>>Today on "Un-Wine'd," Doukenie vineyard in the Middleburg AVA, great food, delicious wine.

So go grab that glass.

It's time to unwind.

>>Production funding for "Un-Wine'd" was made possible in part by... >>The Virginia Wine Board, promoting the interests of vineyards and wineries in the commonwealth through research, education, and marketing.

There's a movement growing in Virginia's vineyards.

Discover more at virginiawine.org.

>>And by... >>I had so much fun talking with Bill Travis at Doukenie Vineyards.

The wines are spectacular there.

And back in my kitchen, I had the opportunity to pair up with some delicious foods, carrot soup, a wonderful beef that's stuffed with a sausage, and then a bonus recipe of a cobbler made with apricots and blueberries.

So let's get started with this carrot soup.

It's wonderful with Viognier.

It's also spectacular with a Petit Manseng, or a Roussanne, and even a Chardonnay.

But today with the Viognier.

So I'm going to put a little bit of oil in my pan and get that nice and hot.

The ingredients in this soup are pretty simple.

We're going to use some carrots, some sliced leaks, and then a little bit of ginger root.

So let's just grate a little bit of ginger root.

And if you don't have a ginger grater, that's fine.

Just chop it up nice and finely.

Now, I have about a teaspoon of ginger root here and that's all I want for this particular wine.

And that's what's in the recipe, a teaspoon to a teaspoon and a half.

If you're using a Petit Manseng, it's awesome to have about two teaspoons of the ginger root because the Petit Manseng really absorbs that great flavor.

Now, let's add our carrots and our leaks.

And we'll pop in our ginger root.

So the idea here is to get a little bit of oil on all of those ingredients, a little bit stirred through in the leaks, the carrots, and the ginger root.

You don't have to saute until they're completely cooked because we're going to add liquid to the pan.

That's where the soup comes in.

Now I want to add a little bit of liquid and some seasoning.

So the first thing, a little bit of chicken stock, three cups to be exact.

I love fruit in this.

So I'm going to add about 3/4 of a cup of applesauce, unsweetened.

Now you can use an apple if you'd like.

I also love this soup with pear.

It's delicious.

It doesn't have to be sauce.

It can be whole fruit because it's going to cook down.

And the last liquid we need is one 14 ounce can of coconut milk.

Now I like to use full fat, but you can also use a light coconut milk.

It works just fine.

And then we need a flavor component.

This is cardamom, and I love cardamom in my soup.

When I'm making a butternut squash or a carrot soup, cardamom really is a highlight flavor for me.

So about 3/4 of a teaspoon, sometimes half.

Again, it's just to your taste.

My recipe calls for a half, but sometimes I like to put in just a spec more.

Now, I want this to simmer for about 40 minutes, or until those carrots and leaks are extremely soft.

And then I can put it through my blender.

So my soup is all cooked down.

The carrots are nice and soft.

Those leaks have started to kind of disintegrate into the liquid.

And now I want to just cool that soup for a while and then take it to the blender to just blend it in small batches.

So let's blend this beautiful concoction.

And all I want to do is take about half into my blender first, and then the other half will do in a second batch.

Now, make sure your soup is not too terribly hot because when it's hot and it goes in the blender, the steam will create an explosion and you don't want that to happen.

So I always have a towel with me and I just kind of lay my towel over the top of the blender, but I release the top.

So that way if you get a lot of heat popping up, it goes into the towel.

It doesn't go all over your body.

(blender whirring) There we go.

This looks so gorgeous.

I just love this soup.

Now let's do the rest.

You don't want to scoop out the soup yet because what happens is you have all of those solids in your first batch, and then you have a lot of the liquid left for the second batch.

So make sure you blend them together.

All right, again, let's take off that little top, just in case.

(blender whirring) And you can see how much more liquid there is in this batch.

And the heat did pop up.

It's a little bit warm right there.

Now let's pour in the rest and we'll stir through.

Be sure you really scrape it down.

