St James Winery
St
James, MO
www.stjameswinery.com
The Estate
Wine brings people together….whether it’s lazy summer
evenings spent on a deck or cozy winter nights in
front of a fire. Wine is the special ingredient for
toasts to the new year, the newly married, and the
newly born. Because wine is made for sharing, its
flavors turn a good meal into something extraordinary.
Wine helps make memories, and for the Hofherr family
at St. James Winery, wine is a family’s legacy.
Jim & Pat Hofherr believed there was great
potential to resurrect the winemaking acclaim Missouri
enjoyed prior to Prohibition, so with dreams of
building a winery from the ground up, the Hofherrs
came to St. James, Missouri, and opened their winery
in 1970. It remains family owned and operated.
That first year, St. James Winery produced about 8,000
gallons of wine (3,400 cases), but two of those first
wines have become the stuff of legend. Year in and
year out since 1970, Velvet Red and Velvet White have
been bestsellers, and the hundreds of awards these
wines have won attest to their quality.
As the
winery grew, the push for excellence became a driving
force. St. James Winery began to win important awards
at major wine competitions. In 1994, St. James Winery
Norton was named Best of Show at the International
Eastern Wine Competition, and in 1995 St. James Winery
Seyval was named one of the Top 50 Wines in the World
by Bon Appetit. In 1997 and 1998, the winery won back
to back Governor’s Cup Awards for Best Wine in
Missouri, each time for Vintner’s Reserve Vignoles.
The popularity of St. James Wines skyrocketed, and
between 1995 and 2000, annual production went from
10,000 cases to 100,000 cases. St. James Winery’s
reputation spread throughout the wine community. To
continue to keep up with demand, St. James Winery grew
its vineyard acreage, enlarged the cellar, added a
twist-cap bottling line, expanded the warehouse, and
increased its distribution network.
These
changes made St. James Winery one of the most modern
and best-equipped wineries in the state. In 2006 St.
James Winery was included in Wine Business Monthly’s
Top 10 Hottest Small Brands in the US, and in 2009
Critics Challenge named St. James Winery “Winery of
the Year-Eastern US.”
Today St. James Winery
makes more than 200,000 cases of wine each year.
The St. James Winery logo, a schoolhouse,
honors these Italian settlers who first planted grapes
here in Missouri. The original schoolhouse built to
educate their children still stands today and is
adjacent to the winery’s vineyards.
The Vineyard
The winery tends vineyards planted with
Catawba, Chardonel, Norton, Concord, Seyval, Vignoles,
Chambourcin and Rougeon grapes.
During the 1800s, Missouri had a
thriving wine producing community. German immigrants
planted vineyards in the Hermann area, and Italian
immigrants planted vineyards in the area around St.
James, Missouri.
The Italian immigrants here
called the area Rosati, and, and they prospered as
they planted vineyards. Grapes became a big business
in the region with eventually more than 2000 acres of
grapes planted in about 200 vineyards.
Today,
the area is known throughout the region as “Little
Italy of the Ozarks” thanks to the Italian settlers
who originally planted grapes here. Of course, the
area has another name now because in 1987 it became an
official American Viticulture Area known as the Ozark
Highlands AVA.
The Wines
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