Photos by Emily Senoff

By Emily Senoff

While a typical wine tasting starts at a wine bar or a table with chairs, ours started in the fermentation room, where large silver and cylindrical tanks hold the liquid that changes from a juice to an alcoholic beverage.

Crown Valley Winery‘s winemaker, Al Dippenyaar, handed us wine glasses and filled them with a 2011 Viognier straight from the 15,000-gallon stainless steel fermentation tank. The whole class, even the sweet wine drinkers, liked the dry white wine.

We finished our tasting, which was unlike any other on this trip, at the bar next to the Crown Valley deli.

Five silver tokens rest on the bar at Crown Valley Winery. Each token gets you a taste of one of Crown Valley

The style of Crown Valley’s wine tasting surprised me because it was not as formal as the tastings at other wineries.

Instead of the winemaker filling our glass with an ounce or so of wine and giving us a short description of what we were about to try, a bartender asked us what we wanted to try from an extensive list.

With only five tokens to use, it was hard to choose just five. The sweet, Blackberry fruit wine was definitely a class favorite as most of us walked out with our own bottle.

About the class

The Wine Country Writing Class in the lab at Chaumette Winery in Ste. Genevieve with winery owner Hank Johnson(left). Photo by Nina Furstenau.

Students in the Wine Country Writing class, taught by Nina Furstenau, will be getting a chance to examine not only wine culture and how to write about it, but also how wine is produced and agricultural issues in the vineyard. During this four-day field reporting trip to Missouri wineries in the Ste. Genevieve, Augusta and Hermann areas, students will see A&K Cooperage in Higbee, watch Missouri oak barrels being produced, talk with winemakers and vineyard managers, and learn directly from experts in the field. Join the class with their blog series as they meet the people behind the Missouri wine industry.