tasteMAKERS

- [Announcer] "TasteMAKERS" is brought to you with support from Missouri Pork Association and Global Foods Market.

(bright music) (upbeat music) - Founded in 1855, the Adam Puchta Winery in Hermann, Missouri is the oldest continuously family-farmed winery in the nation.

Today, the Puchta family has been at the helm for seven generations.

(bright music) (lively music) I'm Cat Neville, and for the past two decades, I've been telling the story of local food.

In that time, American food culture has exploded in tiny towns and big cities from coast to coast.

In "TasteMAKERS," I explore the maker movement and take you along for the journey to meet the makers who define the flavor of American cuisine.

(bright music) Inspired by a wine dinner that we're going to attend later in this episode, we're gonna head back to my kitchen and I'm gonna show you how to make fondue.

(upbeat music) - We're sitting in the original Press House that was built in 1855 by my fourth great-grandpa, Adam Puchta, who founded it and started the winery here.

Our family immigrated from Germany in 1839.

The town of Hermann was a German settlement in the early 1800s, predominantly known for its growing of grapes.

- When the Germans started coming to the United States, they wound up in Hermann being very, very impressed with the area and the similarity and how it reminded them of the Rhineland in Germany.

When they saw all the hills around Hermann and the bluffs in Hermann and along the the Missouri River, they really felt that they could make that a wine producing area.

(bright music) - Commercial wine making began in Hermann, Missouri in the early 1800s, about 200 years ago.

And in fact, Missouri was one of the largest and most important wine making states in the entire country before prohibition.

(birds chirping) - When Missouri was in its heyday, we were the second largest wine-producing state in the country.

And then obviously, prohibition came along and everything stopped.

But the Adam Puchta Winery stayed in the family all those years.

- The winery was open from 1855 'til prohibition.

Prohibition was very tough in Hermann area.

Being a German settlement, they had ripped everything out, ripped all of our vineyards out, burnt a lot of things.

(somber music) Throughout all of those years from Adam onto Everett Puchta, they had a large farming operation that they did on top of the winery and the vineyards.

Restarting would've probably been a huge thing why Everett didn't wanna do that.

You know, there's that anxiety and frustration of what had happened.

And I think that kind of plagued the whole town because even now today, isn't at that successful size in the industry as it once was.

(lighthearted music) But it was something that as my dad grew up on the property visiting his grandpa, it was something that he was just passionate about.

And so my grandpa and my dad reopened the winery in 1990.

(gentle music) In the early 2000s was really when things kind of started expanding and exploding for us as well as others in the area.

I got to see a lot of stuff here.

I got to sit on the equipment at a very young age, get involved when the tanks were getting unloaded, putting vineyards in, taking care of vineyards.

So that was why I had this passion for the wine industry.

It was ingrained in me and I enjoyed working from a young age because for me, it wasn't necessarily work, it was just growing up on a farm.

It was a different farm than your traditional sense, but there was a lot of unique opportunities for me here.

(bright music) I'm very happy to be here in this town and live here in this town and also raise my son here.

I'm home and this is where I want to be.

And I think that's what a lot of people feel that live here, but also come here to visit.

(gentle music) - You never know what's gonna happen with the next generation.

Are they even interested in winery?

Parker showed more and more interest the older he got, maybe not unlike his father's idea of destiny.

And this is the legacy that the family has.

And when Timmy died, almost instantly, you could see Parker's life change and he was ready for it.

His older brother, Spencer, was certainly becoming more of a part of it and being a huge support there too.

German heritage, this is what we do.

(lighthearted music) - So your dad started this 1990 with his dad.

He helped create a sense of community around all the different wineries as the industry was kind of growing through the '90s and into the 2000s.

So I mean he really played an outsized role in the industry, not just bringing a single winery back - For sure.

It's something that dad was very passionate about, bringing people together, having a good time.

It was always around food and wine.

- Very, very involved with everything he could do as an individual to help the industry.

He made so many friendships 'cause he was willing to work with other wineries.

It wasn't just whatever benefited Adam Puchta Winery.

We all really leaned on his leadership.

People like that have devoted their whole life for years to increase quality of wine.

Timmy's the one that that was always there to really make it happen.

- The wine industry is about bringing people together.

It's about conviviality.

And I think that your dad really embodied that.

Cheers to your dad.

- Cheers.

(upbeat music) (birds chirping) This winery is 168 years old, but it is in no way stuck in the past.

Parker has a number of projects in the works, including putting in new vineyards.

- Recently, we've planted four and a half acres of Vidal, an acre of Verona, and then we have three more acres of Vignoles, and three acres of Avant going in in the next year or to two years.

- So on this side, we have netting.

On this side, we do not.

And the difference is pretty stark.

- Yes, we are in our Norton block.

This is what we use for our estate Norton.

So it's very special to us.

We have to save as much as we can.

So what we have over here is netted and that is to keep the birds out, the turkeys, and the deer.

Here on the right you can actually see the berries have already been picked through.

These have just went through veraison and they're already in here.

And then as well as all of these younger leaves here, the deer have been eating and they're clear up to here.

We put about 22,000 feet of bird netting out each year.

So it's very labor intensive.

- Yeah.

And your dad actually planted this in 1989.

- This is the original first vineyard that we had after the winery reopened in '89.

- [Cat] You're in the middle of a big expansion in your production facility.

You're creating a new crush pad area.

There's a new spot where you're gonna have the bottling line.

You're considering where you're going to be putting a new barrel room, and you're like engineering all of this yourself.

