Road Trip!

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

“Defiance!” I said, while pointing the car down the highway.

“What did I do?” Sophie asked.

“No, no,” I quickly explained, “That is the town we are going to”.

Not that this really helped my 13 year old traveling companion. But then, she really hadn’t done any research.. Defiance is the name of several towns and villages throughout the U.S. It is also the beginning of the Missouri Weinstraße, Route 94 between Defiance and Marthasville.  It was also the final living place (though not resting place) of Daniel Boone.

It is also home to  three wineries.  Chandler Hill Vineyards, Yellow Farmhouse Winery and Sugar Creek Winery & Vineyards.

I stopped at Sugar Creek after finding the Yellow Farmhouse closed (and across the street from a really active biker bar).  The tasting room was off the road and across the Katy Trail and up about 150 feet (yes, it was a steep hill).  I liked that there were different outdoor settings for people.  There were at least two decks, a  patio and scattered tables surrounding a gazebo.  Additionally, there was an area that was set aside for music and (presumably) dancing.

The tasting room was relatively small but opened up into rooms in the back that were available for additional seating or for event rental.  Sophie looked around while a started my tasting.  The winery produces 15 different wines ranging from dry to sweet.  I settled on tasting the dry varietals beginning with the Vidal Blanc.  This is an estate grown wine that was fermented in stainless steel with the addition of oak chips while the wine is aged.  The  wine is light and crisp with just enough oak.

The next wine I tasted was the Chardonel which is a hybrid of Chardonnay and Seyval grapes.  This wine is also an estate selection.  It was fermented in aged in French oak barrels.  This wine was fuller bodies than the Vidal Blanc with nice citrus notes and butteriness.  Overall though, I thought both of the white wines lacked a certain oomph.  The reds, on the other hand, stood out.

The first red wine that I tried was the Chambourcin.  I have to admit that I have been enjoying Chambourcin more and more and this wine was no exception.  The wine was ripe with cherry flavor and dry.  It was aged in oak which provided a richness.

Next was the Cynthiana, more commonly called Norton.  This varietal is a native American grape.  The wine it produced tasted of black fruit and had a pleasant tannic finish.  It was finished in American Oak.  I will be looking for more Norton wines in the future.

The last wine that I tasted that day was the Michael’s Signature Red.  It was produced in honor of the winery owner’s Italian grandfather who taught him about wine making. This wine was softer with a smokiness.  It, like all of the wines that I tasted that day, were estate grown and bottled.

I was surprised to find that the Sugar Creek label did not list the Augusta appellation.  They just designated that they were from Defiance.  The winery is listed as an Augusta winery on the Missouri Wine Country website.  Never fear!  I managed to find AVA designated wine nearby!

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

Missouri. The Show Me State. Home of four AVAs and before Prohibition the second-largest wine producing state in the country.

And being in St. Louis meant that these wineries were a hop, skip and jump from me.

So what did I do? Naturally, in our Friday afternoon break, I grabbed the car and started out to wine country. Missouri has over 80 wineries to choose from located both within and outside of their AVAs. Given my love of AVAs, I wanted to try to reach those in designated regions. All four are within a reasonable drive from St. Louis.

Given that I was being accompanied by my personal sommelier but somewhat easily bored teenager, Sophie, I decide to stick as close to the hotel as I could to keep her happy. This narrowed my options to two.

Augusta was the first designated appellation in the US beginning June 20, 1980 and is located along the river bottoms and alluvial plains of the Missouri River though generally at slightly higher elevations. The loamy soil has more of a clay content. The location is that of one of the first wineries in the state, the Mount Pleasant Winery. The region is fifteen (15) square miles and is home to seven wineries and one brewery.

I visited two of the wineries.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

Yes. I have to life outside of wine blogging. I don’t enjoy large parts of it, but that is another story entirely. Wow, has it really been a month since I posted?  More like six weeks?  Well, what is six weeks among friends, right?  Besides, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you what I was doing.  Heck, I barely believe it.

I was thinking about wine.  And drinking quite a bit of it.  And I even got to travel a bit.  Not a fancy trip with luxury accomodations… but the kind of trip that I like to make…  A ROAD TRIP!

And where did I go?

Missouri.

Remind me again… is there any wine in the Show Me State?

YES there IS!

But first, I had to survive volleyball!

Yes.  I am teasing you.  But there will be wine on Friday.  I promise…

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

I am planning out my iternary to the 2010 Wine Blogger’s Conference in Walla Walla, Washington. I am thinking that I will be driving again and this time I will be taking a more northerly route.

If you have any favorite wineries in Western Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Washington, please let me know. And since Walla Walla is so close to the Oregon border, let me know about Northern Oregon wineries as well!

Now all I have to do is convince Marguerite to come with me this year!

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

So after all that discussion of the Ohio and the Firelands, did I finally get around to tasting any wine? Of course I did!

I began with the Pinot Grigio, currently the most popular wine according to the ladies in the tasting room. I could taste green apple and grass. It was a little less crisp than some of the pinot grigios than I have had in the past, but this is a good thing… Sometimes, those wines get too bitey and for some reason that makes the hinge of my jaw hurt. (I never said that logic was my strong suit).

