St. James Winery

Thanks to my wine friend, Megan, aka The Marketing Lush, landing a job at St. James Winery, I had a new destination to seek out this summer.

Only 90 minutes away down highway 44, the tasting room was easy to find.

St. James Winery

St. James is MUCH larger than I thought! Check out how huge these tanks are!

Tanks

Plus a giant warehouse to store all their cases of wine! This is only one section!

Cases of Wine

I made a new friend in Megan's office...

Huge bottle!

After the tour, we finally hit the tasting room. Each person gets to try six wines and since there were three of us...let's just say, we tasted A LOT of wine!

Tasting List

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the sweet wines make up only about a third of all the wines that St. James has to offer. We started with the dry white and red wines and I found quite a few winners. My favorite was the 2014 Chardonel. Tony, who drinks nothing BUT dry red wines, loved the 2015 Chambourcin, and I brought home the 2014 Estate Norton for Patience. Something for everyone!

After the tasting, we were ready for some lunch, but St. James doesn't have a picnic area in the winery. Instead, they have teamed up with Public House Brewing and built a location right next door with a garden. I was disappointed that I couldn't bring in my own snacks, but their own menu is quite extensive.

Reuben Sandwich

Pepperoni and Sausage Pizza

And since we were at a brewery, we had to try a flight!

Public House Brewing beers

From left to right is Rod's Cream Ale, Hefeweizen, Elusive IPA, another new IPA, Revelation Stout, and last, a new cider.

After all the food and drink, we need to run around to digest. In the grass, there is an area for bocce ball, cornhole/bags, and GIANT CHESS.

Giant Chessboard - Tony won as usual

In case you want to see a close up of Megan's cool shirt from WineFolly.com:

Wine Tshirt from WineFolly.com

Definitely a fun afternoon with beautiful weather as well. You must visit!

Resources:

St. James Winery = http://www.stjameswinery.com/

Public House Brewing = http://www.publichousebrewery.com/

Home-cooked meals are always the best!

One of the best things about Facebook is catching up with friends and family that you haven't seen or talked to in years and then trying to catch up on the last 2-5-10 years that you missed! hehehe Thanks to Facebook, I got to go to a friend's wedding to Seattle and went out to KC last weekend to try and make up for lost time by visiting friends.

One friend that I recently got back in touch with, has become a chef in the time that we were apart. So OF COURSE the first thing I said was, "When are you going to cook for me?" As part of fair trade, I brought the wine.

Since I had left that Pinot Grigio back in KC, I was down to my LAST bottle of wine in the house: a semi-dry red from St. James Winery.

Yeah yeah yeah...I know wine purists may turn their noses up at Missouri wines but @STLWineGirl (http://www.stlwinegirl.com/) recently held a class at Provisions to show off how good Missouri wines could be. (Sorry I missed it, Angie!)

As someone who doesn't normally drink red wines, a semi-dry was just perfect because it had a smooth taste with very little tannin. This also was an excellent choice since the main dish was a spicy chili. I ended up having to put in two big glops of sour cream to mix with the chili. hehe

But for the appetizer, we actually started with a white "daily drinking wine" that is inexpensive and you can get anywhere: Barefoot Chardonnay! (http://www.barefootwine.com/) They're just so easy to drink an accessible to everyone. Plus I can't help but think the baby footprint on the label is just SO CUTE! I can't resist. hehe

Anyway, as I last mentioned, I have a couple of classes already marked down on my calendar so I encourage you to check them out as well.

November 10th - Beer and food pairing class with @STLWineGirl at Provisions (http://www.stlwinegirl.com/UpcomingEvents.html)

November 17th - Wine and cheese pairing at Wine Merchant (They just released their class list via their mailing list!) http://www.winemerchantltd.com/

Unfortunately, it does not appear as though Whole Foods Galleria will have any more classes the rest of the year.