Raising a Glass to Support Local Wineries

Welcome back to Fox 5. We are in the kitchen, and we are celebrating Virginia Wine Month this morning here in the Fox 5 kitchen. So here with a guided tasting of top local bottles and farm-to-table pairings, please welcome back Paradise Springs Winery founder Kirk Wiles and sommelier Neil Wavra from Field & May. Guys, thanks so much for hanging around. We mentioned earlier four minutes was not nearly enough to take the tour that you guys have brought in for us Because we spent just four minutes on the whites and just touching some of the food that you guys brought in. Now we've got to get into the reds. We've got to get into more of the food. Absolutely. And everything that Virginia Wine Month has to offer. And, look, Virginia is a destination when it comes to wine. So talk to us a little bit about October being Virginia Wine Month. Yeah, so this weekend we're actually celebrating what we call Harvest Party across Virginia wineries, across the Commonwealth. And all the different wineries are sort of throwing their own spin on it, right? We're celebrating the bounty of the harvest. This is the time when all the grapes have come in, everyone's worked really hard, and we celebrate the fruits of our labor, no pun intended. Absolutely. Because we have Cesar here, and Cesar is our meteorologist, talk to me a little bit about the weather, because obviously that has a huge impact on the harvest, as you mentioned. Was this a good year for wine? So, you know, we started off very poorly. There was a weather event April 21st where we had a frost event, and a lot of Virginia vineyards got hit pretty hard. So the yield was down, right? And through the summer, it kind of chugged along, but I think we finished pretty strong. There were some great numbers coming off. And what people don't realize is you get one chance to grow grapes during a growing season. If something happens during that season, it's gone. You lose it, and it doesn't come back until next year. And so it's a hard business to do. We are farmers at our core. And that's why we're really proud of what comes in during harvest season. And it's a lot of work, and that's why we're celebrating this month. Well, you brought in four options. Like we said, we've got our whites. We went through some of them, but for anyone who is just joining us on Fox Local, start us with the sparkling that you brought in for us. Early Mountain Vineyards is making a sparkling, as a number of different producers are in the state. And this sparkling is made by Maya Hood White, the winemaker there. She did a specialty in her training with sparkling wine as a focus. And so you can tell that from this bottling. It's got a great versatility. It's a celebratory kind of bottling, typically. Sparkling wine is thought of as something you should have for celebration. I think it makes anything a celebration, but it has an incredible versatility at the table. And so when you're pairing with sparkling wine, you can do that with popcorn in a movie. You can do that with anything fried. It has the versatility to play with things that have different textures and temperatures, i.e. soup. So pairing wines with things that are also liquid and hot are difficult. Bubbles help cleanse that palate in between and make for a really wonderful pairing option. I love it. Cheers. Wow. Listen, I love it. You hit the nail right on the head. Every day can be a celebration when you have a bottle of sparkling in your fridge. Early Mountain is also, in addition to having excellent wine, also just gorgeous views, everything about it. And a spectacular restaurant. Beautiful. All right. So Early Mountain is down on the way to Charlottesville, which is one of the main wine regions in the state. We have Northern Virginia, and Paradise Springs is the closest to D.C. to visit. And then Early Mountain is sort of on the way to Charlottesville, so great places to visit. It's kind of a trip as you go down the state and get to see all of the different parts of wine country. We always say at Paradise Springs we're the gateway to Virginia wine country. So we take a lot of pride in putting a good foot forward, making great wine, and giving a great experience so everyone goes out and visits other places as well. All right. Well, let's move on from the sparkling to the Petit Manseng, which is one of my personal favorites as well. Oh, that's great to hear. So I'm going to dive right in. Absolutely. Well, look at that. You already knew right off the bat, Chris. I did. This is the one that I'm waiting for. We chatted a little earlier. Plus, like I said. Cheers. We'll do that again. They didn't bring me in today for my anchoring ability. It's for the wine part, right? So as I mentioned earlier with Petit Manseng saying, it's a varietal you may not have heard of before, but it's a French vinifera varietal, typically from the southwest of France. And you'll find it in a lot of Virginia tasting rooms. It's a product of a lot of research and development in Virginia on growing what grows well here in our state. And this varietal stands up to the good vintages, the bad vintages, and can be made in a range of styles, from a dry white wine all the way to a dessert wine. Yes. And so it's really versatile in our state, and the sommeliers have really taken to a liking to it. It's a unique grape in that as it ripens, it also maintains a good deal of acidity. As we were going to say, it feels almost citrusy. It's bright and fresh. Yes, almost a very tropical element there, too. Which is really nice. I feel like with the wine, especially with this color, you usually expect it to be buttery. And that's where I'm like, I was a little apprehensive at first. I was like, oh, but if Chris is saying he really likes it, I was like, okay, let's give it a shot. Yeah, let's see what's going on. Always trust the guy. With the champagne, the beers, the pelican. I waited until the after show to bust that one out. Okay, so if we were going to dive into one of the two dishes you have in front of us while we were drinking our petite mints. I tried the northern puffer fish, also known as the sugar toad. These sugar toads are little delicacies that are in the Chesapeake at this moment. I'm going to set my glass down. This is my first time eating on camera, by the way. Fingers? If you want. Now you're speaking my