This is a picture of my students (plus John) in the port cellars at Mt. Pleasant Winery. Their winemaker, Mark Baehman, is on the left, giving us a very passionate tour. I love that guy!

As I mentioned, I'm teaching a Fundamentals of Enology class at the local junior college. Saturday we took a class trip to two wineries; Mt. Pleasant and Sugar Creek wineries, both in the Augusta area. At Mt. Pleasant, I set up a tour with Mark Baehman, the winemaker, and Pat Cummings, the director of sales. The tour and tastings were brilliant, and we had a wonderful guided tour through the tanks and barrels and underground caves. Then we headed to Sugar Creek winery, were we came unannounced, but luckily, Becky Miller, one of the owners, was there and gave us a tour of their winemaking facility. The last stop on the trip was to Lukas Liquor, which is a huge liquor store in West County. This was the students idea, since there really aren't that many great places to purchase wine in our area. Even I came away with a couple great bottles of wine.

I think we got an excellent view of both small and large wineries in Missouri. Large wineries, where they make sparkling wines and port and have dinner parties and small wineries where the owner is there on a Saturday and personally shows you around.

This is a picture of my students at the tasting bar at Mt. Pleasant. Think they are enjoying the class?

Regional Cuisines

There are 6 counties including and surrounding Ste. Genevieve County in Missouri that are part of a pilot project started by Beth Barham, a professor at the University of Missouri. The project is called the Regional Cuisines project, and the idea is that rural parts of America can be tourist destinations if they were marketed as such, similar to Europe. If you visit France or Germany or Italy, you visit cities, but you also visit the countryside, and drink local wines and eat local cheeses. America has yet to adopt this idea, but Beth is hoping to change that, with our help. We are just in the beginning stages, but the possibilities are endless. Check out these websites for more information on the project and our 6 county area now deemed the "Mississippi River Hills."

In the News!

Here is a link to a nice article in the Wines and Vines magazine about Ste. Genevieve being the new wine region in Missouri.

My favorite quote from the article states, "The biggest draw is Ste. Genevieve, a town founded by French settlers in 1699. The historic town contains homes and other buildings dating to the French colonial period as well as Spanish and early American times after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. With numerous inns, restaurants, historical sites and the inevitable antique stores, Ste. Genevieve is a popular weekend getaway, and its wineries take advantage of that mood." Ste. Genevieve is (in my humble opinion) one of the cutest towns around, and it's nice to hear someone else recognize that too. A have a feeling a few people visit the wineries in the countryside and miss the beautiful, historic, one of a kind town, and I think that is a shame.

I have heard my "mug" accompanies the article in the magazine, but since I only have this link, I haven't seen the picture.

This is a picture taken by the guys at Missouri Wine Country of my dad pouring wine at the Westport wine tasting held two weekends ago. If you live in the Springfield, MO area, you can taste our wines, and meet dad at the Best of 417 wine tasting this Sunday.

Hazy Shade of Winter

This is our old Concord plot, covered in ice and snow.

Brrr!

Another ice and snow storm hit our area yesterday. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it.