Scott and Tonya Rombach liked wine and had weekends. Several years and every Missouri winery later, they will tell you the wine was never really the point. The people were.
Every owner, every winemaker, every staff member who poured and talked and shared more than was required. What struck the Rombachs was not just the warmth but the lack of competition underneath it. Wineries here encourage guests to visit their neighbors. They celebrate each other’s harvests. In an industry that could easily turn territorial, Missouri wine country largely hasn’t.
They started as sweet wine drinkers, the sweeter the better, Tonya will tell you, and somewhere along the way their palates quietly mutinied. Scott became a dry red devotee. Tonya gravitates toward dry whites and sparkling, especially in warmer months. They now notice the difference between French and American Oak. None of that was the plan. The best advice they ever received came from a visit to Temecula, California, where someone told them that learning to appreciate wine is like training for a marathon. You don’t love everything on day one. You keep tasting, learning, training your palate. The wine taught them, one tasting at a time.
What Missouri does that deserves more attention, they’ll say, is refuse to be somewhere else. The assumption that this is sweet wine country and nothing more collapses fast on a first visit. Missouri has four American Viticultural Areas, and the first AVA ever established in the United States was right here, in Augusta, predating Napa Valley. A state grape, the Norton, has a history longer than most people realize. Dry reds, whites, rosés, pét-nats, sparkling wines made by people who are not trying to out-Napa Napa. That, the Rombachs argue, is the whole point. Missouri’s greatest strength is being authentically Missouri.
Their Golden Cork Awards grew from a simple question they started asking each other on every drive home: would we come back? Not whether the wine scored well or the view was pretty. Would they come back. The wineries that earned an immediate yes were the ones where every guest, first visit or 50th, was welcomed with the same warmth. Not because the Rombachs were recognized. Because that is simply who those places are.
They get asked often what comes next, now that Missouri is complete. The list, they say, only got longer. Oregon, New York, Idaho, Montana. France, eventually. Italy, Germany, Portugal, New Zealand. Every region with its own personality, every bottle with its own story. The through line stays the same: find the places people overlook, taste the wines nobody expected, and tell the truth about what they found. That was always the whole idea.
Missouri was just the first chapter. It turns out that was enough to change everything about how they drink, travel and see. Follow along their journey on their Instagram: @mo_wine_couple.
This article appears in September 2026.