Next up was the Riesling. This was advertised as tasting of apples but I thought it had more of a honeyed flavor that reminded me of pears. This is made in what I consider a more traditional style, in that it was semi-sweet. I love the new modern dry Rieslings as well, but there is something to be said for the full, fruity and floral tones of the traditional method.

I even sampled the Gewurztraminer which I had tasted with Henry Bishop, Rory and Kevin (albeit not the same vintage). It is still an excellent blend of tropical fruits and rose petals. The best of two different worlds.

Additionally, I tasted both the Pinot Noir (a wine that I have enjoyed from Great Lakes regions, i.e., Niagara Escarpment) and the Cabernet Franc. The Cabernet was herbal and lightly spicy and nicely dry. The Pinot Noir was smoke with anise and cherry.

Additional offerings under the Firelands label include:

Cabernet Sauvignon
Merlot
Chardonnay
Barrel Select Chardonnay
Rose de St. George
Country Estate Red
Walleye White and
Ice Wine

Additional wines from the other Lonz, Inc. labels were available including the Mantey, Dover, Mon Ami and Lonz (from grapes produced on Middle Bass Island). I picked up a Mantey Cream Sherry for my father. He has always been a fan of Ohio sherries and am looking forward to tasting it with it in the near future (most likely Thanksgiving).

Additionally, the winery is a source for homewine makers and sells juice in the autumn (until it runs out).

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

Tuesday as it turns out, is a much better day for trying to find an open winery. At least it is in Ohio.

Tuesday morning, bright and early I pulled into the Firelands Winery parking (please note if using GPS to find this location, there is construction in the area and you will be rerouted).

I was excited to visit this winery as I had actually tasted the wine from here before. Back in 2007, when VinoVerve was young, Rory, Kevin and I had dinner at Salpicon in Chicago and drank wine and chatted with Henry Bishop. During that dinner, while eating great Mexican food, we drank wine from all over the world. This included wine from Missouri, Quebec and Ohio. This is one of the reasons that I have become so passionate about local wine. The Ohio wine was the 2005 Firelands Winery Gewurztraminer, Isle St. George, Sandusky, Ohio.

I have to admit that I was curious about the locations listed for the wine. Isle Saint George is on an island (duh) in Lake Erie but is the name of a community, not the name of the island, itself. It is located on North Bass Island and is part of the Put-in-Bay Township in Ottawa County, Ohio. The township consists of 7 of the 31 Lake Erie Islands (some of which are now just reefs) that are shared between the States of Michigan and Ohio and the Province of Ontario. Several of the Lake Erie Islands, including North Bass Island are known for producing wine grapes. In many cases these wineries declined after prohibition but have resurfaced since the 1980s.

In the case of Isle Saint George, the community was designated an AVA in 1982. By law, the AVA must be listed “St.” instead of “Saint” George (government often confuses me to the point of creating a headache). The weather in the area is milder than the surrounding mainlands as the waters of Lake Erie are the warmest of all the Great Lakes. As a result, vitis vinifera grape varietals are able to thrive. The island is famous for producing Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir and Riesling far more north than usual.

However, the Firelands Winery wines also list Sandusky, Ohio (home to Cedar Point) on their labels. This is because the grapes are grown in Isle St. George but are produced at the winery in Sandusky.

Confused yet? Wait until you hear about the rest of the history of the winery.

I will give you a hint: It has something to do with Marguerite’s VinoVerve posts! The first person to most fully explain the connection (correctly, obviously) will win a Locapour T-shirt. Entries must be received before Thursday, October 22th at midnight CDT (yes, we are on Daylight Time).

Firelands Winery
917 Bardshar Rd.
Sandusky, OH 44870
(419) 625-5474

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

Go ahead. Cue the Boomtown Rats. But it is true.

After leaving my Grandmother’s birthday party in Virginia Beach at the beginning of the month, I headed back on the road thinking that I would find wineries.

And then I remembered. It is autumn now and it was Monday. Wineries like many service industry businesses are often closed on their slowest day. In this case, Monday. Particularly in the off season. This meaning not Autumn and Winter. Sigh.

I tried, but wasn’t able to find a winery in Maryland that was open, but I will make an effort to get to this one my next time out.

It wasn’t an entire loss for Monday. I did stop at my first Chick-fil-A. Yummy. Now all the other chicken sandwiches are pale imitations.

So take THAT! Monday.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

Frankly, I always think that wine is an appropriate gift. But in this case the Birthday Girl (which is always capitalized at my house) will be 102.

Yes, I have decided at the last minute to visit my grandmother for her birthday this weekend (though her birthday is tomorrow. GO Nanny!) This is why today’s post is so late. I have been calculating cost benefit analyses about whether to fly or drive (15 hour drive/flexibility of having own vehicle to explore wineries and cheapness even if including rental car and gas v. trying to get a reasonably priced flight less than 48 hours out) – driving won.

So if you know of any good wineries along major highways from Chicago to Virginia through the states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland or Virginia please let me know..

