(upbeat music) - Coming up on Inspire, we feature an extra special episode that will wake your taste buds and provide an inside look into the world of chocolatiering and wine making.

All this coming up on the next Inspire.

- [Narrator] Inspire is sponsored by Kansas Furniture Mart.

Using furniture to inspire conversation.

And by the Blanche Bryden Foundation.

(upbeat music) - Hello, welcome to Inspire.

Romance is in the air on this episode, and I'm happy to share the moment with my wonderful co-hosts Danielle Norwood and Amber Dickinson.

And today will be treated to an insider's view into the process of creating and adding flavor and romance to our date nights.

- And not just date nights but even just a few moments away from the kids is all you need with your special someone to reconnect.

And what better way to do it but with wine and chocolate.

- Amber, wine and chocolates are definitely the key to my heart.

And that's why I'm so excited to introduce our guests for our special date night edition of inspire.

Here with us to provide an insider's view into the world of chocolate and wine, is Lori Henderson, owner of Crooked Post Winery, and Nick Xidis, owner of Hazel Hill Chocolate.

Lori and Nick thank you so much for joining us today.

- Thank you for having us.

- So Lori I wanna start with you.

Tell us about how you got into wine making.

- Well, it was something that we started kind of accidentally and it just has grown into what it is now.

- It's a beautiful accident.

(laughs) - It's been fun, yes.

- Tell us about the process of wine making.

- Well, when you make wine, you've gotta have some kind of fruit.

And we actually grow our own fruit.

Where one of them that are a hundred percent our own grapes.

And all of our wine is made from the grapes that we grow.

And so we are totally dependent upon people.

Our customers, our friends to come out and help us harvest the grapes.

I think you were there at one of those days.

- We loved it.

- Yes, it was.

That was one of our great days.

We picked the Traminette.

You start with the grapes, it has to be fresh.

I am not the winemaker my husband is, I'm the wine tester.

I do not make the wine, but I do know you start with the grapes.

There is a process that you add the yeast.

On the second day the yeast is what may eats the sugar from the grapes and turns it into alcohol.

And then there's several months worth of taking the juice out of one tank and putting it into a clean tank, and finally getting it very clear.

Sometimes there's sugar added, sometimes it goes completely dry with no sugar left.

And then there's a bottling process.

So it can go anywhere from six months to a year.

And we don't force anything.

When we make our wine, we don't use any chemicals.

It's just what nature does.

So ours takes a little bit longer.

- [Danielle] Nature has done a wonderful job.

(laughs) - So I am notorious for picking a wine based on what label I think is pretty.

(laughs) So I have a feeling that's not the best way to do that.

- Oh you're one of those.

(laughs) - So what advice do you have for someone who's looking to try wine maybe for the first time, or to expand their wine knowledge or different tastings?

How do you suggest that someone go about finding new wine?

- Well, when they come to our place, the first thing I have to teach is that, we have wine that they're not used to in a liquor store.

Most people that come in have had a little bit of wine.

So I'll ask them, okay, what did your label say?

Do you remember what kind you drank?

And then I'm able to say okay, that is like a one of ours.

So if they drink a Riesling I'll tell them, let's try this Traminette.

Or do you like a little bit of sweet?

Do you drink a lot of beer?

So a lot of times people that drink a lot of beer, like a sweeter wine.

And then I'll kinda start in the middle and then say, would you like to go a little drier?

Would you like to go a little sweeter?

And then they kinda find a wine.

- I love it.

And you do have beer there at Crooked Post Winery as well.

- Yes, we do.

- So that's good.

And we have so much more to ask you.

I wanna bring Nick in though too, because you know Lori and Kevin grow locally, you source chocolate around the world.

- We do.

We buy cacao from Asia, Africa, Central and South America.

So anywhere in the globe it's grown we're looking for it.

- Gosh.

How do you go about finding it though?

How do you know, you know to explain the process?

- You know there is a wholesale market for cacao, and we go into that market, we will buy small quantities of lots of them, and we can tell a little bit by the genetics of the plant, what it's gonna end up tasting like, and then we make a lot of little batches of chocolate working out what the flavor and the bean is, and also the kind of the roasting and recipe parameters on our end.

So think three to six months to go from sourcing, until we've got something that's ready to put on the shelf.

- What inspired you to become a chocolatier?

'Cause that seems like the best job on the planet to me.

- So I actually have three jobs.

