Favorite winery: Mount Pleasant’s wines excel across the spectrum • by Glenn Bardgett • Photo by Josh Monken
Posted On: 07/01/2007 E-mail This To A Friend!

Being the most popular of the more than 100 wineries in the bistate region is no simple achievement. Many wineries have a beautiful patio, a panoramic view, music and grilled bratwurst. For the third consecutive year, Mount Pleasant Winery has topped the readers’ choice poll, and I believe what gets this Augusta winery the votes has to be the quality of its wines. People will go for the view once, but they will only return if they like the product.

You will find the familiar Norton and Vignoles among the winery’s offerings, but the real story of Mount Pleasant is its range of other wines, including several blends and the only really strong local program that emphasizes vinifera varieties.

Vinifera is the family of European grapes that we most often see from California, such as Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. For the most part, these varieties are not hardy enough for our Midwest climate, and for many years, I have been continually disappointed with locally grown vinifera. The reds, in particular, tend to be thin, with little or no distinction. But Mount Pleasant seems to have found the secret to vinifera success, producing several varieties.

The winery’s Church Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon is a new favorite of mine. It’s also winemaker Mark Baehmann’s personal project. “This is a 1-acre vineyard that gets a lot of hand labor throughout the year,” said Baehmann. Aging the wine for up to two years in new French oak barrels adds to the lovely toasty character of the cherry-like style. I recently said to Chuck Dressel, whose family owns Mount Pleasant, words that I never thought I would say: “Chuck, this is really a world-class Cabernet.”

For many years, I anxiously looked forward to the release of Mount Pleasant’s Les Copains Chardonnay. When it’s served in a blind tasting, most wine enthusiasts typically think this wine is a white Burgundy, generally thought to be the ultimate expression of Chardonnay.

Mount Pleasant also offers several notable blends. One of my top picks for a dry white is its Cuvee Blanc, which is an oak-aged blend of 90 percent Vidal Blanc and 10 percent Chardonnay. For anyone who enjoys great Chardonnay, this is an ideal choice.

If you attend almost any Missouri wine event, you will likely see Pat Cummings, Mount Pleasant’s sales manager. I also know that when I ask him, “What are you pouring today?” the answer will certainly be, “Villagio, of course.” This is a fruity off-dry white (about 1 percent residual sugar) that was developed for the Pinot Grigio drinker. Even the creative name is very reminiscent of the very popular Italian wine.

Part of the blend of Villagio includes the very distinctive Rayon d’Or grape. (The technical name for this grape is Seibel 4986, which is also one of the parent varieties of two other famous hybrids, Vidal Blanc and Seyval Blanc.) With a style very similar to the beautiful semi-dry white wine of Vouvray, located in the Loire Valley of central France, this variety has long been another personal favorite.

Dressel is of like mind. “Every winery owner has a favorite, and Rayon is mine,” he said. (He often gets asked why the wine is named after ugly clothes. “I need to find the guy who renamed the Patagonian Toothfish to Chilean Sea Bass,” said Dressel.)

Claret, the traditional British term for the wines of Bordeaux, is generally not used on wine labels in this country, but Mount Pleasant has created a Claret blend of up to six varieties; it’s aged in both new barrels and those that have been used for Norton and Cabernet Sauvignon for two years. “This has been a fun wine to make,” said Baehmann, who also praised the late Clayton Byers, founder of Montelle Winery, as “the man who inspired me and taught me the importance of blending.”

But the use of vinifera and good blending aren’t Mount Pleasant’s only claims to fame; the wine that brought it both national and international attention is certainly the vintage port. For more than 25 years, the winery has received well-deserved acclaim for both its vintage and tawny ports. “The hardest thing about making ports is that you have to wait several years to see if the changes you made were the right ones,” said Baehmann.

What drives a winemaker or owner to strive to produce higher and higher quality? “The best bonus a winemaker can get is to see a face light up from a customer who enjoys the wine so much and appreciates the hard work that goes into producing the wine that they drink,” said Baehmann.

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