>>Hi, I'm Tassie Pippert.

I'm here at Beautiful Valley View Farms in Fauquier County, picking peaches for today's Un-Wine'd.

So what do peaches, cheesecake, steaks, roasted chicken and an outdoor oven have to do with today's show?

Along with Phillip Carter, we'll be tasting some delicious things.

So go grab your glass it's always time to Un-Wine'd.

>>Production funding for Un-Wine'd was made possible in part by.

(upbeat calm music) (jazzy music) >>You know it hasn't been all that long since we were cooking with a wood fire, but today we're cooking with electricity, gas, pretty much everything.

And now it's fun to look back at the history of our cooking and our Virginia wine and see how those pair together.

So, I had so much fun researching for this show.

I had the chance to talk with Philip Strother, who is the owner of Phillip Carter Winery.

He has an amazing family history that dates back centuries.

And when we start looking at how we want to pair foods with these wonderful wines that come from all of our Virginia wineries, it's really fun to start putting those flavors together.

So on today's show, we're going to pair up some delicious chicken, some cheesecake, and a lovely steak, all made right here in this wood-fire.

(upbeat calm music) I love a steak on a grill, and when we're using this outdoor oven, it's just incredible.

So I'm gonna make some M'aitre d butter to go on our steak.

So what I'm gonna do first is chop up some herbs.

Now this is not just a simple M'aitre d butter, it's just a delicious one with bacon and blue cheese.

Both play really, really well with this lovely Cleve.

Okay, so let's strip down maybe four little stems, and then I'm gonna take some parsley, just a nice little Italian parsley you can use curly if that's what you have.

And then I wanna take some fresh basil and I love to use basil.

It's probably my favorite herbs of all time, and we grow so much of it here because we use so much of it.

I love it with chicken and butter, and I love it with steak, of course pesto, you just can't go wrong.

All right I think that's probably enough.

Now I just wanna chop that up really pretty coarsely, but I don't want it in hunks.

I don't want it super fine, but I also don't want it really, really big.

That ought to do it.

Now I'm gonna take that and put it right down in my butter.

And this is really nice and softened.

Now make sure that your butter is at room temperature.

(board scraping) And this is just a nice fried bacon that's, crispy and delicious.

And I just wanna rough chop through that as well.

About the same size as my herbs.

Now mine is cold because I got it ready last night.

If it's warm, it's going to be nice and crispy and just fall right apart for you.

But you can always do this the night before, and you can do the butter a couple of days before so that you get that nice and ready.

And I don't think I'm gonna use quite all of that.

I'm gonna use about half.

All right.

Now I wanna add a little bit of salt because I'm using an unsalted butter.

If you use a salted butter, there's no need to add salt, but you always can just adjust it to whatever you like.

Remember the bacon also has a little bit of salt.

And then I wanna put in some freshly chopped garlic.

Just about a clove.

I'm just gonna mix that through just like that.

Make it nice and evenly mixed before you put in the blue cheese.

Because you want that blue cheese to be really crumbly in this, you don't want to turn the butter gray.

And when you have a nicely striped blue cheese, nicely marbled, it will turn your butter really gray if you mix it up too much.

So let's just crumble that up.

Ooh yeah.

Now I just wanna move this to the side and then I'm going to pull out a piece of wax paper, (paper crackling) and I just wanna dump that on the wax paper.

'Cause what we're gonna do is make a nice little log that we refrigerate, and then we have a nice slice of butter that we can put on our steak.

So I'm just gonna roll this up.

Just gonna of pull it back, you wanna shape it a little bit, try to get the air out and just roll it up like this.

There we go and we make it nice.

And twist it, and then stick that in the refrigerator while you grill your steaks so that when it comes out, it's nice and solid, and that way when you put it on the hot steak, it just beautifully melts.

I am a gal who likes to put a lot of flavor in things.

So when I season my steak, I mix up a little bit of dill seed, a little bit of coarse kosher salt, some coarsely ground black pepper, a little garlic powder and a little onion powder.

So these are incredible steaks that come right off of that oh, it's just awesome.

Now what I wanna do is plate this with a little potato and some broccoli that's one of my favorite combinations, and then I'm gonna take this butter and I just wanna do a nice thick slice and put it right on top.

And it will melt down over this steak as it rests there and it is incredible.

So I'm serving this beautiful meal with this Cleve, this beautiful Phillip Carter wine.

