Ridge Norton
Dry red · hill three
Missouri’s own grape off our oldest vines. Dark, dry, built for brisket.
$22 · tasting pourChapter one · The family
Seven hills, one table.
Two growing regions touch on this ridge — the hill soil of one, the river air of the other. That seam is the whole story of the place.
Emil and Rose Doerhoff bought this ground in 1954 because it was too steep to row-crop and nobody else wanted it. He planted apples on the first hill and peaches on the second, and when the frost took the peaches every third year, Rose said “plant something with deeper roots.” So the third hill went to grapes — Norton and Chambourcin, vines that like a hard ridge. Their son Walt built the tasting room out of the old packing shed. Now it’s us: Marie runs the barn and the front porch, Dan runs the orchard and the press, and our kids are the ones waving your car up the hill on Saturday mornings.
We sit where two American Viticultural Areas touch and at the north edge of Missouri peach country — why the same farm can give you a dry red with some backbone and a peach so ripe you eat it leaning forward. Sixteen towns’ worth of families make the drive every fall. Most of them have been coming longer than we’ve been running it.
“The hills decide the vintage. We just keep the gate open.”
— Marie Doerhoff, third generation
0Acres in fruit & vine
0Vintages in the cellar
0+Weddings in the barn
0Towns that pick here
