When I joined the Stone Hill Winery team as their Shipping Coordinator, I was what we might call an enjoyer of wine, as in I drank it if it was available but rarely went out of my way to seek it out, with a small caveat that I will explore a bit later.
That is not to say I did not drink and find wine tasty, I just rarely explored the actual tasting experience of the wine, aiming to drink and sit with company or share a glass with a partner, notable and pleasant experiences on their own but hardly a true understanding of the wine.
Now, to touch on that caveat; Stone Hill Winery has had my favorite wine long before I ever considered working for the winery. The Cream Sherry is a wine that I will cover as part of my journey, but I feel that starting with that is hardly a fair assessment of my wine journey, so instead I am starting with my grandmother’s favorite wine, Vidal Blanc.
My grandmother is rather important to me. The details are largely irrelevant, but she has had enough impact on my life that a year ago I left my career in the tech world behind to move in with her and help her as she fully enters the twilight of her life, though even at 84 years she could hardly be forced to admit that she stands in that twilight. She has also lived in the city of Hermann, Missouri for most of her adult life and has worked at least three of the wineries in the area and has very firm feelings about wine and its experience. To say that she is much better than me at putting her tasting experience into words would be a huge understatement.
With all that in mind, this series will be a slow and gentle exploration of Stone Hill Winery’s offerings in two stages. I take an evening and sit with a wine, with my grandmother, and we taste and discuss. The second stage is to take that wine and attempt to cook a meal with it. A potential third stage is to pair it with an entirely different meal, though that may be cheating due to Vidal being one of my primary “Dinner” wines for that purpose.
Sitting at our kitchen table, a glass of Vidal Blanc in front of us, me and my grandmother chat and sip and explore the wine together. Whenever I pour the glass, it has the pale-yellow color of light straw. I bring it up to my nose and take a short sniff, just a brief intake. Initially I get a mineral-adjacent nose that has a brief fruity scent at the tail end of it. My grandmother does this as well and finds that the fruitier notes come out stronger to her senses. I take a much longer breath in of the wine after letting it sit for a minute at the table, with this deeper exploration into the nose I find that the minerality becomes a more limestone background while Lemon and vaguely Pear notes take the forefront, though there is no real sweetness to the nose from the Pear or Stone fruit; feels like it somewhat tricks the sense of a sweetness to the aroma.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, my grandmother’s experience is an interesting one. She has always been quite expressive, wearing her heart on her sleeve so to speak, and she has taken her first sip. As her favorite wine at Stone Hill Winery, it should hardly be a surprise to her as to the flavor but on her initial sip the surprise at its dryness was very evident. She found it to be overwhelmingly so at first, though mentioned that it mellows out quickly and with subsequent sips she found that the minerality and subtle fruit flavors took to the fore and left her with a smooth and enjoyable experience.
When it comes to my own taste, the experience was different but subtly, so I think. Initially it is dry and somewhat brash, it has an enjoyable complexity with a fresh minerality that I very much enjoy. Somewhat like the smell or taste of limestone that refreshes the palate and almost clears the way for the bright lemon notes that follow, ending on an almost cantaloupe adjacent flavor that mellows out with all three notes combined into a very pleasant aftertaste as it settles into the back of the tongue and down the throat. I think as I mull over it, the flavor is less that of actual melon and more the refreshing, bright feeling that you get whenever you bite into a nice honeydew or cantaloupe.
As me and my grandmother drink this wine, she reminisces on her own time working up at Stone Hill Winery. As an art teacher at Hermann Elementary (and several other schools in the area) she would often work a second job over the summers, a tradition that holds true to this day as at least three of our seasonal sales room folks are also teachers at local schools. She speaks fondly of her time and how Stone Hill Winery was her first real experience with wine, where she admits that initially she was a huge Pink Catawba fan and talks about enjoying a bottle on the hillside above where our showcase vineyard now stands after work (Sounds like I know the subject for my next article!) She mentions that her tastes evolved as she experienced more wine, trending slowly but surely towards the drier of the wines we offer where she settled firmly on Vidal Blanc as her everyday drinker, so to speak.
As we wind the evening down, drink our wine and finish our dinner (a pairing not worth speaking of if I am being honest, a vaguely Asian themed chop suey that did not benefit the wine whatsoever) we finish with the last glass for each of us, toasting to our grandfather and to Stone Hill Winery as it helps us create more memories for our family that will evolve and grow, hopefully for another 83 years.
Vidal Blanc is a delicious wine with a fresh, bright and dry flavor profile that benefits from its vaguely citrusy notes to create a clear and enjoyable experience. Enough complexity to explore but simple enough to enjoy on its face.
You can shop Vidal Blanc and the rest of our wines Here.
Michael Haggerty is the Shipping Coordinator at Stone Hill Winery and handles all DTC wine shipments.
You can reach him for shipping inquiries via email at shipping@stonehillwinery.com or by phone at 573-486-2221.