And this is a combination, a blend of Tannat and Petit Verdo.

It's very jammy and it's delicate at the same time.

Really, really beautiful.

It goes so well with steak and it goes incredibly well with blue cheese.

That's why I thought I'd pair these two up.

It's just so tasty and I know you're going to love it.

So, next time you're having a great steak grab a bottle of this Cleve wine and you will just die.

(jazzy music) Well, Phillip Strother, thank you so much for joining us for this wonderful conversation about Philip Carter Winery.

It has just, it's great to meet you here on Zoom and to have the opportunity for you to tell us a little bit about that family history and exactly how Phillip Carter Winery came about.

So tell us a little bit about the winery.

>>Well, it's absolutely my pleasure and thank you so much for having me on today, really appreciate that.

So Phil Carter Winery is a dream come true.

It was an opportunity to bring the story of the Carter family back to life.

As it relates to wine production here in the Commonwealth, in Virginia.

(bright music) 2008 when we decided to purchase the property here in Hume, Virginia.

We set out to re-engage the Carter family or retell the story of the Carters and their involvement in wine production that happened back in the 1700s here in Virginia.

And that was the goal in mind when we set out to embark on Phillip Carter Winery.

>>That is awesome.

Well tell us a little bit about the family history, about Phillip Carter and Charles Carter and how the wine industry played in your family way back when.

>>Sure.

Well as you know, Virginians have had a long history.

A beautiful history with wine that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years, 400 years for that matter.

It was back in 1619 that colonial Virginia decided as the most, well as the 12th law, the 12th most important law in the State of Virginia or the colony of Virginia, they decided to pass Act 12, which required every land owner to plant 10 vines in Virginia.

And that was intended to promote viticulture and the wine industry way back in the very foundation of Virginia.

The Carter family has been involved in Virginia for many centuries and in the 1700s, Charles Carter, one of my relatives, was involved in the Virginia House of Burgesses and he sat on the economic commission.

And as part of that, they identified the wine industry as an industry that they should focus on as an alternative to tobacco growing at that time.

And so they set out to establish the Virginia wine industry, if you will at that time.

Charles Carter in 1762, produced his wines and sent them over to London where they were received by the Royal Society of The Arts.

And they were recognized as being of excellent quality.

And it's our understanding that that was the first time in recorded history for America, that wines received international acclaim for being of excellent quality.

And so our involvement with wine goes back centuries, and we're real proud of that particular story here at Phillip Carter Winery.

>>Oh and you certainly should be.

I love that you put this on the back of the bottle that it received, what was it?

The medal by the Royal Society of Encouragement of the Arts.

>>That's right.

>>Okay, I love that.

(both chuckle) >>And that's great and you know what just so you can see, we actually had a replica made of the medal, can we see this?

I'm gonna hold that up, okay?

>>Oh yes, perfect.

>>All right.

This is actually what the medal looked like.

I was, I had the privilege and opportunity to go into the archives at the Royal Society over in London, I traveled over there, to really get to the bottom of this great story.

And I was, I met with their chief archivist and we went through a lot of the documents back in the 1700s and the correspondence back and forth between the Carters and the Royal Society talking about which vines to plant and how various ones were doing, and that there was Portuguese vines that Carter was growing.

And I had an opportunity to see some of those medals that were in the archives, that were back from the 1700s.

And so we were able digitize one of those medals and we had a renowned sculptor recreate the medal, his name's Paul DePasquale and he is the same sculptor who did the famed Neptune down at Virginia Beach.

That massive, massive sculpture that's down there in Virginia Beach on the boardwalk.

And so this one was a different scale.

Yeah obviously the little medal and that's related to it.

All the details, but he took that on and he made that for us.

And I also, we had one of the medals reproduced into a gold medallion, and that was presented to the first lady of Virginia, lady McDonald when governor McDonald was the governor of Virginia.

>>Well, tell me how did you decide on the property where you have your winery?

Was that something that was handed down through the family, or did you purchase it and decide that that's where you wanted to grow grapes?

>>The property where Phillip Carter Wineries' located in Hume, is located about 10 miles away from where the Strother family farm is located.

Which is Valley View farm.

And in Valley View farm, if you're not familiar with that, there's a wonderful, a pick your own operation there with peaches and apples and blueberries and cherries and a farmer's market as well.

And so the Hume side where Phillip Carter's located is in close proximity to that location.

