St. Vincent: Missouri’s Mystery Grape
The French-American hybrid grape St. Vincent is an orphan. Or at least, that is how it is perceived to be.
Lois and Bob Mueller, founders of Robbler Winery
Unlike most other hybrid grape varietals found in Missouri, St. Vincent’s parentage is largely unknown. Winemaker Jerry Mueller at Robbler Vineyard and Winery says there are some who believe it comes from a spontaneous and natural hybridization of Chambourcin (a French-American hybrid) and Pinot Noir. However, there is little research to support this claim, which furthers the mystery of how the St. Vincent grape came into being.
Others say it comes from cross breeding of vinifera grapes at the Missouri State University Fruit Experimentation Station in Mountain Grove. (There is also a grape called “Vincent,” which is different from St. Vincent.)
Although the parentage is still unknown, Scott Toedesbusch of Mount Pleasant Winery in Augusta, Mo. was the first to discover St. Vincent in 1973, according to Iowa State University. St. Vincent grapes are most likely named after the Catholic Patron Saint of the Zaragoza province in Spain, Vincent of Saragossa, also known as the Patron Saint of Wine Makers.
Today, St. Vincent grapes have spread from Missouri to other states such as Iowa and Ohio. Even so, St. Vincent is still relatively unknown to the public and few wineries grow this varietal. In Missouri, a handful of wineries including Robller in New Haven, Mount Pleasant in Augusta and Les Bourgeois use St. Vincent, mostly to blend with other wine grapes.
‘It makes great wine, it grows well, it’s easy to get started and it produces,” says Mueller, whose winery currently grows nearly three acres of St.Vincent. ‘It’s surprising to me that there isn’t more of it produced.”
The St. Vincent grape might be named after Saint Vincent of Saragossa (above) but is not related to the singer St. Vincent (below)
As a stand alone varietal, St. Vincent is usually used to make dryer red wines similar to an Italian Chianti or Rossese style, although it has been used in blends for sweeter wines as well. St. Vincent is not heavily tannic.
St. Vincent grapes can also be used in Rosés and sparkling wines. The intensity of the wine’s red color varies from bright red to brick red and often has undertones of cherry, smoked nut or oak.
Les Bourgeois tasting room manager Marilyn Ellsasser says that St. Vincent grapes are used to make their Fleur du Vin, which also incorporates Norton and Chambourcin grapes. At 2.2% residual sugar, Fleur du Vin is a ruby-colored wine with a floral aroma and a complex flavor. Other wines in Missouri that contain St. Vincent grapes include Stone Hill’s Steinberg Red in Hermann and New Oak Vineyards’ St. Vincent in Wellington.
At Robller, St. Vincent grapes are used in two wines; St. Vincent Rosé and Le Tromp Noir, which is a blend. The Rosé, Mueller says, is bone dry in a style that is more common with blush wines in Provence France. Robller makes St. Vincent Rosé with a strong strawberry and cranberry flavor profile and a lighter to medium body. Production is approximately 350 gallons this year.
‘Our Rose has the ability to present itself with really world-class characteristics that aren’t necessarily typical of what you would think,” Mueller says. ‘You wouldn’t necessarily try it and say, hey, ‘this came from Missouri.'”
St. Vincent grapes are normally harvested in October. According to Missouri State, it has a moderate to high degree of winter hardiness, grows vigorously upright and is only mildly susceptible to rot, phylloxera and other pests.
Mueller, who plans on planting more St. Vincent grapes in the future, says it’s a relatively easy and stable vine to grow. Cluster thinning and leaf pulling is important to get the grapes to a proper level of ripeness, he says. When St. Vincent is ready for harvest, the berries are at the point where they will nearly fall off, Mueller says.
The length of time it takes to ferment St. Vincent grapes varies from winery to winery, but it takes at least 30 days in stainless steel at Robbler. Mueller says that they have a more delicate approach to making their Rosé and, as with all of their wines, aim for a light and fruity character. After harvest, Mueller cools the grapes briefly, then gently presses them. For the Rosé, very little skin contact is key because only a small amount of coloring is desirable.
‘It’s one of my favorite wines, and it’s one that I always look forward to making because it’s challenging to get it just right,” Mueller says.
Mueller comes from a long line of winemakers, all the way back to his great-grandfather. Mueller himself has been making wine since he was 14. His father, Robert, first made wine in 1965, with the help of his grandfather. Robert bought the property in 1987 and officially opened Robller’s door in the spring of 1991 on his 34th wedding anniversary. Robller started to grow St. Vincent grapes around 1993 or 1994 from cuttings they received from southwestern Missouri.
Both of Robller’s St. Vincent wines are popular, especially the Rosé. Because it’s made more like European Rosés and is different than what many American wineries produce, customers are attracted to the St. Vincent Rosé, Mueller says.
In addition, St. Vincent wines are scarce in Missouri, which helps Robller to sell out of the Rosé relatively quickly.
‘Customers like what we’re doing with it,” Mueller says. ‘It makes a very easy-to-drink kind of wine. I think it has a broad acceptance.”
Mueller calls the St. Vincent Rosé the ‘cranberry salad of wine,” which goes especially well with holiday meals such as Thanksgiving. With enough character to stand up to foods that contain butter and dark meat, it’s a nice contrast to the savory elements in holiday meals. Mueller says it has good depth and is a versatile wine that has the qualities consumers want in food and wine pairings without being ‘thin and wimpy.”
