>>Slightly north of Richmond sits a beautiful vineyard.

Today we'll visit James River Cellars Winery, and I'll pair up some food with all of their wines.

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

>>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... (upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music continues) >>I have a blend here of half Chambourcin and half Petit Verdot, and I thought, what fun thing I could make with it might be a pimento cheeseburger.

So we're gonna make some burgers first, and then we're going to make some pimento cheese, put 'em together on a bun, and call it a day.

Right now in my bowl, I have two pounds of very lean ground beef.

Now, to that I want to add a few of the components that I have in my pimento cheese so that the flavors blend together.

I have an eighth teaspoon of cayenne powder, a quarter teaspoon of onion powder, and a quarter teaspoon of garlic powder.

Now, if any of those items happen to clump, make sure that you get in with your fingers and pull them apart.

We're going to mix this together and make some burgers and put 'em on a really hot grill pan.

Make sure you mix all of your ingredients together, but don't over mix, because the burgers will get tough.

Don't want tough burgers.

There we go.

Now, let's just pat these out, and I'm making slider size today.

So I want to take a large golf ball, almost double golf ball, and then we'll pat it out and we'll press it.

Let's put it on our pan.

Ooh, nice and hot, hear that sizzle.

Now, I like to use a really lean ground beef for this, but you can use a higher fat ground beef if you'd like.

Whatever you can afford and whatever you like, perfect.

I just like to not have a lot of the fat run off into my pan.

It smokes up my kitchen, so I go for a leaner beef for this.

Now let's sprinkle those burgers with a little salt and pepper, and then get on that beautiful pimento cheese.

In my bowl, I have eight ounces of room temperature cream cheese.

To that, I want to add a cup-and-a-half of a sharp cheddar cheese.

And a cup of pepper jack, I want a little kick in this.

And then I'm gonna add about a half cup of mayo.

That'll make it nice and soft and spreadable.

Yep, I just want to start mixing in those cheeses into my cream cheese to make sure they'll mix well.

And then let's sprinkle with our seasonings.

A quarter teaspoon of garlic powder, remember I put that in the burgers, a quarter teaspoon, and I'm gonna shake this in my hand.

Onion powder has a tendency to really stick together and you don't want a clump, so let's just kind of sift that with our hands into the dish.

And an eighth teaspoon of cayenne.

And then I wanna take about a quarter cup of either pimentos or roasted red bell peppers.

Pimentos, of course, are red bell peppers, but if you get the roasted ones, it gives you even more flavor and it's delicious in this.

A quarter cup.

Now let's blend that together.

Mmm, I love pimento cheese sandwiches.

I love pimento cheese on things.

And a burger with pimento cheese is just wonderful.

Let's give that a little sprinkle of salt and pepper and mix through.

You can see pimento cheese at home is so easy to make, and you can do it quickly.

You can make it with the cheeses that you like.

If you like sharp, use sharp.

If you like mild cheddar, use mild cheddar.

If you don't want to have any spice in it, use cheddar instead of any of the pepper jack, or use Monterey Jack.

All right.

Now let's give those burgers a flip.

Mmmm, looking good.

Now I'll get my buns together and I'll be back to plate up these beauties.

Now let's plate these up.

I've taken some slider buns and I put pimento on the top, and I'm going to secure them when I put them together with a pick, because they do tend to slide.

Let's take one of those sliders.

Right there, there we go.

And when I flipped my burgers, I did put a little more salt and pepper on the opposite side as well.

Always make sure that you season as you go.

Now let's top those and secure them.

Oh, these are so good.

You don't need lettuce and tomato on these.

As you can see, it's gonna be hard to get your mouth around them anyway.

But just like this.

And then to indicate that these might have some spice, I'm going to take a little bit of jalapeno and just kind of decorate my plate.

It also gives it a little pop of green.

Now with this wine that's half Chambourcin and half Petit Verdot, these are perfect.

The cream cheese cuts down on the tannin that's in the wine, the tannin blends well with the protein that's in the meat, and it's just a match made in heaven.

I hope you'll enjoy it.

(upbeat jazz music) Mitzi, it is so great to be here at James River Cellars Winery.

Beautiful place, tell me about it.

>>Thank you very much.

This is a family hobby that basically got outta control.

We basically opened to the public June 1, 2001.

We were small, just small little tasting room, figuring things out.

Probably three to 800 cases those first couple of years.

And we have been very blessed, open to the public for now 23 years.

Making about over 4,000 to 5,000 cases of wine every year.

We have 20 acres of grapes planted.

It's truly been a family adventure.

>>Tell me about your varietals.

>>We grow a lot of different grapes at our farms.

We have about 20 acres planted.

For the whites, we have the very high maintenance Gewurztraminer.

We have the low maintenance Vidal, so we have a balance.

We also have Chardonel and Chardonnay for our whites.

And then our reds are just kind of smaller amounts that we can use for blending.

So we have the Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot.

Touriga is kind of a little bit of a unique.

We have Chambourcin, which is the easy growing red.

We have Chancellor.

And then on our property here, the only grape you actually see is the Norton.

>>Having the right staff is always so important in a winery and people who can really relate to your customer base and people who can perform all the duties that need to be performed.

