Wineries celebrating a great harvest this year

ALTENBURG, Mo. -- The first thing to greet wine lovers when they pull up to Tower Rock Winery in Altenburg is the grapevine.

The parking lot in front of the small winery is roped off by the vines. The pungent, sweet smell of grapes is almost overpowering, but it's a smell wine lovers crave.

September marks the tail end of the grape harvest season, when vineyards and wineries around the area are picking the last of the late harvest grapes from their vines and beginning the process of turning them into wines.

Bob Breuer talked about the fermenting process that takes three weeks for his wine at the Tower Rock Winery in Altenburg, Mo.

While this summer's lack of rain has wreaked havoc on traditional agriculture in Southeast Missouri, it has only made the grapes local wineries depend on for their product thrive.

"The drought was really good for the grapes," said Bob Breuer, who owns the Tower Rock Winery with his wife, Cheryl. "While it affected the other crops, the grapes prefer the dry -- it concentrates the sugars."

Grapes, with their vines and deep roots, are hardy plants when it comes to water.

In the midst of harvest season, said Breuer, a morning rain can be enough to put off the harvest another day. The rains dilute the sugars in the grapes, making for lower quality wine. Rains this week have put the harvest on hold, but it will be back in full swing soon -- emphasis on "full."

"Last year we harvested about 10 tons of grapes," Breuer said. "We've already had 10 tons of just whites this year."

Tower Rock has about 1,250 grape plants on about two acres of ground, with five varieties of white grapes and one variety of red. About 40 percent of the grapes used in the winery's 12 varieties of mainly dry and semi-dry reds and whites come from Tower Rock vines, with the rest coming from other local vineyards.

Many of the vines hang bare now, but large green clusters of Vidal and tiny, tight, purple clusters of Cynthiana still hang plump in the summer sun. They hold the promise of a worthy future.

"This might be one of the best vintages we should have," said Breuer as he walked among the rows.

The vineyard isn't huge by any means, but that doesn't mean picking the grapes isn't a lot of work. Throughout the summer, the Breuers pick grapes along with friends and family. Some grapes are ready to harvest in July, but August and September are the busiest months for the harvest.

"We pick them all by hand," Breuer said. "We try to recruit as many friends and relatives as we can. We offer them wine, barbecue and T-shirts."

It takes four people almost a whole day to harvest a ton of grapes, said Breuer.

With the good harvest this year, wineries all over Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois are experiencing the same kind of good fortune. Along with those high yields come more work, too, and not only in terms of picking the fruit.

"It's also the messiest, because those grapes have a ton of sugar in them, and when you start squeezing them that juice gets all over the place," said Jack Dunker, owner of the Cache River Basin and Winery in Belknap, Ill. "When it dries you get a lot of fruit flies, by the thousands."

At River Ridge Winery in Commerce, Mo., manager Keller Ford and owner Jerry Smith spent much of last week pressing grapes. On Wednesday, they pressed more than five tons of grapes from their seven-and-a-half acres. Their harvest started at the beginning of August, and the last reds will be picked mid-October.

The harvest is tough in the August heat, but it gets better.

"When the temperature drops into the 80s and there's a nice breeze, there's no place I'd rather be," Ford said.

At the Hemman Winery in Brazeau, Mo., harvesting grapes and preparing the wine is a family operation. The winery is owned by several members of the Hemman family, including brothers Doug and Cory, their wives, Bonnie and Lisa, and their parents, Al and Dorothy.

They just finished harvesting their roughly four tons of Concordes, Niagaras and Catawbas for their primarily sweet and semi-sweet wines.

"We were all out there harvesting grapes," said Doug Hemman. "The grandkids and all the rest of the family joined in."

The harvest was long and finally came to and end last week, Hemman said.

Harvesting is only the first part of the process of making wine. Much more work comes afterward, as wine is racked, fermented and bottled. At Tower Rock, crushed red grapes sit in a tub on the porch with covering over them, letting the juice soak up the goodies in the skins.

Inside, the winery's 26 fermentation tanks are nearly all at work.

"We now have two empty tanks, with the reds coming on," Breuer said.

Wine lovers won't be able to enjoy the fruits of Breuer's labor for six months to a year, depending on the variety. That means the 2005 vintage is going to be one of the best in recent memory, with great flavor and finish, said Breuer.

But the hard-core wine lovers can be a part of the process. Wineries like Tower Rock and Cache River encourage visitors to help out with the wine harvest, and they have people take them up on the offer.

"We've had people that want to experience the winery, the wine lovers, and they like to see what happens and how things go at the winery," Dunker said.

Maybe they can even get some free wine and food out of the deal. Dunker's winery also offered an old-fashioned grape stomp this past weekend.

At Tower Rock, no grape stomping takes place.

"This crusher and de-stemmer has replaced Lucy," said Breuer.

But anyone who wants to sweat it out in the field picking those juicy grapes, they're more than welcome.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182