St. James Winery Winemaker

[winemaker_3352]

Doug (Brew and Wine Supply) had the distinct pleasure to get a personal walk thru the St. James Winery in MO (largest winery in MO) with the winemaker Andrew Meggitt.

Talk about a great guy!! Andrew was a pleasure talking to and doing business with. I will be going back to him for more juice!!!

 

[Brew and Wine Supply]

It was quite a morning, You should have see our eyes when they took us into the room with 5- 25,000 gallon fermenting tanks.
Could have stayed there all day, so much going on, and everyone was willing to talk to us.
I ended up with 32 gallons of chardonell and 10 gallons of Rougeon juice. The adventure is on...

 

[winemaker_3352]

Agreed - I could have easily spent all day talking to them. They were very friendly and willing to help with anything or question we had.

The 25,000 gallon tanks were breath taking to see. They had to take the roof off the building and sky lift those in.

Looking forward to doing it again..

 

[BobF]

Next time you guys make the visit, let me know and I'll meet you there.

I've been there quite a bit, but didn't realize they would sell juice. Do they sell grapes also?

 

[Brew and Wine Supply]

Our day started out at a little after 7am at the store. An hour and a half drive to St. James, MO. we arrived at the winery. Drove around back and pulled up to a set of sliding doors on the metal building. Inside we saw rows of stainless tanks and the floor covered with hoses.
Andrew met us at the door and greated us with an Aussie accent. We got our containers out of the truck and rinsed out the K meta we had in them. His assistant drug a 4" hose of of the warehouse and put the end that looked like a 4' long gas nozzle, into a 4'x8' tank and turned on the valve, out came the juice with a good amout of leas, they ran it untill it somewhat cleared, then into the truck to fill our containers.
After filling us up, the hose went back into the tank to flush the lines ( found out afterwards, the juice was filtered and returned to the tank).
Andrew left to fill out our paperwork, and his asst. proceded to show us around. We started out back where the driveway came in and a huge overhead crane, next to that was a hopper where the 18 wheelers would drop the grapes into a de-stemer that was some 20' long.
From there we went back inside to a series of 6" and 8" pipes interwound through more stainless steel tanks, some covered with frost. Then through a pair of doors and there were the 5 25,000 gallon tanks. Not sure of the exact measurments, but we guessed they were between 30' to 50' wide and about 100' tall. All sat on 4' concrete pads.
Andrew came and got us at this time and went into an office where we got our bills and a print out of the brix, TA and Ph. We told Andrew our plans of what type of wine we were going to make, and he made so many suggestions I had trouble keeping up with notes. After paying, headed out to the truck to secure our bounty.
We could have stayed much longer soaking in all the info that was presented to us, Jon had the day off, but I had to get back and open the store.
This is just a brief overview, to go into more detail would be a second by second replay. Simply amazing. Looks like Jon and I are heading back next year.

 

[Brew and Wine Supply]

Next time you guys make the visit, let me know and I'll meet you there.

I've been there quite a bit, but didn't realize they would sell juice. Do they sell grapes also?

They sell only juice, 50 gallon minimum. Something about scales for selling the grapes. We figured out that buying juice is better than getting the grapes, they are destemed and crushed for you and the price we think worked out better than if we had bought just grapes.
Would love to meet up with you.

 

[Brew and Wine Supply]

This is the first white wine I have made, pitched the yeast last night already have quite a bit of acitvity...
eeeewwwww looks like...well something yellowish brown and foamy...

I like the looks of fermenting red wine.

 

[BobF]

I started an Apple-Jalapeno yesterday (3G)

Looks great to me and smells heavenly!

 

[winemaker_3352]

This is the first white wine I have made, pitched the yeast last night already have quite a bit of acitvity...
eeeewwwww looks like...well something yellowish brown and foamy...

I like the looks of fermenting red wine.

Yeah mine too. Last year my chardonel look like chocolate milk when transferred into the carboy.

No worries - it is a golden straw color now - once it all settles the color resumes as it should..

 

[winemaker_3352]

Next time you guys make the visit, let me know and I'll meet you there.

I've been there quite a bit, but didn't realize they would sell juice. Do they sell grapes also?

Yeah - maybe next year we can get the MO folks to all meet up there or something Meet Andrew - hang out for a while - hit the tasting room.

Leave with our juice!!

FYI - St. James is harvesting more chardonel tomorrow nite.

 

[ckassotis]

Very interesting. I had no idea they sold juice! I would definitely be interested in checking that out in the future.