I felt that it was just the right site to start and to move forward with telling the Carter story and our involvement with wine production back in 1700s.

>>Yeah well Philip, I love your wines.

And I just wanna thank you for giving us the opportunity to feature some of them.

And I can't wait for you to see what I make with them.

>>I am so looking forward to tasting what your creations and I really thank you for the opportunity to chat with you.

>>Absolutely, our pleasure.

Thank you so much and to you.

>>Thank you.

>>Cheers.

>>Cheers.

(jazzy music) >>So I love a good roasted chicken.

And this one really plays well with the Viognier.

And I want to just pull off some herbs here.

I have some parsley, some basil.

I love to make these compound butters, they really do beautiful things for meats, particularly when you're grilling them and you have a lot of hot heat and you want to moisturize them in some way, aside from their skin.

And then I wanna take some thyme and just pull that right off of the stems.

Oh my goodness.

I love the smell of fresh herbs, in the summertime, I grow so many fresh herbs because we use them for a little bit of everything.

Now this chicken can of course be made in your oven.

It can be made on your grill, but today we're making it the old fashioned way, with a nice hot oven outside.

And when you're cooking with an oven outside, usually what you do is certain things over coals.

And then you remove those coals and you have all the residual heat to continue to cook.

And that's the way that we're going to cook this chicken, with residual heat.

So the oven should still be probably about 400-425 degrees.

It doesn't have to be finely chopped, actually a nice coarse chop on this works really well because you're just sticking all of this up under the skin of the chicken and giving it a lot of flavor.

So a nice coarse chop is fine.

When you look at your chicken in the oven don't think that you've burnt spots, it's really just those herbs up under the skin.

All right, now I wanna take this and put it into a bowl of softened butter.

And I have two sticks of softened butter here.

And the next thing I wanna do is grate some lemon zest.

(grater rattling) So the zest of two lemons.

You can use a lime if you like.

I like the lemon with the chicken.

The lime gives it a little bit of a different flavor.

(grater rattling) >>I have a microplane, but when I'm doing this much zest, I really like to pull out the grater because it just keeps my hands from getting tired.

And don't worry if you leave a little on your board, the chicken is going to go on that board next.

And that little bit of zest will not hurt it at all.

Now I'm gonna take just a little bit of salt and pepper, and I've got mine mixed already, and then I just want to give that a nice mix.

You can see it's just so colorful and it's delicious.

Now if you like garlic in your chicken, you can also add garlic to this.

You can change up your herbs depending on what kinds of flavors you like in your chicken.

I particularly like basil and I love thyme and parsley really just stretches it.

And it's a great flavor as well.

Now I wanna get my chicken ready.

So the thing that I'm gonna do first is put my gloves on.

I always like to use sanitation gloves when I'm working with chicken.

And if you're outside and working with chicken, be sure you have it over ice.

And it's not a bad idea to have it inside, over ice as well.

Now I wanna take this nice roaster and I have washed it well and I've kept it on ice.

And you wanna do is turn it so that the legs are toward you and then lift the skin of the breast just slightly on one side and press the fingers in all the way as far as you can get them and then come over to the leg and kind of cut yourself a little pocket between the leg and the breast you'll feel that tissue and just press down on that so that you can get some of that butter up around the leg.

Now we're gonna do the same thing on the other side.

Just sort of press in, get those fingers right in there, and then kind of tear through that inner tissue, don't make a hole on the outside if you can help it, because you don't want the butter to run out everywhere all right?

And now we're going to stuff that chicken with our butter.

Make sure you get all the way down that breast.

You can push the pockets of butter down.

If you want, you can save about half of this butter out and you can finish the chicken with butter.

I actually happen to have some left from making a sample of this recipe, so I have some already.

But if you want to, if you wanna finish your chicken with some butter, just hold out a little bit before you ever dip your hands in the chicken.

So let's rub the rest of that butter all over the chicken.

And then we're gonna take some more salt and pepper again it's been mixed, so I'm just going to give it a little season all over the chicken, up top, underneath, a little more of that butter.

Now I want to take any stems from my herbs that I have left, and we're just gonna stick those in the cavity.

Just force them in there, just to give a little extra flavor.

All right, now beer can chicken has been around for a long time.

I love to make beer can chicken, but I'm one of probably the few people you know, who saves beer cans.

So I get my beer cans and then I put wine in them to make a wine chicken, but over a beer can form.

