Our vineyard tour for this day ended at Chaumette Vineyard and Winery. Tony had visited before and absolutely raved about the food here. He's been talking about it for over a year, so I was excited to finally get a chance to visit. Chaumette refers to itself as a "premier wine lifestyle destination" since it includes a destination spa, private villas for overnight stays, a pool, and a full-service restaurant in addition to the traditional winery amenities.
I'll warn you now, I'm going to talk a lot about the food and the views since that it what this place is all about.
View of the restaurant and tasting room as you enter the property.
This winery was established in 1990 and is located in Sainte Genvieve, Missouri. To give you a little bit of historical context, Sainte Genevieve is recognized as the home of the first colonial settlement on the west side of the Mississippi River by the French in the early 1730's. More than 30 acres of the 310 acres that Chaumette sits on are planted with grapevines. All of the vineyards that we visited on this trip reside in this area known as the Ozark Mountain American Viticultural Area (that's a mouthful!). This region, distinguished by rolling hills and the Saline Creek River Valley (we'll talk about this creek in a later post), is known to be up to 5 degrees warmer than other Missouri wine regions, which we learned is advantageous.
The vineyards that you see as you drive up. I love the little pop of color that they added by planting bright pink flower bushes at the end of each row. I've never seen that at any other vineyard.
I have to admit that I've only sampled one of their wines, but it was lovely. We arrived after their tasting room was closed. They do produce more than a dozen wines from varieties such as Norton, Missouri's state grape, Chardonel, Missouri's most widely planted white grape variety, Traminette, Chambourcin, and Vignoles. They produce between five and six thousand cases annually of mostly dry wines, with some semi-dry and semi-sweet styles as well as a vintage port and late harvest Chardonel.
The tasting room. As I said, we have not done a tasting here at Chaumette.
The inside dining area for Chaumette. Although, with this view, I can't think of a single good reason to eat inside here!
Special events dining area
Outdoor porch for dining. I absolutely love the rustic feel of this property. The linens, glasses, and plates all fit perfectly within the setting.
The other part of the porch. We dined right in the corner against the railing which allowed for great views in all directions. There is also a hummingbird feeder right here, so we enjoyed several visits by hummingbirds during our dinner!
The following pictures are all taken from our seats.
You can see the villas and spa off in the distance.
Amazing, isn't it?
This is Norton who is named after the grape. He is one of four dogs that has the run of the property. What a life! We watched them visit guests at the villas, run through the grapevines, as well as visiting various tables at the restaurant for handouts. They quickly learned that Tony wasn't giving up a single bite of his food!
Meet Pepper.
Tony decided to contribute to this blog post by saying that "The meal was magically perfect in every way." If you know Tony, then you know that he's a pretty harsh judge when it comes to food! Seriously, it was one of the tastiest meals that I've ever had.
Before we arrived, Tony kept talking about their yummy pulled pork and apple sandwich with their homemade Parmesan chips. Our waitress quickly dashed his hopes by informing us that this evening was the first of their Sunday family dinners. Every Sunday evening during the summer, they serve a set menu family style. We decided to try it out.
A little background about their chef here at Chaumette. Adam Lambay is classically trained and a Zagat award-winner who has worked at several well known St. Louis favorites. His goal is to always match visual appeal with taste. He is also a strong supporter of using local food products. Right off of the wine deck is a garden that is maintained by the culinary staff. Every day, they walk out to pick the herbs and vegetables that they will be using in the dishes that evening. That's pretty fresh!
Here is what we had that evening: Chicken and rice soup with a Romaine salad topped with a buttermilk and herb dress, croutons, and carrot ribbons. They could have just given me a large bowl of the soup, and I would have been perfect happy. It was fantastic. The spices and herbs used in the soup were incredible. I had never even heard of using buttermilk as a salad dressing before. I'm not a big fan of salad dressing and usually eat mine plain, but this was delicious.
Our entree is pictured above. It was a grilled sirloin steak with pommes a raclette, butter glazed asparagus, sauteed mushrooms, and spinach. I don't like mushrooms or spinach, so Tony took all of that. Pommes a Raclette is a roasted potato with cheese and cream sauce. Tony has got to learn how to cook this ASAP!
We were both a little surprised that they never asked us how we wanted the steak prepared. Turns out, there was no need to ask us. They knew how to prepare it to perfection. Tony says that from now on, he'll just order steak to be prepared perfect at restaurants. They should all learn from Chaumette!
For dessert, Tony chose a Chambourcin spiked strawberry shortcake with vanilla cake and fresh whipped cream. It was the perfect ending to a summer evening meal.
As I'm sure that I have mentioned before, I'm a chocoholic. I went for the Norton chocolate brownie. The fudge brownie was topped with Norton wine syrup, cocoa cream, and ganache. Amazing.
A group of very loud ladies who were quite the over-sharers were seated near us. At one point, they went on about how amazing the bathrooms were here at Chaumette, so of course we had to check them out before we got on the road. Yes, that is goat milk soap. It left my hands feeling much softer than a normal hand soap.
While I was waiting for Tony in the main tasting room and gift shop area, our lovely waitress Allison came running back inside. She had just picked up the check and tip from our table. Excitedly, she showed the other waitress and hostess what Tony had left her. Tony loves to fold a dollar bill up into some shape as part of the tip. For her, he had left a Tomcat plane. She had definitely not noticed me standing off to the side! I felt really bad when she jumped and turned bright red after I started laughing and told her that she needed to tell my husband that she had gotten a kick out of the plane! It was really cute though. She ended up running back to the kitchen to show all of them. Tony loves doing little things like that to make people smile, so he loved her enthusiasm!
Walk back to the car.
Love the little church at the top of the hill where weddings are held! They also hold services on Sundays for those staying in the villas.
I was so excited to see elk right on the side of road that Tony stopped to take pictures for me! The truck behind us didn't appreciate it as much as I did.
I'll leave you with this - if you ever find yourself in the St. Louis area for any length of time, visit Chaumette Winery!
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