Although St. Vincent grapes are popular with a small fan club, it lives in the shadow of other Missouri hybrid powerhouses such as Vignoles, Vidal Blanc and Traminette. Because very little research has been done on the varietal, not much is known about the best growing practices or technical St. Vincent winemaking considerations.
But whether or not St. Vincent’s reputation grows in the future, it will always have a loyal fan in the form of Mueller.
‘Most people think it’s a generic grape; I find that it has tremendous qualities if you grow it right and handle it right,” Mueller says. ‘It’s one of those that I think if people really would go after it, it would compete really well.”
Mary Elgin is currently a senior at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is majoring in arts and culture magazine journalism. Throughout her college career, she has had works published by ALIVE Magazine, Columbia Missourian and Vox Magazine. Mary lives in St. Louis, Mo.
RESOURCES
http://viticulture.hort.iastate.edu/cultivars/St.%20Vincent.pdf
http://www.ehow.com/list_7475012_missouri-wine-grape-varieties.html
http://winemakermag.com/867-planning-the-right-red-backyard-vines
http://www.feaststl.com/drink/features/article_41ad45be-8e41-11e1-aef1-0019bb30f31a.html
http://www.doubleavineyards.com/p-796-st-vincent.aspx
http://mtngrv.missouristate.edu/assets/publications/MS29grapeguide.pd
http://bordeaux-undiscovered.co.uk/blog/2008/02/the-patron-saints-of-wine/
We grow St. Vincent in Michigan and have recently been making a rose’ from it – our Pink Satin. My father originally bought the vines from Boordy Vineyards in Maryland back in the early 1990’s. He never was able to go back & get any information on St. Vincent’s parentage either. It’s a mystery!
We too grow St. Vincent grapes and have found them to be easy to manage and they do well in our climate in the New Bloomfield area.
St. Vincent seems to do best made in to a Port style wine in Central Ohio. Willow Hill (now closed) made port from it for years and it has been continued by Signature Wines. An amateur of portuguese background started many making it from my St. Vincent. If I don’t sell mine (not much left as I took most out) I use it as a blending grape as it adds some nice color. Has pretty high acid levels, higher than Chambourcin always.
I spoke with your Australian reporter, (sorry can’t remember his name, but very much enjoyed speaking with him) and bud/freeze damage is worse than I had previously believed(My glass is always 1/2 full). My St. Vincent seemed to winter much better than most varieties. The Norton was unfazed, with the Cornell hybrids taking the biggest hit. With 17 seasons under my belt, I have mixed feeling on St. Vincent. I like its late ripening, but if you try to let the acid drop out and get the brix over 20, the grapes all end up on the ground as you try to pick them. It may be ideal for machine harvesting, but is the worst “hand-harvester” I got.
St. Vincent first came to the attention of Scott Toedebusch in 1973 who was managing a vineyard owned by Lucian W. Dressel that lay west of Schell Road in Augusta, Missouri. The remarkable size and health of the vine, and the fact that there was only a single vine in the vineyard, first brought it to our attention and led us to propagate the vine further and make wine from it.
At first we thought that this unique vine might have come to us in a collection of vines that we had purchased from Philip Wagner at the Boordy Nursery from whom we had purchased all of our French Hybrid grapevines. We sent cutting of the vine to Wagner who propagated them, grew grapes and made wine from them. Wagner said that the vine did not come from his collection, he had never seen it before, and that it was a unique vine. At the time we were calling the vine ‘Stomboli” because the leaves turned a bright red in the fall, and the vines had volcanic production. Wagner suggested that a more melodious name would be ‘St. Vincent” and that that name would reflect the fact that the wine had a resemblance to Pinot Noir. We concurred and thereafter call the vine ‘St. Vincent.” (See Exhibit E — 1)
After eight years the mother vine began to show signs of decline and eventually died. We had two plant experts from the Missouri Fruit Experimental Station (James Moore and Larry Locshin) come to Augusta to look at the vine. They suggested that we dig up the entire vine and that they take it back to the fruit station at Mountain Grove, Missouri for examination. Brian Kampmann and Scott Toedebusch tried to dig the entire plant out of the ground, but found that the plant had virtually no lateral roots. After digging down below 24 inches it was obvious that the plant was growing from a tap root and was not a rooted cutting that was planted by us but rather a plant that had come up from a seed and had a tap root as only a plant which had come up from seed could have done.
The spot where St. Vincent was growing was 100 feet from where we had once had a row of Pinot Noir. The strong Pinot Noir character of the wine suggested that one parent of St. Vincent was Pinot Noir. However, St. Vincent also had some very definite features found only in French Hybrids. The only French Hybrid growing next to the Pinot Noir that could be involved in cross pollenization was Chambourcin. If DNA analysis of St. Vincent is done in the future we would suspect that it would reveal this parentage.
The original pollinator was obviously a bird. Every year the robins ate the entire Pinot Noir crop from the 50 vines we once had. Fortunately, one of them had re-deposited one of the seeds while sitting on a blank section of wire 100 feet up the line. In those days we used no herbicides and tied up every thing resembling a grape vine that came out of the ground. What began as a chance seedling has now become a commercially important grape in many parts of the United States.