I am reachable on Facebook and Twitter!

Oh, and Nanny will be getting wine…. and maybe I will be sharing with the cousins too….

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

I don’t know why so many of my adventures start with an element of panic. I sometimes think it is so I can appreciate them all the more.

As I drove up Rutherford Hill Road, I finally started to relax and realized that the road looked familiar.. and the reason why became clear a moment later.. as I passed Auberge du Soleil, a restaurant that Kevin and I and our friend Charles visited and ate at when we were all in Napa together. As I pulled past the restaurant I reached a large parking lot at the top of the hill. Now, I had really reached my destination.

I left the car and approached a woman pulling out her cell phone. From her picture on Facebook, I immediately recognized Karen McFarland who is Anthony Terlato’s assistant in Napa Valley. We exchanged greetings as we headed toward the winery and stopped briefly to admire the view of the valley. The picnic grove and olive grove were beautiful, the olive are pressed for oil, but had recently been trimmed back so they would be another season before they bore fruit again.

We walked into the tasting room, walking past the outdoor tasting bar which was complete with a BBQ grill. I can imaging fun summer events there… and since it is California.. long into the fall as well. The tasting room consisted of a large u-shaped wooden tasting bar with pourers in the middle of the two sides to the bar.

Karen introduced me to the folks working in the tasting room as poured me a glass of wine (I think I suggested Rose, just to break my Sauvignon Blanc habit from the weekend )  Karen started telling me about the history of the winery.  The winery was established in 1974 and specialized in producing Merlot.  When the Terlato family purchased the winery in 1996, the first thing that they did was REDUCE production in order to concentrate on a higher quality of wine.  The family also invested money in state of the art winery equipment such as fermentation tanks that had glycol sleeves to heat or cool the wine to the appropriate temperature to adjust for changes in the environment.

We began our tour looking at area behind of the winery that was being set up in preparation for the coming harvest.  Of course, the winery had previously been state of the art, when the original owners built the cave system at the winery.  The original cave was constructed from 1984 to 1986 and the additional space  was completed in 1989.  The caves extend for almost a mile and allow the wine to be aged in their oak barrels at a consistent 59o F with 98% humidity.

While we walked through the caves, we stopped occasionally at the displays that were located along the path.  A sign at each location would describe a type of wine or winemaking process and taste a different wine.  Additionally there is room set aside for meetings or other events. In fact, the caves themselves can be rented for special events and has often been used for special celebrity chef dinners hosted by the Terlato family.  The caves include plaques commemorating these special events.

As we left the caves and headed back into the winery and continued the tour.  The winery is a state of the art winery within a winery facility.

At this point my tour of the winery returned me to the tasting room.  I had already tasted some of the selections from the Terlato Wine Group, but there would be more to come….

Powered by Bookmarkify™

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

Have you ever had to drive somewhere and you know EXACTLY where you are going and yet you still can’t manage to find it?

This isn’t one of those stories.

This is the kind of story that you enter the address that you are going to into your GPS system and it spits back an answer that is halfway there. You have an actual, real address and yet you still can’t find the place. Technology has abandoned you or just gotten lazy. You really don’t know which and frankly, you don’t really care.

All you know is that while you are driving down the St. Helena Highway, your GPS system suddenly announces, “Destination” and you start looking around frantically. You see wineries, after all, this IS Napa. But the one that you are looking for? Not so much.

So you keep driving down the road wondering if this is one of those instances where the GPS gods forgot to switch between yards and meters and is off by some weird factor of 3 1/3 inches over the 4,000 miles you have been driving which means that your destination could have been oh, say, 3/4 of a miles back or ahead. So you continue on, panicked looking for some clue. Until you see a sign saying that you are entering Yountville and Now you KNOW that you have missed your destination.

So you pull over into the parking lot of some cute little market (which they all are in Napa. It is a rule, I think.) and you gather your thoughts realizing that your discombobulation is adding to your inability to figure out this problem. You park and double check your directions and realize that the problem is that your GPS took you to the town but not to the street address (An issue you will find occurring more often over the coming days. As it turns out your GPS sucks in the countryside where township-range addresses are ALL too common. Heck, you don’t remember the last time your saw a township-range address… maybe back in the days when you were doing title searches when you worked for the government or when your were in grad school and what the hell, they still beat the dickens out of metes-and-bounds addresses… 10 rods to the west, indeed.)

Of course, in a moment of clarity you realize that there is more than one way to skin a cat (I love cats… it’s just a saying, people) and approach your GPS system from a different angle. You start clicking the buttons on the dashboard looking for “ATTRACTIONS” nearby. and Voilà! You find that you missed the turn off about two miles back and that the location of the address that you plugged into the GPS unit was indeed known by the stupid machine. And now that I have asked it in a manner more pleasing to the satellite gods, it is pleased to provide me the directions to Rutherford Hill. (“Why didn’t I just ask in the first place? Silly human driver!”).

The map below represents my actual trip to the winery. Please note that I continued down the St. Helena Highway before I corrected my course and headed back into and through the town of Rutherford. Sigh.

Powered by Bookmarkify™