Missouri’s Wine Renaissance

Posted on October 12, 2011
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Take the family to absorb Missouri’s rich heritage of the Lewis & Clark expedition, the Missouri River, the Katy Trail, German settlers, Daniel Boone, the arts and crafts center of St. Charles, and the wine renaissance.

From St. Louis, I began my wine area exploration in the eastern part of Missouri. After five days, I visited 18 wineries with Missouri’s attitude, ‘show me,’ quickly discovering it’s all about hospitality and having fun.

Ste. Genevieve Winery, which is a bed and breakfast upstairs, is owned by Chris Hoffmeister and his enologist daughter Elaine Mooney. Their long-term goal is to produce more hybrid wine (Norton, Chambourcin, Chardonel, Catawba, Seyval Blanc and Vidal Blanc) in their 13-acre vineyard, but today at Ste. Genevieve it’s all about wines made from 100 percent fruit with no flavorings or syrups. The blackberry and the cranberry are outstanding.

Cave Vineyards grows four grape varieties on its 14 acres. A saltpeter cave where the early French settlers mined saltpeter for gunpowder is now often inhabited by wine enthusiasts enjoying the sounds of a babbling brook and a taste of Traminette or Norton.

Chaumette Winery is French in heritage, with its colonial building style, its merchandise from Provence in the tasting room, and wines produced reminiscent of French Rhones. Opened less than five years ago, Chaumette is producing 6000 cases from 30 acres of vines.

Well worth a stop is Charleville Vineyard with the picturesque view, ultra casual atmosphere and the most down-to-earth people. Just down the road, Crown Valley is the only Missouri winery with a French winemaker, Philippe Daguisy. The winery opened in 2003 followed by Crown Ridge, a 55-acre estate featuring an elegant restaurant, banquet facility, lodging, and tiger habitat.

Less than 100 miles west, Peaceful Bend owners Clyde Gill and Katie Nott live above their winery, a weathered grey barn, on the Meramec River. Occasionally tasters arrive by canoe. Their life-altering experience was starting the Chamber Music Festival in the winery after realizing that the acoustics were nearly perfect. Locals come in tuxedos or jeans and the cat may stroll across the stage. The red wines here are awesome.

The Wine Business News recently listed St. James Winery as a ‘hot’ winery, producing the most wine in Missouri. They have a self-serve tasting room where 30 percent of their production is sold.

Traveling north toward the Missouri River and the capitol, Jefferson City, I visited a 1000 case winery, Native Stone. Owners Cara and Larry Stauffer suggested how to drink their Norton Port. “Melt chocolate. Dip edge of glass into the chocolate. Put in refrigerator. Add port and get in hot tub. Be sure to tell someone you are in the hot tub so they can get you out.”

To the north and slightly west of Columbia, Les Bourgeois Vineyards at Rocheport is the third largest winery in Missouri. Although many tasters say they want to drink dry, sweet wines such as the Riverboat Red, are 65 percent of sales.

Heading back east toward St. Louis discover the German village of Hermann with its clock towers and church steeples. The first Germans settlers arrived in 1836 to an impossible farming wilderness. Resourceful of necessity, they planted grapevines on the craggy hillsides and began making wine.

Just outside of town on the 20-mile Hermann Wine Trail along the Missouri River is OakGlen [hq], founded in 1859 by the father of Missouri wine making, George Husmann. Adam Puchta Winery was started in 1855 by Tim Puchta’s great-great-grandfather, an immigrant from Bulgaria. They produce 23,000 cases and can’t begin to keep up with the demand. Tim’s philosophy is to try harder to promote a food and wine culture. “We encourage families to come and bring a picnic basket.”

Jim and Betty Held reopened Stone Hill in 1965 and are joined by three of their children who hold degrees in enology and viticulture. As Missouri’s second biggest winery they sell 70 percent of their production out of three locations including Branson. Their Missouri sparkling wine is the best.

Hermannhof, built in 1852 as a brewery, produces our favorite Missouri wines — an appley Chardonel, a smooth, dry, orange zesty Chambourcin, and a Vignoles full of peaches and crisp acids.

In Defiance on the outskirts of St. Louis, Becky and Ken Miller’s Sugar Creek produces another favorite Chambourcin, like a light red Zinfandel, but softer and rounder and not so foxy. The Cynthiana (Norton) is full of black cherry and blueberry.

Augusta Winery has a Vidal Blanc with crisp fruit and floral flavors that linger. Montelle, has a full, fruity, fragrant Chardonel with perfume of apple and pear. Having won awards at many competitions, Missouri’s star is Mount Pleasant’s Tawny Port that speaks of butterscotch and caramel and might remind you of sherry.

SEE THIS WEB SITE
www.missouriwine.org

[As originally published in the Fort Worth Business Press.]

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