language. There is a bone running right through the middle. So as you do it, maybe just a touch of the front and be careful that there's a little touch of a bone there. But flaky, delicate, sweet fish. This has been battered with a little bit of beer. Did you find that bone? Sorry. I found it. Yep. From Powers Farm, it's their persimmon ale, which is a... Oh, so it's a beer batter on top of that. Beer batter on this top of this fish. That pairs perfectly. If you pair it with a little bit of the aioli, the mayonnaise, the fancy mayonnaise there, it has a touch of yuzu in it for a bright acidity. I watched the acidity and the patina on sang I was just having that, I was like feeling it all together and it was melding very nicely so you have that acidity from the wine you have the brightness and citrusy flavor from the yuzu wow, next career sommelier see I used to bartend so I've got a little bit of hiring with drinks this is where you've got to be able to Chris, you've got to be able to watch the weekend shows more often, Maureen already knows this about me that's why she's like, Cesar, come along we have drinks, you're going to talk to this I was also a bartender in a previous life, but I was at an Irish bar. Oh, we weren't known for our wines, as you can imagine. You can testify. I can. So if I could say some great things about Neil. He's an amazing culinary guy, and his restaurant is out in the middle of Virginia wine country, up here in Virginia. Just does a fantastic job, so it's a great spot to stop for lunch or afterwards for dinner. We're about an hour west of here in Marshall, Virginia. Yeah, Neil's been a great champion of Virginia wine over the years. All right, well, we've worked our way through the whites. Now let's talk about our reds. Yeah, so we'll get into the first red from Early Mountain. It's a Cabernet Franc. And people don't realize Cabernet Franc is the most widely planted grape in the state of Virginia now. Do you want to take a guess on what it used to be? Cabernet Sauvignon. You nailed it. It was. And so 30 years ago, people in Virginia thought to be a great North American wine region, you had to plant Cabernet Sauvignon. And it was the wrong varietal for our region. There are some great spots that do it well. But Cabernet Franc is an earlier ripening, so it sort of lends itself to our weather patterns a little bit better. And nowadays, you'll be hard-pressed to go into Virginia Winery and not find some version of a Cabernet Franc. Yeah, that's right. It's got a real range, too, from the table perspective. It's a grape that we can pair, for example, with a little bit of trout and a touch of lentils and maitake mushrooms, for example. So an earthy profile. That's a big maitake right there on the table. Yeah, I was going to say, I walked over and I saw it, and I was like, that looks amazing. There's two foragers that dropped off maitakes in the last week for us, Paul and Lisa, and so we brought some for you today. But that earthen element, and it can span a seafood course, and it can span, it would be a magnificent wine to have at your Thanksgiving table. It can span and reach into a red meat course as well, poultry work. We've only got a minute left, so I want to make sure we get to our last red varietal. So the last varietal is our Paradise Springs Meritage blend. And we often say in Virginia blending is one of our strengths because we can take different parts and elements and put them together. So this is a blend of Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Merlot, which are two other red varietals that do very well in the state. Cheers. Cheers, indeed. Cheers as well. And I see we also have a salmon here along with the mushrooms. And what else do we have here? There's a little bit of a Hakurei turnip and lentils underneath that as well, all brought together in this wonderful kind of fall transition period. I was going to say, you've got the salmon, of course. By all means. You have to talk while I... No, definitely. So I'm assuming this dish right here would best pair with the reds. Yes. Very easily. Because as you were mentioning, the mushroom, the earthiness. The mushroom, the earthiness, exactly. A lighter red works really well there. You don't want to have something too tannic with the trout. It would become a little bit more metallic. But a lighter red with a lower tannin profile and that touch of earthiness to reflect back on that mushroom and those turnips and the lentils, that's a very humble profile from from the light red side. No, definitely. And it's certainly fall like with this. You know, we'll throw up the seven-day forecast real quickly here just to touch off on a little bit of this, you know it's going to be certainly feeling fall like out there so this dish would be perfect for it so Chris, I'll let you take the rest of it away because again I have to now dig into this, yes please do and guys if they want if anyone out there watching wants to learn more not only about Field in Maine and Paradise Springs winery if they want to learn more about October and Virginia Wine Month where can they go to do it uh go to virginiawine.org um or come out to a Virginia winery and just ask your local educator Come to Field in Maine and talk to your waiter. Come see the process. Come see Neil's open kitchen. Come see the barrels fermenting in our winery. And it's a hands-on experience that people, I think, will really find that is amazing in our backyard right here from Washington, D.C. There's a lot of extra wonderful events being put on. Wine shops, things of that sort, are doing their own programming around Virginia Wine Month. Oh, perfect. Look at that. It's a little vacation away from home that you can do within a day and be able to come back home full, satisfied. and, you know, maybe a little happier. Guaranteed. And if I can add, if you love Virginia wines, please ask your neighborhood restaurant, ask your sommelier, your waiter. The more people say, I want Virginia wines, the more we're going to get these out and into places that are closer to you. We appreciate you guys being here. We appreciate all that you do. We appreciate everyone out there who joined us for the Fox Local After Show. We'll be back here tomorrow on Fox 5 Morning and the After Show on Fox Local. Weekend Live coming your way next right here on Fox Local. we'll see you next time. Cheers.