River Ridge Winery celebrates 25 years: 'People recognize it and they appreciate it'

River Ridge Winery owner Rob Bullock’s main goal Friday was to check sugar levels before harvesting the last Norton grape crop of the season Tuesday.

“For us, it’s really about wine,” he said.

The site is home to a 2,600-vine vineyard in Commerce, Missouri, just outside of Scott City.

“We have one shot at doing this each year,” Bullock said of the 6-acre vineyard. “Different grapes have different picking times. We’ll pick a couple in August, a couple in September and one in October.”

Bullock and his wife, Denise, have owned the winery for nearly three and a half years. The business celebrated its 25th anniversary Saturday and Sunday with food, live music by Jerry Ford — and wine, of course.

Standing within multiple rows of “thousands” of Norton grapes covered by nets under the hot sun, Bullock looked into the viewfinder of a refractometer — a hand tool measuring the sugar content using the sun as a backlight.

“I also taste them,” he said. “I’ve gotten to where I can kind of guesstimate the acid levels, too.”

A few of the wines produced at River Ridge are “unique” to the area, he said, including Cabernet sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, merlot and Chardonnay.

But why Commerce?

“I lived here. I came as an air traffic controller, so I lived in this area,” original owner Jerry Smith said. “I had access to 30 years of climatological data from the Cape Girardeau Airport.”

He said the vineyard’s location is classified as Category 3 — perfect for ripening grapes. Smith said he knew even before he planted a single vine “we can produce good wine here.”

Jerry and his wife, Joannie, didn’t buy a farm that had grapes — “We planted all of it.” They bought the farm in 1980, and the first grapes were planted in 1981, he said. But its doors officially opened to the public Sept. 17, 1994.

The Smiths now own the Yule Log Cabin in Scott City, but still work closely with the winery, they said.

Rob Bullock — once “an aggressive lineman” for Southeast Missouri State University — said showing up at River Ridge changed his life.

“It introduced me to this whole world of wine and food. A lot of times, people don’t get that opportunity,” he said. Enjoying wine is a shared passion of Rob and Jerry, they said, and is why their paths crossed.

Through the years, “not a whole heck of a lot” has changed, Jerry said. “When we bought the winery, we wanted to continue the winery. It was our favorite spot.”

The food is made from scratch, he said, adding, “We were farm-to-table before farm-to-table was cool.”

Grapes are harvested, pressed, fermented in 43 large stainless steel tanks and bottled and labeled by hand. The strong, sweet scent of grapes can be smelled from the entrance of the facility.

As it turns out, Bullock said, if you have thousands and thousands of gallons of wine, “it smells good.” Anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 bottles will be produced, he said.

“I’m at 49,500,” he said of the handcorking apparatus, adding much of the equipment is custom made for the daily operations.

Bullock said he credits the quarter-of-a-century success to appreciative customers.

“People recognize it, and they appreciate it,” he said.