You don't wanna miss any of that soup.

Okay, now we've got our soup ready.

Let's just put some in our bowl.

And then we want to garnish.

And I love to garnish this soup with a little sour cream or creme fraiche and a bit of freshly minced chives.

Now you can snip these chives right in.

But if they're at all moist from your garden, they will just stay together in a clump.

And mine just came out of my garden so I want to make sure I chop them with a knife.

In that way, I can kind of spread them apart a little bit.

There we go.

All right, I like to use a nice little piping bag for this.

If you don't have one, use a Ziploc bag.

If you wanna make it pretty and just snip off the corner, pipe right into your bowl.

Or you can just use a dollop of sour cream.

There we go.

And a little sprinkle of that chive.

I love fresh chives on my soup, in my potatoes.

Awesome.

All right, now let's taste it with this amazing wine.

This is a Viognier.

And Viognier is light.

It's refreshing.

It has a lot of apricot, nectarine, honeysuckle.

It's fantastic, mm.

Mm.

So good.

And with this soup, let's give it a try.

Mm.

That's so good.

And the pairing is just perfect.

Now, let's head up to Doukenie to talk to my friend Bill Travis about Doukenie Winery and the beautiful region of Middleburg AVA.

I'm here at Doukenie Vineyards with Bill Travis, and I love this place.

It just has such a wonderful ambiance.

Tell us a little bit about the history of Doukenie.

>>I'd be happy to.

The owners are George and Nicki Bazaco.

George is a doctor, he's a pulmonologist.

He bought the farm here in 1983 and started growing grapes here in '85.

>>Wow.

>>And we have about 12 different varieties that we grow.

>>Wow.

>>Yeah, Doukenie is a Greek name.

It's his grandmother's first name.

>>Oh, wow.

>>Yeah.

In English, it means duchess.

>>Oh, that's fascinating.

>>And she emigrated from Greece as a little girl, age of 15 in 1919, but she was the one that talked George into planting grapes here beginning in '85.

>>So Bill, those planted acres sit here on a very large plot of property that I understand is covered in walking trails and there's a beautiful pond here.

Tell us a little bit about that.

>>Well, we have about 360 acres total.

Again, 30 of it is under vine.

The rest is the winery facility.

All the open land is leased to a farmer.

We also have cattle.

We have about 40 head of cattle.

>>You know, this whole area is just so fascinating and so many wineries have popped up here.

What do you think is the thing that attributes to that?

>>Well, I think it's the more the merrier is really the philosophy.

(laughs) I think, you know, it's better to be near each other than to be spread out.

Now, Loudoun County has, I believe, 48 wineries, which I believe is the highest concentration in Virginia, in a county.

We have a lot of breweries and a lot of, some distilleries as well.

So I think it's just the congregation of people out here.

Being along the Blue Ridge, it is a little better for growing grapes.

We're on a fault line.

There is a little different soil here, still a lot of clay in the soil.

You know, that red clay that's so prominent in Virginia.

But it's more broken here.

There's more stone in the soil which provides a little better drainage.

>>Sure, and do you think you get most of your visitors from your local community?

Or are there a lot of visitors who come from the city?

>>They come from all over.

You know, we're in a very nice spot, in terms of... We have a large metropolitan area with Washington in the surrounding areas, Maryland, Virginia, DC.

West Virginia is nine miles away.

You know, Pennsylvania is only about 40 miles away.

So we draw from a lot of different directions and it's...

So that makes it a good spot.

>>Well, and I know that they come for your wine, so let's taste a little bit of this beautiful wine.

>>Absolutely.

This first wine we are having is our Vintner's Reserve, kind of our flagship wine.

It is a very typical Bordeaux-style, four different grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot.

It gets 18 months in French oak downstairs.

Just a lovely wine, you know, great wine... >>Beautiful.

Yeah, so cheers to you.

>>Cheers.

>>Uh-hmm.

Mmm.

That's lovely.

Now, is that all...

