>>Hi, I'm Tassie Pippert and I'm here today at Rappahannock Cellars in Huntley, Virginia where they have an amazing family atmosphere at this winery.

So go grab your glass, we're going to have some amazing food, some delicious wine and it's time now to Un-wined.

>>Production funding for Un-wined was made possible and part by.

(upbeat music) >>I had the best time today at Rappahannock Cellars with Tom Delmare, I tasted from the distillery I got to hang out in the tank room and the bottle room it was so much fun.

Back in the kitchen, I'll make some delicious food to go with these wines.

So with the sparkling a little bit of a crostini that I hope you'll love with the Meritage and amazing prime rib of beef and with this beautiful dessert wine some chocolate truffles.

So grab your glass, let's head into the kitchen and see what we're gonna make.

(soft music) This smoked and ham crostini with havarti cheese is so good with this delightful sparkling red from Rappahannock.

It's so wonderful it's made from the Cabernet Franc grapes and it's just delicious.

So we're gonna start off with just a baguette and I'm gonna slice these between, a quarter and a half inch thick.

I want these to be kind of a an appetizer party sort of food because when you have sparkling nice light things just are what's best.

All right, let's let the wine show through.

Okay, so I'm gonna put these on a tray just a little baking sheet, wanna give them a little room just so the cheese that runs off does it stick together and then you have to cut them apart I don't like to do that.

Okay, I'm gonna take a little bit of olive oil and just brush each one lightly.

Just a touch of olive oil, this makes the bread nice and moist and it serves as that Mayo or mustard that you would normally use on your sandwich.

It also allows the bottom of the crostini to brown just a little bit because as it runs through the cracks it gives you that little browning method.

Take a little oregano which is just perfect for this blends so well with that cap frank with the sparkling and it just gives a little hint of something in the sandwich usually people just go well what was that?

Now, I'm gonna take a little bit of cheese, just a tiny bit.

Now this is grated havarti and I love to use havarti on this you can build crostinis any way you like but this particular one just works so well with this wine.

And it's a great little order before you have people sit down to dinner or just a nice little snack and you can make this for lunch too with larger pieces of French bread, that's also delicious.

Now, I wanna take just a little bit of my ham or my smoked turkey, I like the smoked meats on this because I think it brings out all the flavor better.

Roasted turkey will work but your flavors are gonna be completely different.

So I'm gonna take about half of these, with turkey and half with ham.

My preference is usually the turkey and my husband just loves these with ham.

And when I'm making these sandwiches for lunch usually I use sliced ham already because it's easy to put that on a sandwich and let that go.

Now a little bit of roasted red bell pepper that you can use your own roasted red bell pepper.

I love to roast my own but when I'm really in a hurry you can get some really great jarred red bell peppers.

And I love the ones that are fire roasted for this particularly.

Just a little bit of that red pepper it just makes it pop.

These make great little hors d'oeuvres for the holiday season or for football or just for a Saturday night with friends, they're so tasty.

And then finish it off with just a little more cheese.

When things fall off, you can either put them back on or you can let them roast and eat those little niblets off the pan that's why I love.

I'm gonna put these in a 425 degree oven for about eight minutes, maybe 10 depends on your oven and they'll get nice and toasty golden on the top they'll be baked through and they are going to be delicious.

I've got a nice little tray just something to make them look pretty as I present them and they are just gonna be, so delicious to have with this wine.

And as you can see, I've got lots of nice little crusty pieces on the tray that I just love to eat by myself.

Now let's pour out this incredible sparkling wine.

Sparkling is just incredible.

Look at the gorgeous foam on that had so great and with this, I know you're gonna love it.

So let's head up to Rappahannock and see what's happening in Huntley, Virginia.

(soft music) I'm here at Rappahannock Cellars with John Delmare and John, you have done some really cool things here since the last time I was here just recently it seems.

So tell me a little bit about Rappahannock and what you're doing right now.

>>Oh, my gosh, well, you want the story from the beginning?

>>Sure, I would.

>>Oh my gosh.

Well, try to make a long story short we had a little winery in California in the mid 90s, we sold our winery we moved to Virginia, we did the reverse commute to the east and it took us a couple of years to find this property and plant the vines and start the winery.

We started the winery in 2000 opened our tasting room in 2001.

You know, as a business grew back in those days we were one of the closest wineries to DC we thought we had a perfect location and then as wineries sprung up between us and the Beltway we kind of shifted gears and we thought well how do we exist in a business out so far away?

And so we really started focusing our wine club and that's kind of the lead into what are we doing now.