So chocolatier is somebody who takes chocolate and makes truffles or things from it.

We also do confectionary, which is caramel and sugar, and those kinda things.

And then we're a chocolate maker.

So we buy cacao coco beans, and we turn them into chocolate.

- [Betty] Interesting.

- So the candy man.

(laughing) - So I'm curious.

- When Willie Wonka grows up, he wants to be me.

(laughing) - So I would really like to know what your favorites are of the products that you sell.

Like what can you not stay away from for yourself?

- Well my favorite's not on the shelf anymore.

Cause I drank it all.

(laughing) We made a dry Traminette.

It's gone.

And we might not make it this year because it didn't taste the same.

The Traminette came in this year didn't taste the same.

It's all changes.

It's all weather dependent.

- And that is one of the things when we harvested out at your place, Kevin was saying this might not be the best this year.

And I love it that he's that picky, because if it's not gonna pass the muster so to speak, it's not gonna happen.

But then I didn't give you a chance to say what your favorite was of chocolate.

- So I've been eating a lot of two of them.

The first one is Semuliki Forest chocolate from Uganda, which has a really nice cocoa flavor, but also kinda some milky soft notes to it, even though it's a 72% cacao.

And then the other one I've been eating a lot of is we made a blend.

So we bought some cacao in Madagascar, and some in West Africa and Ghana, and they are very different flavors, but we blended those two together, and in chocolate making that's a bit of an avantgarde thing to mix origins like that is a little bit of a bold thing to do.

- Have you had the opportunity to travel to these places where you're getting this stuff?

- [Nick] I wish I got to go to all of them.

(laughing) - And meet meet the growers 'cause that's so important.

But we get to meet our growers here, but meeting those growers as well that's amazing.

- Yeah we had hoped actually we had a trip to Columbia scheduled right before COVID hit, and then it's all the breaks have been put on all that stuff.

- I gotta tell you when you were out there, you were having fun picking.

But when you get out there Lori, like you know your customers, everybody's coming out there, and making sure they get everything exactly right.

We kind of explain the process of what you have volunteers do.

- They actually pick the grapes.

So Kevin and I spend months getting ready.

So we're cleaning off everything underneath.

We're getting rid of poison Ivy, we're getting rid of wasp nest, we're hedging back all the excess growth.

We don't want anybody to be uncomfortable.

And all they have to do is just stand and clip, and drop them into the buckets, and then we have people that come by and pick them up.

For eight years now, our harvesters understand that that's our business, and there's no messing around.

They are picking and getting it done and getting inside.

We actually picked three ton of Seyval this year in an hour.

They beat my lunch people.

- [Betty] Oh my goodness.

- We were done at nine o'clock, and I didn't know what to do with them.

- Well and speaking of lunch, you provide a farmhouse lunch.

And this is an experience, the whole family.

- Yeah.

Yes.

And free sangria.

- We enjoy that too.

- That was awesome.

- And Nick I've seen you down there mixing, pouring, what's your favorite thing to do with liquid chocolate?

- Well so yeah, it's about a week to make a cocoa bean turn into chocolate.

- [Danielle] What's that process that it takes a week?

- So when we bring in the dry cacao, we first roast it, and then they have like skin on them like a peanut.

We have to shell them, and then they'll spend several days in a stone wheel grinding machine, and then from there there's a tempering process that makes a chocolate turn out right.

And then we mold it into bars and wrap them.

Most of my time is spent really in the refining piece of that.

And my son Daniel does a lot of the roasting these days.

- [Amber] That's amazing.

- Have we wedded your appetite?

I mean, look at this stuff that we're gonna show you, we're going to a short break, but we'll be right back with Lori and Nick to continue our discussion and maybe some sampling, stay with us.

(upbeat music) - To say that Kay McCormick is a fan of Steve McQueen, might be putting it lightly.

So Kay you have the Bullitt.

- Yes I do.

I have a 2008 Bullitt.

They made about 7,300 of them.

Ours is number 5903.

- [Betty] And what is it about this particular car, that intrigued you so much?

- I love Steve McQueen.

I like the movie.

It's not really good, but it's a great car chase.

In 2001 they came out with an edition, and I couldn't get one.

When they came out in 2008, I told my husband Terry, I said I want a Bullitt.

Took me a year that I got one.

- [Betty] Tell us about some of the details.

I mean you actually have Steve in the seat.

