For more than 30 years, Mark Baehmann has been turning grape juice into vino at Missouri wineries like Montelle, Robller, Mount Pleasant and, most recently, Chaumette. Now, he and business partner Ed Wagner are striking out on their own with Wild Sun Winery, opening in late August on a 10-acre property in Hillsboro.
How did you get interested in winemaking?
I dropped out of college to figure my life out. I applied for a job as a cellar master at Montelle Winery. Communion wine – that’s all I knew. I was barely of drinking age. Clayton Byers (Montelle’s founder) sat me down on a picnic table and opened a bottle of Cynthiana. This man had such passion in his voice, such a romance when it came to wine, that I said, “I want to know more.”
What’s your winemaking philosophy?
Keep it simple. When you keep it simple you let the fruit show itself. If you do too much – baby the wine too much, touch it too much – you run the risk of taking things away from that wine.
Is winemaking an art and a science?
Absolutely. I think we should rack it now, I think we should take it off the oak, I think we should leave it on the skins longer – that’s the art, the unknown gut feel that I have. And when someone says, “Why did you decide to do that?” I don’t know. It was a feeling.
What’s something most people don’t know about Missouri wine?
It is night and day from the ’80s to present day. I still hear that a lot of people have not tried Missouri wines because of their experience from the ’80s, but the wines have gotten markedly better.
What wine do you drink?
I drink from all over, and I typically don’t drink my own. In my very early days of winemaking, we went to a winery, and the wine wasn’t very good. The guy never drank any wine other than what he made, so he acquired a taste for what he was making. That scared me. I want my palate to be fresh.
Why start your own winery now?
God’s timing. He’s finally allowing it. This has not been the first attempt. I have been involved in all aspects of owning a winery from working the tasting bar, working in the vineyards, making the wine, running a wine club, talking to customers – I loved it all. But when you work for someone else, you find yourself saying, “I think I could do this better.”
How do you plan to distinguish Wild Sun from other Missouri wineries?
We are going to focus on our wines. We are not a restaurant. We’re not a vineyard. We’re in long-term contracts with grape growers from Missouri. And we’re going to focus on our customer base, that customer that wants to learn about wine.
What have you learned most about the world of wine in your 30-year career?
There’s something about wine that is so darn romantic – the passion that comes out of a glass. I know what wine can do to transform an evening or a conversation or just someone’s enjoyment in a product that gives more than it takes.
What wine are you most proud of making?
When a wine is successful. When there’re 300 people on my patio having a great time, that’s a good wine. If it wins a medal, it means a handful of judges liked it, and that’s a good thing, but I don’t take it as success. The wine that stands out is the wine we made that christened the Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier: a bottle of Genesis, champagne that we made at Mount Pleasant.
-photo by Carmen Troesser
This article appears in August 2015.