Our wine club is the backbone of our business it's about 80% of our sales.

>>You know, you had this winery in California what part of California were you in?

>>Santa Cruz Mountains on the Santa Clara side of the mountains, Saratoga?

>>Yeah awesome and then what possessed you to just pick up and come this direction.

>>Well, you know, we got into the wine business my wife comes from 120 year old California farming dried fruit.

So we've always kind of been around the farms, the ranches the prune ranches and apricot ranches and we love the idea of raising our kids on a farm.

So I was in the real estate development business in the Bay Area and it was like well, honey we can't move to the farm.

So what's the next best thing, well the next best thing was let's go and you know, as you know if you know the Bay Area the mountains there your 20 minute drive away and once you're in the mountains, you feel like you're a million miles away.

So we started on little search, we came across a an old literally 80 year old winery that was for sale at the time and moved there moved our family there loved it decided that we loved it so much that we wanna do it somewhere other than Silicon Valley my wife said honey, all I'm doing is driving up down the mountain all day long, carting the kids back and forth.

So we sold it, we started looking for another place we looked in all over wine countries in the West Coast through some friends of ours who were moving to Virginia they said hey, you need to come see Virginia and we thought well, all right, we're gonna try Virginia.

>>Wow, wow.

>>So, just kind of plunked down and started looking around and thought well, let's start looking for vineyard lands so.

>>That's fantastic, well, what do you find different between the grape varietals that you could grow there the ones that you grow here or the styles of making wine in those two areas?

>>Yeah, great question.

We were fortunate enough that our old planet in 1910 vineyard in California, grew a lot of Chardonnay and a lot of Cabernet Franc, which was highly unusual for California, highly usual for the for the East Coast so we were starting to feel a little bit at home.

You know, Virginia, your palette of what you can grow is much narrower than what you can grow in California.

We'd love Zinfandel, we grew it on our site in California and there's no chance of growing it in Virginia.

And there are a few things out here that we didn't even you know some of the hybrid grapes as an example, Norton that we make our port from.

That was something that I didn't even know existed of course you come from California and California is the center of the universe right, so it must be the center of the wine universe.

You know, California I've always said you can be a hobby farmer in California, you can plant your grapes in the spring and prune the vines come back in the fall and harvest which you which you've grown.

You know here in Virginia, if you don't manage your vines for even as little as a few weeks, you'll lose your crop.

And when it comes to wine making, you know that because we are weather here in this Mid Atlantic climate is so different year to year our grapes year to year are different.

So from wine making perspective, you know again, contrasting California, California is very consistent grapes year to year and you kind of you hone your craft and you just do it a little bit better you're making the same style wine do a little bit better, a little bit better you hope every year.

Here in Virginia this year, these grapes may be very reminiscent of Bordeaux next year they may be very reminiscent of California.

You've got old world, new world and so assessing the grapes understanding what, how these grapes are gonna be best expressed in a wine and then being able to make those different style wines.

>>Well, John, thanks so much for having us here today.

>>Oh my gosh, thanks for being here.

>>It's fun to be in the space.

>>Yeah, good well, thank you for being here we appreciate it.

(soft music) >>So prime rib of beef is so incredible with this beautiful Meritage from Rappahannock Cellars.

You know, prime rib is easy to do and people really think that it's going to be difficult but it's just a snap it's just a matter of seasoning it properly.

So here I've got a six pound roast and it's been trimmed up really, really well by the butcher.

what you wanna look for is to make sure that you have a little bit of a fat cap like this, so that when you go to cut it, you're not thick, thick with fat but you have enough fat that it will melt into your meat and really tenderize it.

So let's talk a little bit about how to do that.

First thing I'm gonna do is rub this all over with a little salt and pepper not a lot, but their equal amounts of salt and pepper because I'm going to also have salt and pepper in my rub.

Now technically, just using salt and pepper is what we call a dry rub.

So a dry rub would be any herbs and spices that you put on the meat just dry to make it a wet rub you can add fat so a little bit of butter or a little bit of olive oil today, we're gonna use butter on this.

So it almost serves as a Maître d' butter without being a Maître d' butter, it's preparing a Maître d' butter and then using it really as a wet rub which is what that's called.

So I've got some nice salt and pepper pretty much all over don't forget the ends and don't forget the bone area because sometimes if we forget the bone area and people really liked to kind of nibble on those bones the meat in that area is not as well seasoned.

So let's make sure we've got a little bit in that bone area.

And what is excess will just fall off.

Okay, now let's set that aside and we're going to make this beautiful rub the base of my rub is butter.