- [Kay] Yes I do.

It's a regular Mustang GT, but they have upped the horsepower for that year.

It has a special roll bar, it has special suspension, the exhaust they made it to sound a lot more like the original car, but we've upped that too, because we didn't think it sounded good enough.

So we've increased that.

So when we start this car in the morning the neighbors know.

We found the police ID from the movie.

We found the shirt from the movie.

We had to get these from England believe it or not.

And we still look for Bullitt stuff, but it's kinda hard to find anymore.

(upbeat music) - [Betty] Thank you for coming to Women On Wheels.

(upbeat music) - And we're back with Lori Henderson and Nick Xidis.

Ladies on our last segment, we were discussing their favorites, and now we get to figure out what our favorite is.

- I'm so excited to get to taste them.

This is gonna be amazing.

And now this first one we're gonna be on the left.

This is the one you were talking about that is your absolute favorite and it's from Uganda.

Comes in this cool packaging.

Will you tell us how to pronounce this?

- Semuliki forest.

It is named after a nature preserve in Uganda where this cacao was grown.

- I love it.

And you have paired it with, because you've tasted Lori's wine from Crooked Post Winery.

- So we've paired it with the cherry.

- Yep.

- Yes.

Okay.

- It's so good.

- [Lori] Okay.

So, and then take a sip of the cherry.

- Okay.

- All right.

- But we don't have to aerate this, as you told me off camera.

- No we do not.

- [Betty] That's delicious.

- [Amber] Oh, it's so good.

- That's very good yeah.

- They really bring each other out, and that's the whole thing about pairing.

But Lori you were mentioning that everybody's pallet's different.

So what works for one may not for another.

- There's general rules of what kind of food goes with what kind of wine, but really it's all on our own taste buds.

So, but this does pair.

This is kind of a milky chocolate.

And we found that the cherry wines pairing with like a milk chocolate like a kiss, but this is pretty close.

So it does it 'cause you don't want to down the flavor, you wanna taste the wine and the chocolate, which we are.

So they complimented each other.

Good choice.

- Yes which we are.

(laughing) Let's have a toast of that.

- Yes absolutely, absolutely.

- Salute.

- I wanna know how much time it took you to figure out what pairs with what.

Did you spend hours like, you know let me try this chocolate and this one, and this chocolate and this one 'cause I could.

- Should we lie and say that's true?

(laughing) - Sure.

Yeah.

It's called Google.

(laughing) - But you did taste her wines.

I mean you've been out there 'cause how many varieties do you guys have now Lori?

- 16, 18 something like that yeah.

- [Betty] But you started with like what six or something like that?

- [Lori] Yeah, we started with six.

Yeah.

- So it's just grown and grown, and then you have adjusted your planting of grapes, and what type of grapes.

- Yeah we have 11.

11 different varieties that we grow.

12 now.

We planted a brand new one called Core Noir, that's gonna make another dry red.

- Was this just a dream that you all had to do this?

Like I'm really curious about that.

I'm always so fascinated with how people get.

- It's not mine.

I don't know about Nick.

Was a dream of yours?

Ours was just an accident.

(laughing) - They both had other regular jobs and when they retired, and now they're busier than ever with Crooked Post Winery.

- Amazing.

Was this a dream?

- A little bit.

It was actually my grandfather's trade when he immigrated to the US from Greece.

- [Betty] Oh, that's nice.

- So when he landed here, that was one of the trades the Greek community could teach you was candy making.

- [Betty] Really?

- Yeah.

- So then you grew up in this, and how old were you when you started like.

Like little boy?

- Yeah.

- And unlike some people who don't wanna be in the family business, obviously this became a passion.

- Well again I had a different career, and when it allowed my wife Terry and I were able to do this as a second career.

- I think that most children would agree that growing up, learning how to make chocolate is magical.

(laughing) - Yes.

When your grandpa owns a candy store, you've scored life's lottery.

- Yeah.

And have a bunch of friends you know.

And what now can we put chocolate on?

(laughing) - So let me, I'm curious about this.

Does this amazing, beautiful product make it difficult for you to eat candy like that you would buy in the grocery store?

- Oh no.

- Really?

You can't eat an M and M, and compare that with what you do.

- You just gotta look at me to know I'm well fed right.

(laughing) - Of course you can.

And look an M and M has a place right?

When you wanna sweet treat, and that's the right thing to have.

