Les Bourgeois Winery - Power Partners - October 19, 2011

I am still playing "catch up" with our postings. This one is another outing with our retirement club, Power Partners back in October. It was a chilly, cloudy, and windy day but most of our activities were indoors at the Les Bourgeois winery near Rocheport, MO.

The winery is owned and operated by second generation Bourgeois family members. Wine making started as a hobby back in 1974 but has grown to a fairly large business. As a matter of fact, Les Bourgeois is now the third largest winery in Missouri. They have moved from the kitchen table to some very modern facilities with production reaching nearly 100,000 gallons each year. The winery is located about half way between Kansas City and St Louis just off I-70. Edel and Sigrid are ready to do some wine tasting.

The last of the grapes for 2011 are at the front door of the tasting room.

Their wines have done well in competition.

The names of the wines indicate that the winery doesn't take itself too seriously despite the fact that they have received excellent reviews.

One of the family members gave us a wonderful and fact filled tour. It was clear that what was once a hobby has turned into a serious business and the family has done its homework and invested carefully to produce high quality wines.

The processing area is all new and very clean. You can see some of the fermenting tanks along the wall. Maintaining a precise temperature during fermenting is of utmost importance and they have high tech equipment to do the control.

De-skinning and pressing equipment are located at this end of the building.

Grapes ready to go.

This area has the bottling equipment and stocking/shipping operations.

Filling and corking machines.

The barrel room is used for aging certain wines in oak barrels before bottling....not much spare space here.

The family also operates a restaurant near the winery. Many in our group joined us there for lunch.

The restaurant sits high on a bluff and has a beautiful view of the Missouri River. One of the family members is an architect so they designed their own building. It was very warm inside and the food was great. They have a chef in the kitchen.....not just a cook.

After lunch, we went out to get a better view of the river.

The leaves were just starting to turn color.

You can see why the restaurant has such a nice view from the dining room.

Some of the family's grape vines.

A nice way to spend a cold and cloudy day.

Missouri River Towns - February 2011

We finally had good enough weather and free time in our schedule to get out and roam around. We had threatened to tour some of the small Missouri River towns last year and last Saturday, we made good on the threat. We drove nearly 300 miles during our tour in a big loop that started with Booneville and ended in Rocheport. The trip was a great cure for our "cabin fever".

As I said, we started in Boonville which is just north of I-70 and about 90 miles from home. Boonville is the county seat for Cooper County and has a population of about 9,000. One of the landmark buildings in Boonville, is the Hotel Frederick.

Across the street from the hotel and overlooking the river, is the War Memorial monument.

The Australian's don't have anything on the Boonviller's as far as building wall murals go.

It has been a long time since you could buy a Coke for 5 cents.

Most of the downtown buildings have been nicely restored.

Pretty fancy awning.

The Zuzak Building is the local art gallery. A number of local and national artists have their works for sale here. I was impressed by the quality of the art.

It was too early in the morning to enjoy the Lucky Lady.

We did have lunch at the Stein House.

We were the first customers for lunch so we got to talk to the waitress for a while about the town. She was very friendly and even offered to make phone calls for us to see which of the attractions were open on Saturday. I had the Colossal Burger Special and it was great! It wasn't just a hamburger. It was an Angus burger stuffed with cheeses and spices and it came with hand cut fries and coleslaw. Sigrid had an equally good Reuben sandwich. We got lucky with our food again.

Sigrid had to take this photo because we were so happy with the spring-like weather.

A beautiful church that traces it's roots back to 1821.

The local theatre. We will have to go back and catch one of the shows.

No relation as far as I know.

The jeep was parked outside a small museum.

Lots of nice old buildings well preserved.

The Cooper County Courthouse.

The lobby of the Frederick Hotel. Sigrid was scouting the Cafe for a future girls day out trip.

Missouri River bridge with a liftable middle section to allow boats to pass under the railroad tracks on the bridge.

The old rail depot building. The MKT (Katy - Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad) went threw town years ago when it was still in business. The old right-of-way has been turned into a hiking-biking trail over 200 miles long. The Chamber of Commerce now occupies the depot.

We got a little out in the "boonies" (now it occurs to me what the origin of this term is) on a dirt road looking for the Boonslick State Park and historical site. We found that it was closed for winter, but got lucky with this fun photo.

We passed through what was left of old Franklin, the city that the first trip down the Santa Fe Trail originated from. Floods on the Missouri River destroyed the town and all the residents moved up the bluffs to New Franklin. Our next stop was Glasgow.....another city with great old buildings that have been restored to serve tourism and new local business'. Close to 1,200 people call Glasgow home.

German's always have to have coffee and dessert about 3:00pm each day, so we stopped in at the bakery.

My cinnamon roll looked and tasted fantastic.

Sigrid will now be able to continue the trip.

We went through a number of smaller towns after Glasgow. I had high hopes for Steinmetz, but we must have blinked when we passed through. We did stop in Fayette, the Howard County seat. About 2,700 live in Fayette. The court house is below.

Somehow, I managed to get the Missouri River photos that Sigrid took in Glasgow sandwiched between the Fayette town photos. It is late and too much work to move them around. The river has a different look in winter. Sigrid took some very nice photos and captured the beauty and power of the river.

Now we are back in the town square in Fayette, MO.

This tire cover says it all about our winter adventure on the Missouri River.