So I'm using one cup of butter that's two sticks or one half pound and you want it nice and soft room temperature, kind of read a fork through it.

Just like that, then I'm gonna take some chives some dried chives, about three quarters of a teaspoon I'm gonna take about a teaspoon of dry garlic.

About half teaspoon of basil or oregano, you can use either one, half teaspoon of dried thyme and here you can use fresh in all of your herbs just remember to triple those if you're using fresh.

And then I'm gonna take about a tablespoon of salt and a half tablespoon or a teaspoon and a half or even just a teaspoon of pepper and put that in there.

And then the herb that really makes this is Rosemary.

Rosemary with beef is just so perfect and I love to use Rosemary in all of my beef ribs because the rosemary really brings out that intensity of meat flavor.

I like rosemary with lamb and with beef.

You don't wanna get too much of that stem, make sure that you're just getting the beautiful herb leaf and don't snip them too big you want them about half maybe even a third of their length.

All right, now I've got that in there and let's mix it together.

Okay, now I have all of that mixed and I've put on a little sanitation glove just so that I don't end up with butter everywhere on my hand.

Certainly, most of the time I don't use that but it takes a little while to get butter off of your hands.

So we're just going to pile that up on this beautiful roast.

And working from this top, we want to just start pressing that butter all over.

You're creating a cap to go on the roast.

So again, this is a wet style rub lots of butter.

In this beautiful, beautiful roast.

And don't worry if you pick up a little bit of that salt and pepper that's already on your roast that will be fine.

Now, if you don't like a lot of butter, you can actually make this rub using more herbs more salt and pepper double or triple it and then put in about two tablespoons of olive oil just to moisten it and rub it all over.

And in that case, I would rub it even on the sides and on the bottom of the meat.

Because the butter will melt off, we're not gonna put it up under we're just going to put it on the cap.

And I'll be back in just a second to show you how to build your roasting rack so that you can roast this delicious prime rib of beef.

(soft music) So here I have my baking pan set up, this is a nice roaster pan and I put in about a pound and a half of carrots that I washed but I didn't peel.

One full bunch of celery that I just chopped and one large white onion that I peeled and just cut into quarters then I cut again into eighths.

All right, so the next thing I wanna do is put in a couple of my sprigs of my rosemary.

And I usually take off those springs were really chopped it so if I want, I can use a little of the rosemary as a garnish.

There we go, then I wanna take about three quarters cup of red wine and here's my little secret ingredient a double shot of espresso.

Now if you don't have espresso, no problem just use a nice dark roast coffee and you can double that, I have about a half cup, if you want you can put in more but I find that a nice strong half cup of coffee works.

Now I'm using what I call a strong beef stock.

Everybody asks me what is the strong beef stock I don't understand that.

Well, to me strong is more potent, so I usually use a paste beef stock instead of the bouillon cubes.

And those have just more intensity and you can actually increase your delicious amount of beef flavor with those.

Now I'm just gonna put my roast right on that you can see it's not resting in any liquid.

It's going to rest up above the vegetables and continue to cook and then we'll have this most amazing Au jus in the bottom.

So I'm going to put this into a 450 degree oven for about 15 to 20 minutes.

Nice and hot, make sure it's preheated.

Then I'm gonna turn that heat back to 325 and roast it for 15 minutes per pound, plus one half hour.

(sharpening a knife) So it's just about ready.

I roasted and now I've let that roast sit for 20 minutes so that all those juices can just amalgamate back into that meat, all of it is just so tasty.

I'm going to sharpen my knife and then make sure that I wiped down that blade just in case I have any little fibers on it.

So here's how we finish everything.

I took all of the vegetables and just kind of laid them around the beef, now one of my favorite ways to carve a roast like this is to put it on a meat board so it's slightly angled in part and those juices can run down but I can still make it look like a beautiful platter.

So I drained everything into my gravy separator and I just want to use this amazing Au jus I'm not gonna make a gravy, I just wanna use the Au jus and you can see that you can just pour all of that gorgeous Au jus right into a gravy boat and it's ready for you.

Now let's carve our beautiful roast.

See what this looks like on the inside oh, it's so tender it's so juicy, just amazing oh, that is beautiful.

You can see this gorgeous roast on the inside on the exterior sides, it will be a medium on the inside is going to be medium rare.

Who wouldn't want this on their Saturday night table their Sunday table, their celebration table or even for one of their wonderful holidays.

So, let's pour that out with this beautiful Meritage from Rappahannock, this is gorgeous just a gorgeous wine.