What you're eating tonight is a much more expensive product.

There's a range of flavors that are just not available and there's a time and a place for that.

And I mean you were trying to talk about it a little bit, but the thoughtfulness of putting together a wine, and a chocolate and an experience, I think somebody special would enjoy, not just the things, but the thought that went into putting it together.

Does that make sense?

- Absolutely.

Maybe like a chocolate Charcuterie plate.

- There you go.

There you go.

- Where you can put like different varieties of chocolates, and different wines and sitting samples, and have that be romantic.

- Yeah.

And the more you talked, and the more you drank, and the more you ate, the better acquainted you are.

- And the better everybody looks.

- Or even for maybe couples that aren't able to get out for a date, like just bringing these beautiful chocolates, and this beautiful wine home, and the sort of creating that space in your own house that's just a little more special than your day to day everything you're doing is really I mean that, 'cause not everyone can get a babysitter, or not everyone wants to go out right now, we are still feeling a little uncomfortable sometimes going places.

But this what a special way, to make something happen that's beautiful in your home, that's different from the norm.

- Yeah.

It's not your typical roses, it's something that we're all doing together.

- Especially if you think about, I know that my husband likes this kind of flavor, what do you suggest for this?

I mean what a thoughtful way to bring something home special to your partner.

- I was gonna say to pair with Nick's, this is a more special chocolate.

The other one I brought was dessert style or a port, but you can't call it port anymore because it didn't come from Portugal.

So it's a dessert wine.

But that is something you can go to the liquor store, and then a lot of the wineries and in the Midwest also make a dessert style.

And some are old enough that they actually call theirs port, but they're usually more expensive, they have a higher alcohol content.

So they're gonna match the next really nice chocolate.

- So tell us about the chocolate that we're about to eat.

- So the second one is called Lachua.

It's a named for a lake in Guatemala, which is the area that the cacao came from.

This one we deliberately made the full flavors a little bit bolder, so you're gonna taste fruit, you're gonna taste a little bit of bitterness, and acidity that you didn't in the other one.

Even though this has less cacao in it, the flavors are gonna be quite a bit bolder and stronger.

And so it's gonna stand up to a port or something like that much better than that really mellow chocolate, is gonna go with certain wine that has this much character to it.

- I wanna quickly say before we move on to this wine, that that absolutely tasted like biting into a cherry.

- It did.

- Yes.

- It really did.

- That was gorgeous.

I loved that.

- So that we tell everybody it's like a cherry pie.

It's truly is like a cherry pie.

- And it was, it was.

It was just like you know, like a cherry cordial, like Christmas how everybody gets those.

So that was really, that was really unique.

Now I know you guys always grew grapes for other wineries, and so then you decided, hey, we're gonna do this ourselves.

- Yes.

We originally were doing business with Smoky Hill out in Salina.

- Yes my people.

Go ahead.

And that original family then quit the business and sold it.

We grew in huge blocks.

We have 600 at a time, and we found back then that there was no winery, within our mileage of where we were needing to transport that could take all of them at a time.

Smokey Hill was then a commercial winery.

So we had to split it up to several different wineries.

And after a couple years of that, we just said, you know we're just gonna do this ourselves.

So we picked up that piece of ground where the winery is, and then sat on it for a couple years and then built the building.

- [Betty] So they built their own building, which is gorgeous.

- We did all the inside.

The outside we had done, but we did everything inside.

- I just took a bite of this and had a drink of this, and it made me wiggle out of excitement.

(laughing) - This is made from the noir grape that we grow.

The noir is a little smokey, a little peppery, slightly tannined, and it makes a really good port style wine.

So how does it pair with a chocolate.

- This chocolate has quite a bit of aroma too.

- Oh yeah for a solid object.

- [Betty] It pairs well, it's like what?

- Well as we continue imbibing and enjoying the chocolate and the wine, we are going to take a short break and we'll be right back, with Lori and Nick, so stay with us.

(upbeat music) - [Betty] I tell you, Bessie is just fantastic.

I cannot believe the finish on this car.

- The finish is a tricolor pearl paint and it's custom.

- [Betty] You know, let's talk about this interior though, for the first time and you made it look this good?

- I did.

I've not done interior work before.

So it was my first attempt.

So I have the steering wheel, that's pink.

Our car club painted it, metal flake.

And there's a diamond in the middle of the steering wheel that belonged to my mother.