It doesn't taste like all new oak?

>>No, it's not.

>>Okay, okay.

>>We use a ratio of new oak, which gives off a lot of flavor, as you know, a lot of >>Right, right.

>>secondary, tertiary flavors.

>>Right.

>>And a lot of neutral oak.

But they all get the same aging, 11 months.

So it's usually, you know, 25% new oak to 75, depending on what the wine maker wants to do.

>>Sure, sure.

Wow, well, it takes a village to create an amazing wine and I know that you have to have great grapes to make a great bottle of wine, but you can also make terrible wine with good grapes.

(Bill laughs) And this is amazing wine.

Thank you so much.

Now, I know that you do a lot with education here.

You do a lot of different kinds of tastings.

Tell us a little bit about that.

>>Well, we provide a few different experiences.

Our current general tasting is a flight of wine.

It's four different wines in a flight, and it's kind of a self-guided tour.

But our wine educators, our people that serve you, are very knowledgeable of the wines and take you through them.

We do an elevated tasting.

We call it an elevated tasting, which is about an hour and a half long.

And involves tasting six of our wines.

We give a short tour of the property and the wine-making facility.

It includes charcuterie and things to pair with the wine, which is just a nice experience.

And then about once a month, I do a two-hour educational tour.

It's called From Vines to Wines.

And we literally go from the vines to the wine cellar, and we talk a little bit about everything that we do, and... For people who have an interest in wine, it just gives you a great appreciation for what goes in, how much work goes into a good bottle of wine.

>>Oh, goodness, well, this is just amazing wine.

And I thank you so much for having us here, for sharing the wine, and for sharing the story.

>>Oh, thank you.

>>Yeah, thank you.

(soft music) One of my favorite wines is a Bordeaux blend.

I love the way that those grapes from the Bordeaux region of France just blend together.

And I love to pair French food with that.

This particular recipe is called a macaronade.

Now macaronade is a generic name that goes for a lot of different styles of recipes.

However, this is a macaronade a Sete, so it's made with sausage, beef, and just a few other ingredients, including some tomato and some pasta.

So I hope you'll enjoy this.

In my bowl, I have one pound of sweet Italian sausage that has fennel in it.

If you don't have fennel in your sausage, add about a teaspoon of fennel to this and it will really make this recipe pop.

Now I'm going to add a little bit of panko crumbs, about a quarter to a third cup.

And then I want to add two tablespoons of dried minced parsley, about a half teaspoon of salt, and a quarter teaspoon of pepper.

And then I like to use a little paprika.

And for this one, I like to use smoked paprika.

It's about a half teaspoon.

It's not a lot, but it really gives that little extra something in the recipe.

And then I wanna add one egg.

Now I'm just gonna crack that in my bowl to make sure that it's fine, a nice farm, fresh, large egg.

Now, the reason that I said I had about a quarter to a third cup of the panko is because depending on the egg in the shell, if you're using a large, you usually need about a quarter.

If you use an extra large egg, you need about a third cup of panko.

Now, let's just mix this up.

I used Italian sausage that's not bulk for this particular recipe.

You can use bulk Italian sausage or you can get it in links, but make sure that you trim off and take out the sausage from the casing.

Now what I have here on my plate is a pound and a half, a very thinly sliced top round.

You can use London broil, you can use just a round roast if you want.

Whatever is easy.

Make sure that the butcher cuts it for you, 1/8 inch thick.

And some grocery stores will have the beef already cut just like that for you.

So we're gonna take about a golf ball size piece of our sausage, and then we're gonna roll it up just like this.

Just roll it, roll it.

If you need to tuck, do that.

So that's a little bit wide there.

I'm just gonna tuck that in, kind of like a tail.

So another golf ball.

And before these go in the pan, I want to make sure that I just sprinkle the outsides with a little bit of salt and pepper, just like so.

Now I'm going to roll up all of these and then we're gonna head over to the cooktop and make some magic happen.