(wine sparkling) oh, with these flavors, it's just gonna be incredible.

So I hope you'll enjoy this and I'm gonna be right back with dessert chocolate truffles.

(upbeat music) Well there's nothing quite like a chocolate truffle and it's said that the chocolate truffles actually originated in the kitchen of Auguste Escoffier when an apprentice had the misfortune of pouring hot cream over chocolate chunks.

Well, I'm sure Misir Escoffier a really got on in that day but the result was amazing chocolate truffles.

These are so easy to make and I want to show you an easy microwave recipe that will have these ready for you in only a few minutes.

This is what we're gonna make delicious.

So in my bowl, I have a pound of chocolate.

Now, you can use chocolate chips you can use chocolate chunks you can chop up chocolate bars whatever you like.

I have semisweet and bittersweet chocolate chips And in my one pound I also added a couple of squares of 100% cocoa because I like a little darker chocolate.

Then I also have in here one stick of butter unsalted and I'm going to add a can of sweetened condensed milk.

Now don't confuse this with just evaporated milk that's not what it is, it's sweetened and condensed it has a lot of sugar in it and it's been simmered down nice, nice and thick.

Okay, so we're just gonna put that in and then I wanna go to my microwave and I'm just going to not even mix this up I'm going to stick it in the microwave for about two and a half minutes, check it, stir it and then if it still needs extra time, I'll go 15 seconds at a time until everything is well blended I'll show you what I mean.

(upbeat music) So you can imagine how delicious these truffles are, with this Rappahannock Cellars, it is a delicious dessert wine this 2016 Rappahannock Cellars red dessert wine it's so good and the red wine, the sweetness with the chocolate, it's wonderful.

Now this has been in the microwave for two and a half minutes, and you can see that the butter has melted and it just looks like you have a soupy mixture right here.

But when it comes together, it's all of a sudden and it's absolutely incredibly beautiful even though you think you've done something wrong so don't think you've done it wrong this is gonna be wonderful.

So just stir until this is all incorporated.

(upbeat music) Okay, now we're getting that last bit of melted butter down into our truffles.

And notice that I'm not using a whisk I don't want to incorporate any air into these I want them to be nice and solid.

And there we go, now I'm going to let this rest for about 20 minutes and you can just let it sit in your bowl or until it's cooled, make sure that the bottom of the bowl is also cooled and then you can scoop it out and it's easier to work with.

So here you can see I've got a couple different little cookie scoops and I like to use this for my truffles but you can just use a teaspoon if you don't have one.

So for a regular truffle I like to use one that's about an inch across and it just works beautifully.

And you just wanna drag that through until it's nice and even on the bottom and then just scoop it onto a plate.

Same thing with the little one you can always do just tiny ones, if I'm dipping my truffles I would like to use a smaller one because then they fit in the little tiny papers better.

If I'm using crumbs or nuts or sprinkles or white chocolate anything like that I like to use a larger one.

So, then I want to take these truffles and just kind of roll them into a little ball just like that.

You can see how easy it is to do and just form them into that little ball.

And then we roll them through our sugar you can put them in white chocolate sprinkles or dark chocolate sprinkles.

You can put them in pecans, anything you like on a truffle.

I also like to dip mine, so when I dip them I just melt a little bit of chocolate and then I dip it down in and I always just use a fork.

And I like to use a dinner size fork so I have longer times to really shake that and get that excess chocolate off the bottom, it's just great.

And then I put it back on my dish to cool.

And I like to use wax paper when I'm using candy because wax paper works so much better than parchment.

Parchment can actually stick to the candy as can plastic wrap, all right so let's see what we have.

(soft music) So let's pour out a little bit of this delicious red dessert wine, it is just so yummy made from Norton grapes one of my favorites, so good.

And with this chocolate, let me just break one open and show you what it looks like so, so delicious.

Oh, you can see how dense they are.

I don't wannna poke my thumb in it that's why I'm being very, very careful but these are so wonderfully dense and so delicious and with this dessert wine who wouldn't want this for a treat for Valentine's Day just as a special gift from the heart.

So I hope you'll enjoy this one and this beautiful wine.

(soft music) Well, thanks so much Rappahannock Cellars for an amazing day and for so many fun wines to pair with delicious foods.

I sure hope you've enjoyed those today.

For these recipes and a lot more please go to vpm.org/unwined and you'll get all of our recipes.

And all of our shows, so until next time, I'm Tassie Pippert, don't forget to grab that glass it's always time to Un-wined.

>>Production funding for Un-wined was made possible in part by.

(upbeat music) (soft music)