When we first got my car, she got ovarian cancer and it took us five years, but she didn't make it to ride in it.

But she gave me the diamond and said, put it in your car and I'll be with you.

So that's my favorite part of the whole car.

(soft music) The engine is at 302 and it's got a C4 tranny.

My husband does all the mechanical parts, so it runs very good.

And he did all of the customizing of the body.

That was all his ideas, and our car club helped us put it together.

(soft music) - [Betty] What would you say to women to encourage them to be in a car club and be Women On Wheels?

- It's really really fun.

You meet a lot of...car people are great people.

They are so fun and everybody has a story.

And you can just spend all day at a car show talking with people.

It's great.

(soft music) (upbeat music) - And we're back with Lori Henderson from Crooked Post Winery and Nick Xidis from Hazel Hill Chocolate.

And we're talking date night.

I'm gonna depart just a little bit because we found out something creepily fun that would be a perfect date.

Maybe more so around the Halloween time.

But anytime that a man wants or the woman wants the other person to be just a little scared, they could come to either the places that you guys are gonna talk about.

What about Hazel Hill that building?

- So our building is haunted.

We have a ghost and we think we know who she is through some old records that we found, as we demolished some of the older parts of the building.

Her name is Daisy, and her family actually owned that building when it was a restaurant.

And she ran the restaurant there.

And from time to time we hear her in her heels walking around and she definitely is going somewhere.

(laughing) - Is Daisy a friendly ghost?

- She is, she is.

And my wife put her name in the family search website.

And again we found out that we are related to Daisy.

- [Amber] That is unreal.

- I mean, that's kismat.

That in itself is kinda creepy.

(laughing) - But fun.

She's probably thrilled, because you've got dessert now at her family restaurant.

- Yeah, that's true.

- And then you've got something going on with the hotel Josephine.

- Ironically, when Nick was talking about this, I said well, our wine is up at hotel Josephine now.

And they have becoming worldwide with their ghost tours, and staying overnight.

So I'm gonna have to call Sarah Fox up there and tell her to get ahold of Nick.

And she might have a little ghost trail or something going on.

- Oh, really what a fun night, what a fun evening to go to all of these places and experience all of these things.

I'd love that.

- Okay now for a regular date night though what.

- You seem so down "for a regular date night", and have a ghost be a part of it.

But if you just wanted to kick it with the man and the woman, what would you do?

- I'll have a regular.

- Okay, so our son is six, and so we don't go out that often just because, we just don't because we're too tired.

(laughing) But one thing that we like to do is we like to find a radio program, and we turn it on and we sit down and we have food, and we listen to the radio program, and sometimes I will color and we listen, and sometimes my husband will, kind of fiddle with things that he likes to fiddle with, and then we'll talk about it afterwards.

And it's such a nice way for us to sort of pause the world around us a bit.

We haven't done it in a long time.

So now I think I need to go home and do this.

- And you can enjoy wine and chocolate while you're listening to the radio.

- And so I think, sometimes we think about date night and we think it has to be this huge sort of spectacle or this and I don't think that that's it at all.

I think it's just about pausing your daily routine of okay we gotta sweep, and we gotta do the dishes, and we gotta, and just saying let's take ourselves out of that and just do something that is just a shared space for us.

And so we tend to have simple date nights right now.

One day my dream is that we'll go to Italy, and have a big date night in Italy.

(laughing) - What about you Danielle?

- I like regressive dinners.

Now are you familiar with progressive dinners?

- I know progressive.

- Okay so regressive starts with dessert, and works back to appetizers.

And so we go to our favorite places like for dessert, and then we go to have the entree, and then the salad, and then the app course, and then we can end, having something like this for like another extra dessert at home.

But I just, I like getting out, I like exploring Kansas.

And what better way to do that than on a date night when you don't really have an agenda, and you can just hang out with each other and enjoy different things.

- Well, this was wonderful, but that's all the time we have for today.

So Lori and Nick provided some fabulous ideas to spice up your next date night.

As a reminder, you can watch this program again at watch.ktwu.org.

- And if you're inspired to learn more about our guests, and find out what's coming up on future shows, be sure to visit our website at ktwu.org/inspire.

- Inspiring women, inspiring you and inspiring romance on KTWU.

Thank you for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Inspire is sponsored by Kansas Furniture Mart.

Using furniture to inspire conversation.

And by the Blanche Bryden Foundation.