>>A winery is a unique business 'cause it's not one style, it's not one thing.

You are a grower, you are a producer, manufacturing, you are retail sales, wholesale sales, attraction, tourism industry.

There's so many segments that we hit with just one business.

So yeah, you need people to be willing to dabble in a little bit of everything.

So when you're short on labor, sometimes tasting people might be in the vineyard picking this week.

>>And whether you're a PhD as you, are doing finance.

>>Yes, yes, yeah, our roles are quite unique.

My husband has the finance degree and is our winemaker, whereas I have the PhD, pharmacology, biochemistry based work, and I do all that accounting.

>>I love it, I love it.

Well, you have to do what you have to do, particularly when you own the place, right?

>>Yes.

(upbeat jazz music) >>Chicken Mirabella is a classic recipe, and all the greats on TV have certainly done their share of changing up chicken Mirabella.

But the classic chicken Mirabella is just a wonderful flavor that goes so well with Gewurztraminer.

Now, I've changed a couple of little things, like I've added more capers and I've added a little bit more prune, but this recipe is so great, and it was made famous by the "Silver Palette Cookbook" when it came out decades ago.

So today I'm going to put together my version of Chicken Mirabella, and hopefully, you will enjoy it with a glass of Gewurztraminer.

We're gonna start with a little bit of marinade.

A half cup of red wine vinegar and a half cup of olive oil.

As you can see, you're kind of making a salad dressing-ish marinade.

Now let's add to that one whole head of garlic, and it's important that you maintain the clove structure.

So just a head of garlic peeled.

If you crush this, the garlic tends to disseminate a little bit of a different flavor, and it doesn't quite blend as well with the olives and the prunes.

Let's take a jar of capers.

This is three ounces of capers, and I drained off half of the liquid.

Let's just pour that in.

Then two tablespoons of oregano.

Now let's just take about, oh, a teaspoon of each salt and pepper.

And I have these mixed 50-50.

Let's take all this along with some olives, prunes, and bay leaves and put over a whole chicken.

Here's a chicken minus the wings.

The wings cook so quickly that a lot of times they disintegrate in the pan.

You don't want that to happen.

So we're gonna take about a cup to a cup-and-a-half of prunes.

These are just a nice sweet prune, of course, dried plums, and they are wonderful in this.

People will look at this and go, "Prunes, olives, what are you thinking?"

Well, it's really a great combination.

Then let's take a seven-ounce jar of Manzanilla olives that are drained.

These are easy to find.

They're the little green olives that have the pimentos in them.

And we'll pour those all over top.

And then let's stick in three bay leaves just to give some great flavor.

And pour over that all of your dressing.

What we're going to do with this is marinate it in the refrigerator overnight, and then we'll just stick it in the oven at 350 degrees tomorrow and let it go for an hour.

Now, let's platter this chicken that's been roasted at 350 for an hour.

Just platter it up with all of those prunes and olives and garlic cloves.

You might think that my chicken had three legs.

I actually had an extra leg and I just threw it in there.

I did not get an odd chicken, believe it or not.

All right, so let's just platter that.

And then we want to take all of those olives and prunes and just put over top, and let's strain them out, because we're going to use all of this juice to make a sauce.

All these flavors are just amazing together.

You get salt, you get sweet, you get garlic.

The original Mirabella recipe called for you to put sugar on the chicken or in the sauce as you bake it, but I'm adding the sugar to the sauce at the end to give it a little different sweetness.

Now let's just pour all of the juice into a pan and make that sauce.

The first time I had this chicken, my friend Michelle made it for me.

I absolutely fell in love with these flavors.

We're going to simmer this down until it reduces by half with half a cup of brown sugar, and that will take, oh, six to seven minutes.

Our sauce has reduced by half, and here we go over the chicken.

So delicious.

Now, the reason that I left the sugar for the end was because I thought sometimes the chicken can get a little too sweet.

If you have it in the sauce, you can control that sweetness in the chicken.

Oh my goodness.

This dish is absolutely wonderful with its salt and sweet.

And it goes so well with Gewurztraminer, which grows mostly in the northern part of Europe.

So the Alsace region, Northern Italy.

Here in the United States, some growers have it in cold climates, and it does really well.

The word Gewurzt means herb, and it really has an herbaceous, beautiful bouquet and flavor.

So I hope you'll enjoy a little Gewurztraminer with Mirabella.

(upbeat jazz music) The Gewurztraminer was how it all started, right?

>>Yes, yes.

>>Oh!

>>It is, again, this is the one, Virginia, we had a fantastic Virginia Gewurztraminer.

Then the next year they weren't able to make it.

The next year it was a little too sweet.

So we planted it in '98, we planted a round and decided to make our own.

So yes, this is the reason the hobby started.

>>Oh my, I love the aroma on this, that little bit of floral and apple.

Oh, love that.

Mmm, that's really nice.

Gewurztraminer in Virginia is very difficult to grow.

When I think of Gewurztraminer, I think of cold European countries, not hot Hanover County.

>>Yes, so Virginia is blessed with being able to do probably one of the widest range of grape selections for the East Coast.