I have a pan on the stove, and in it, I have three tablespoons of olive oil, just any oil will do.

But I like olive oil in this.

And I have two large white onions that I just chopped.

They don't have to be a fine mince because they are going to break down in this sauce.

So just a nice heavy chop on them is fine.

And I just wanna stir that through and get it started to saute a little bit.

Now let's take all of those little beef rolls and we'll just add them one at a time.

Really get down in there, and you can put them in between the onions, just kind of tuck them in.

Won't hurt a thing.

You want that onion flavor anyway.

And I usually start with the tucked side down.

That way you know that it's going to sear really well on that seam.

And I don't want a lot of color on these.

I just am trying to sear them just a little bit.

And that will keep them from coming apart in the pan as it cooks.

Now if you have any sausage left, what we're gonna do is just roll that into some little balls and just put it right down in the onion mixture.

Again about golf ball size.

Now let's start just turning that meat a little bit.

You can see it's still gray, but that's okay.

It's going to turn brown in the pan.

So let's just flip all those, and then we'll get onto our next step.

And now we want to add a few more ingredients to make this really pop with flavor.

So I'm going to start with about a half cup of red wine.

Make sure it's a nice dry red wine.

And then a half cup of chicken stock.

You can use beef stock with this if you'd like.

And then I'm gonna take two cans, two 14 1/2 ounce cans, to be precise, of fire roasted tomatoes, with all the juice and everything.

We're just gonna lay those right up on top.

Now, I'm going to mix this down ever so gently, put a lid on it, and stick it in my oven at 350 degrees for two hours.

This is just out of the oven and it looks absolutely amazing.

You can see all the tomato and onion has just cooked down, and we have these nice little beef bundles buried under.

And I want to take those out.

Don't worry, if something sticks to it, that's not a problem.

Just take them out and put them on a plate because we want to mix all of this sauce component with some pasta.

All right, now we have just our sauce.

And in this pan I have 12 ounces of pasta cooked to al dente.

And you can use any kind of pasta you'd like.

Bow ties work great with this.

I particularly like a nice little flower, a bellflower kind of pasta.

I think it looks very French, and I enjoy that.

So I just wanna put that in and mix it through.

All right, now what we wanna do now is return that beef to the pan, but just let it sit right up on top of all of that pasta and sauce ingredient.

You know, I love dishes like this that you can make ahead of time.

You can have that beef already so that all you have to do is pop it in the oven.

And then when you get home, all you have to do is cook your pasta, stir it all together, and then put some cheese on the top and slap your lid back on.

And it's ready in no time.

Now I want to take some freshly-grated Parmesan cheese.

This is about a cup and a half a freshly-grated Parm, and we're just going to sprinkle it all over the top.

And then we'll pop this under the broiler.

And I like to use a high broiler for this for two to three minutes, just until the cheese is starting to turn a nice brown.

And we'll pop it out and plate it up.

Mmm, I love this stuff.

Ah, with a little bit of that pasta, a little of the sauce.

Mm, some of that sausage.

Mm.

That was so good.

Now let's try it with that wine.

Again, a beautiful Bordeaux blend.

Oh, that beautiful, beautiful smell.

Oh, just gorgeous.

Mmm.

Oh, that's exquisite.

What a blend.

And with that fennel, it just makes this wine pop.

So I hope you've enjoyed all the recipes today and these wines from Doukenie Winery.

The recipes I paired up were this delicious carrot soup, this wonderful macaronade, which is made with beef and sausage, and our bonus recipe, the apricot and blueberry cobbler.

For these recipes and a whole lot more, visit me at vpm.org/unwined.

And until next time, go grab that glass.

It's time to unwind.

>>Production funding for "Un-Wine'd" was made possible in part by... >>The Virginia Wine Board, promoting the interests of vineyards and wineries in the commonwealth through research, education, and marketing.

There's a movement growing in Virginia's vineyards.

Discover more at virginiawine.org.

>>And by... (soft music) (gentle music)