So what we wanna do is just pull that chicken just right down on that beer can just like that.

Let her rest there, make sure she's all rubbed up with the rest of the butter, and the salt and pepper.

And then we're gonna stick it in this lovely oven.

(jazzy music) What a beautiful chicken oh my goodness.

This is just great.

I love cooking in this open oven, this wonderful outdoor oven is so much fun and you get just amazing flavors in your food.

These are known around my house is the chicken gloves.

So this is the way that I lift my chicken off of my beer can.

I just wanna have a board ready, and then I'm just gonna kind of wiggle it off.

Okay, so sometimes we have to wiggle a little bit and then it comes right off.

All of those herbs should fall out.

Oh, look at that incredible bird.

Oh my goodness it looks wonderful.

Now what I wanna do is take a little bit of that butter, and rub it on the chicken.

Rub all over the outside just like this.

So get a nice piece of that breast meat, I wanna just serve that up on my plate.

And with this, I'm serving some lovely mashed potatoes and a little bit of green beans that I've just picked this morning from my garden.

Now let's serve this up with this beautiful Viognier.

This is the Sabine Hall Viognier from Phillip Carter, and it is exquisite with this lovely chicken dish.

(jazzy music) Who would have known that cheesecake would go so well with this Vidal blanc.

Well, I had no idea.

First I was planning to do a peach compote with a nice fried chicken and then I thought, you know what?

I wanna do something different.

So I came across a recipe for a Basque cheesecake that I've kind of redeveloped a little bit for the outdoor oven and for my oven frankly, and I love this cheesecake.

We are going to start with making a little bit of peach compote.

I love peach compote and pretty much anything.

And in the summer, peaches are one of my favorite fruits.

So what I wanna do is just cut this peach in half, and this one, the pit is coming apart.

Now when you're using peaches and you're cooking, you really want to go for a freestone peach as opposed to a cling peach, because you lose a lot when the peach pit is clinging to all that meat, but these are cling peaches.

So I'm gonna do it because that's what I have.

I just want to peel this and then I'm gonna cut them into cubes and they don't have to be perfect, actually I like a nice little rough cut on these because it just makes it look more rustic for that outdoor oven.

Now, the next thing I wanna do is add a little bit of white wine.

Now I'm using the Viognier to serve this, but I don't necessarily want to use up all of my wonderful Viogneir in this.

So you can use another Viognier or you can even use a Chardonnay in this recipe, just make sure that it's something that you would drink and not something that's going to make your food bitter.

So about three quarters cup.

Then I'm gonna take about two tablespoons of butter.

And I wanna take a little cinnamon.

This is what makes the combination work, the little bit of cinnamon.

I tried this with just the peach compote and no cinnamon, without that little bit of spice, the flavor profile is totally different.

Therefore, the pairing is a little bit different.

Just a touch of salt about a quarter teaspoon, not much.

And then I wanna take a little bit of brown sugar and I have about two tablespoons of brown sugar.

You don't wanna make this really sweet.

But I also wanna give a little bit of honey profile, so about a tablespoon of honey.

The key to making a dessert with a wine is that you don't want your dessert to be sweeter than the wine, or then the wine will taste like vinegar.

This Vidal blanc has about 2% residual sugar, and it works really well with this particular recipe.

I'm going to set this aside and I'm going to put it in the oven.

When I put the cheesecake in.

(jazzy music) So here is a piece of that incredible cheesecake, I just love it.

You can see the denseness of it and you can see the fact that the cheesecake does fall and how beautifully browned it gets on the top.

Now again, I'm serving this with this Vidal Blanc, which has beautiful flavors of lemon peel and lime peel, a little pear and pineapple, it's perfect with this cheesecake.

Who wouldn't love that for a great dessert.

It was fun cooking in my outdoor oven today, making all of these delicious foods, things that you can also make in your indoor oven and I hope you will.

So from this delicious roasted chicken with lemon butter, oh, it's so delicious.

And this wonderful M'aitre d butter with blue cheese and bacon and herbs on this delicious steak.

And then of course the cheesecake that is just to die for.

So I hope you will enjoy all of these recipes and all of these delicious wines.

So until next time I'm Tassie Pippert, don't forget to grab that glass.

It's always time to Un-Wine'd.

>>Production funding for Un-Wine'd was made possible in part by.

(upbeat calm music)