But Gewurztraminer is absolutely the hardest one, I think, to do.

There's an estimated about 5,000 acres of grapes in Virginia, and there's less than 10 Gewurztraminer, acres of Gewurztraminer.

And we grow one-and-a-half acres.

>>Well, this is so well balanced.

It has a really nice floral aroma.

You don't get the floral on the palate as much, but oh my goodness, it's crisp, it's light.

Very enjoyable.

>>Thank you.

>>And this Rad Red, tell me the history behind that.

>>So again, this is something, years ago.

Rad Red is named after a family friend.

His last name was Raddeball, which was a tongue twister, so he shortened it to Rad.

We had the idea for many years that we wanted to do this wine, but it was with a 2005 vintage that we actually released the Rad Red.

And it is that particular year, it was like seven different grape varieties.

So this is designed to be just a very nice, approachable blend, and a portion of every bottle sale goes to cancer research.

>>That's fantastic.

So I smell a little Cab Franc in this.

>>This one has, I believe, Petit Verdot, some Chambourcin, and yeah, Cab Franc is another one that we use for a lot of our blends.

>>Wow, it's got a nice nose on it.

That's really great, now let's taste it.

That is smooth.

>>Yes.

>>It doesn't have that harsh tannic structure that a lot of times you would get with a PV.

>>Yes, and that's why it is designed, the goal is to make it approachable.

I don't know if I use that word too often, but this is like, when people are like, "I just want one white, one red," this is just the red that I'm usually going to recommend.

>>Well, I would like to thank you so much, Mitzi, for having me here.

Good luck in all of your pursuits here.

>>Cheers.

>>At James River Cellars Winery.

It's incredible, thank you.

>>Thank you very much for coming.

(upbeat jazz music) >>Touriga is one of those great grapes that has lots of that deep berry flavor, dark blueberry, blackberry, mulberry, and I love to pair that up with a chocolate cake.

Well, this is a chocolate cake that's from Germany, and I absolutely adore it.

It's called Schwarzwald Kuchen, and it's made with chocolate layers of cake and then a beautiful cream called Schwarzwald Cream.

And this is one that is a family recipe of mine, and my grandfather brought it actually from France.

We're gonna start this by creaming together 12 ounces of a very soft cream cheese, so room temperature.

Now, to that I want to add a cup of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla.

I'm looking for that to be completely incorporated, and you might need to just scrape down the beaters or the paddle or whatever you're using.

I particularly like to use the whisk for this because cream is involved and it will bring all the air in that you need.

(blender whirring) All right, now to this I'm going to add two cups of heavy whipping cream, nice and ice cold.

Don't turn it up too fast too quickly because it will just splatter out everywhere.

Just increase that speed as the cream begins to become more thick.

(blender whirring) And I want to take just a second to turn it off and scrape down the sides, just in case it's not all mixing through.

Usually, you can feel lumps on the bottom of your bowl if it's not mixing, just like that.

There we go.

Now I'm going to turn this on for just a couple of minutes, as high as I can go without splattering until the whipping cream becomes nice and fluffy.

(blender whirring) Now, this is almost ready.

I just want to beat it for about 30 more seconds, get that air incorporated in, and then we'll be ready to put this cake together.

(blender whirring) This cake works best if you can let it sit in the refrigerator overnight, but sometimes it's just a little too tempting to do that.

We're gonna take about a tablespoon of cherry liqueur, any kind of cherry liqueur will do, and we'll put it over each of the three layers of cake, one tablespoon per layer.

Now let's take some of our cream, about a third, and just spread it around.

Now let's take another layer of cake right on top of that.

Now let's take another spoon of that delicious liqueur all over the cake and some more cream.

I usually save a quarter to a third of the cream just to decorate the plates as I'm plating this cake, because I like to plate it with a little bit of mint and cherry and some of this cream.

And let's spread that batch.

It's not so important for the bottom two layers, but for this top layer, you want to make sure you use the bottom of the cake, what's against the pan, so it's nice and level.

Now a little more of that cherry liqueur.

There we go.

I have here one can of cherry pie filling.

Now, you can make your own pie filling, but I find that this works just great.

Classically, those Germans would have made their own cherry filling.

And we're going to stir the last little bit of that cherry brandy in.

Then let's top that cake.

Pour them slowly and start at the center, because there's a lot of liquid in pie filling, and you don't want all the liquid in the center, and then all of the cherries to fall off.

Some are gonna fall anyway, but let's just make sure we can spread it around from the center out.

So here's that beautiful Schwarzwald Kuchen, complete with a glass of Touriga.

It's gonna make a great dessert any day.

Well, thanks so much to Mitzi at James River Cellars Winery.

We had so much fun with her.

And I hope you enjoyed your day today with me as I paired up her wines with these great foods, including these burger sliders with pimento cheese, this delicious chocolate Schwarzwald Kuchen cake, and of course, chicken Mirabella.

For all these recipes and a whole lot more, you can visit me at vpm.org/unwind.

And until next time, I'm Tassie Pippert saying, go grab that glass.

It's always 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 atvirginiawine.org.

>>And by... (upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music continues) (upbeat jazz music continues)