Just to clarify, you said they sold at minimum in 50 gallon batches? Yet in your first post you said you got 32 gallons of chardonel and 10 gal of rougeon? It strikes me that neither of these is 50, nor is the combined total 50. Did you split this with someone, and this was your take, or do they allow you to make up the 50 with different varieties?

Might be worth making a trip down from Columbia! Thanks for the info!

 

[winemaker_3352]

Very interesting. I had no idea they sold juice! I would definitely be interested in checking that out in the future.

Just to clarify, you said they sold at minimum in 50 gallon batches? Yet in your first post you said you got 32 gallons of chardonel and 10 gal of rougeon? It strikes me that neither of these is 50, nor is the combined total 50. Did you split this with someone, and this was your take, or do they allow you to make up the 50 with different varieties?

Might be worth making a trip down from Columbia! Thanks for the info!

It is 55 gallons min.

Yes we got 70 gallons of chardonel - split it 35 gallons a piece. Doug's container was only 32 though - not 35

I think I actually got about 37 gallons. Filled my 32 brute container to a few inches from the top - then my 6 gallon bucket to the top.

While we were there - Doug asked if he could get 6 gallons of red juice. The only juice they had that did not have alcohol was the Rougeon.

He got 10 gallons of that.

 

[Brew and Wine Supply]

Jon, what have you done with your juice so far?

 

[ckassotis]

Fantastic! Will have to see if I can coordinate with someone for next year perhaps. Mind if I ask what you paid? I was actually thinking today that would be a great sticky for this forum. A by-state list of what people were buying grapes/fruit for, to give other people (mostly within their state, but also further out) a better idea of whether or not they were getting good prices or not.

 

[Ron22]

If we planed this right we could get about 9 people and we could each get 6 gallons.
Of course it would have to happen when I am in Missouri

 

[UBB]

<-------------Is jealous!

 

[Brew and Wine Supply]

It was $6 a gallon for the chardonell and $8+ something for the Rougeon +$5 each for the pair of buckets. My total bill was just over $300. Thought my barrel was 35 gallons, only to find out after I got home it was 32 gallons.

I've been playing with the chardonell. Have them in 6-7.9 gallon buckets with 6 gallons in each except for the last one which has two. the first 4 buckets came out pretty clear ( tasted like peach juice) the last 7 gallons came from when I had to dump the drum up side down and got pretty cloudy with lees. All are bubbling along real nice. It now tastes like green apple juice.

The Rougeon is another story. Its foaming like a bubble bath. moved it to the basement to cool it down, has 6" of head space and is foaming over. SG on that is getting pretty low 1.010 to 1.015 ( each bucket) but starting SG was only 1.052.
Not sure how long or what yeast they had pitched before I got it. It is still foaming pretty good.
Anyone have any experience with Rougeon grapes?
They make a semi sweet wine with it, I want a dry and Andrew says it makes a good dry with some added tannin.
With a SG of 1.052, that gives a pot. alcohol of only 7%. Thinking of adding some sugar to get the alcohol up, but better do it soon.

 

[ckassotis]

Thanks for the info! So doing some quick math... 50 pounds of grapes will net you roughly 3.5 gallons do you think?

So I figure most people are buying by grape weight, just curious how that compares. So if I assume that, then it would roughly be 14.3 pounds of grapes per gallon of wine.

So that would put your price/lb at $0.42 for the chardonel and $0.56 for the rougeon. Seems to me that is quite a bit lower than I have seen for most grapes.

Checking the MGGA real quick, I see some chambourcin at $0.65/lb and some concord/cat at $0.55/lb. And that is all raw price, not getting your grapes crushed/pressed for that.

Might also be underestimating the juice amount, which would drop the price a bit from St. James. Sounds like a pretty solid deal, overall. Only downside is the volume. Really need some people to go in on it together!

 

[winemaker_3352]

The math looks right - but for Chardonel - i do 18#'s per gallon. The grapes i used to get were $.50 per pound - comes out to $9 per gallon.

We got the juice for $6 per gallon - do the opposite it figures out to be $.34 per #..


Much better deal that I have ever seen - and all the crushing/destemming/SO2 additions/cold soaking is all already done.

For $15 - he will supply a 55 gallon blue drum to transport the wine in..

We also get the juice off the first settling from the cold soak...

Luckily Doug was willing to go in with me - 55 gallons is a lot - I was going to attempt it - but then Doug said he was in.


Doug - I just have my chardonel fermenting at 58* - it does smell alot like green apples with some peach smell - I have added some french oak in - so i can smell a hint of that as well...

I definitely plan on going back to them next year...

 

[BobF]

Count me in when you go! Did they have Seyval? I've been wanting to try Seyval as a base for fruit.