Wine Down

Place A Tour of Missouri Wineries on your nearest coffee table, and let the conversation (and wine) flow.

I’ll admit it: I am afraid of red wine. Not because I dislike the taste or can’t speak fluent vino lingo, but because of its potential for stains. If you are as clumsy as me, you fear anything even slightly deviant from the color of water. But glancing through A Tour of Missouri Wineries is more than enough to make any oenophobe a little thirsty. (But make it white, please. Baby steps.)

Springfieldian Johnathan Eccher and Jeremy Hollingshead have compiled a 172-page coffee table compendium of Missouri wines. The authors have broken the state up into seven wine regions (with 417-land located in the Ozark Mountain region). Eccher and Hollingshead provide history, statistics and photos of the various wineries in each region.

But before you take a wine road trip to Westphalia Vineyards or Stone Hill Winery, you’ll want to do a little studying up on the winemaking process (so

417-land wineries Le Cave Vineyards: Billings, 417-744-4122, lecavevineyards.com Mount Pleasant Winery: Branson, 417-336-9463, mountpleasant.com Oovvda Winery: Springfield, 417-883-4896, oovvda.com Stone Hill Winery: Branson, 800-926-9463, stonehillwinery.com Whispering Oaks Winery: Seymour, 417-935-4103, whisperingoakswinery.com White Rose Winery: Carthage, 417-359-9253, whiterosebed-breakfast.com

you can enjoy the wine drinking process). The authors cover everything from the ideal grape-harvesting season to fermenting proper sweet wines. A helpful section even explains the difference between catawba (used to make sweet, light wines) and vignoles (versatile, used to produce a variety of wines), and all the types of grapes in between.

And if phrases like “full-bodied finish” and “notes of rose” don’t roll off the tongue at your next cocktail party (unless you’ve had too many glasses), you can turn to almost any page in Missouri Wineries and find a quote on wine. (Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine.”) That should impress the wine snobs, even if you blundered through the port versus blush debate.

A Tour of Missouri Wineries is a nice addition to any coffee table library, especially for the wine uncultured. Just make sure not to spill.