- Yeah, it's a learning experience.

- I'm sure.

- You learn what you should do and my biggest thing is we're trying to plan for the future so I don't have to reinvent the wheel later on.

Learning through different processes and experiences and learning what not to do is a huge part of growing grapes and really kind of working with other people in the industry and getting feedback.

Each one of us experience something new and something different because of being on different sites, different soils, and having other people in the industry that you can ask questions I think is huge.

- Parker may have grown up in these vineyards, but managing a vineyard is tricky business, especially here in this Midwest climate.

So the Grape and Wine Institute works with vintners across the state of Missouri to ensure that they are doing their best work.

(ambient music) - My role is to work with a lot of different growers throughout Missouri in the grape industry.

I spend a lot of time on the road out working with people going to their sites.

I think I've been to every corner of the state.

(bright music) The Adam Puchta Winery, it's the oldest family-named winery and vineyard location in the United States.

It's going back now to its seventh generation.

So it's very unique.

(bright music) They're at the exact location where they started.

And so you go to that particular vineyard site and you see the hills and the bluffs they're growing on, planting on the sloped areas.

It's really protecting those grape crops, having that cold air when it does come in in the springtime after those grapes have already taken, sprung forward where the new growth, it drains that cold air away from the grape plants protecting them.

It's a very unique site and location and a very unique family to have here in Missouri.

(gentle music) - I've known Dean probably over 15 years now.

He has been great to learn from.

We've been sending our staff to almost every single one of the workshops up at Mizzou.

The new enologist, Stefan, has been great.

So it's been a huge experience to learn from what others are doing because all boats rise with the tide.

(bright music) - I was visiting the Puchta winery and I was looking for some of the old established Norton that would've been planted by his first ancestor back then.

And actually, Parker pointed those out.

Now, those vines are actually located in the woods 'cause you can imagine over 155 years ago, trees have grown up in that original vineyard area, but some of the original vines are still present historically there on the site.

- So this kind of looks like a normal forest when you're walking like on the edge of the vineyard, but it's not.

This used to be a vineyard itself.

- Yeah, so if you notice here to our left, we have some, I guess we'd considered wild grapevines now.

But at one point in time, this would've all been a vineyard and this is the remains of what happened to it after prohibition when they came in and ripped these out.

So these are probably vines that were able to reestablish themselves.

We haven't ever noticed them fruiting, but the tops of the vines are all the way up in the treetop, so most likely the birds get to them pretty quick.

- [Cat] Yeah, I bet they do.

- We've talked to Dean actually a few times about possibly trying to do some DNA testing on them to see what varietals they are and then also try to maybe do some planting.

- [Cat] It's super cool.

And there are tons of them.

- There's a ton of them.

In some areas, they are in trees that are 70 foot taller, go all the way through there on the ground.

So it's pretty cool.

- The government thought they- - Ripped them out.

- Yeah, got rid of everything, but ha ha, the vineyards grew back.

(bright music) - Grape growing, it's a very risky business.

Grapes are very sensitive to the environment.

It's a very long process.

It's three years to get to producing grape and really it's the fifth year until you're in full production for that grape.

So you can imagine that grape growers have a lot of time and money before they're seeing any return on their investment.

You have to grow with your crop.

You have to be there for them.

So you have to be out in the vineyard, you have to be walking the rows, you have to be walking the border, and you have to know what they're doing all the time.

No different than a small child.

So there really is no downtime in the vineyard.

There's always something to do.

- It's very tough to grow here, but the reward when things do go your way is making an award-winning wine and then getting to share it with others and the joy that it brings them is why we do it.

(bright music) - One of Parker's favorite things is when food and wine intersect.

And so today, we are at a sold out farm to table dinner.

- Welcome.

Welcome to Adam Puchta Winery.

My name is Parker Puchta, I'm seventh generation president here at the winery.

I'm going to welcome you to our first farm to table dinner.

This was an idea put on by our chef Alex here.

(crowd applauding) This is to raise money for the local food pantry.

I hope you guys enjoy everything.

Let us know and thank you.

- On your tables right now is Vidal Blanc and we do have more wine in the wine tent if anybody needs any.

(bright music) - We have such a large variety of flavor options and taste in our wines to choose from.

The harder part is actually picking which ones to start with, but me and Parker collaborate really well in tasting the menu, tasting the items we're gonna make, checking to see which wines go well with what.

(ambient music) Then he lets the wines speak what they really wanna be.

Same as our farmers are doing.

And it's just about being able to deliver the absolute best food that we can.

(bouncy music) You get inspiration from everything.

The view of the vineyards, the smell of the flowers, the taste of the wines.

Just driving out here alone is inspiration with all the farms and everything else that you go through that kind of just add into the thoughts that go into creating the dishes we do here.

(lively music) It's a very relaxed atmosphere to be in and it's really about having fun and just providing a great experience, doing good food, having great wine, and having that communion with everyone else.

(bouncy music) - One of the very important things that we do here at the winery is use as much local products as we can.

And one of those is Hemme Brothers Cheese.

We've been using their products.

I couldn't even tell you how many years.

We love their stuff.

We've toured their facility, it's beautiful.

You know, raising the cattle, farming, and then producing amazing cheese.

And we really incorporate a lot of their products, whether it's in the sales room on our charcuterie boards, or I would say almost every dinner or a few wine trails a year has some type of their product in (bright music) - My family started dairy farming in 1996.

We kind of went into value added.

It seemed like a better idea than going out and milking 500 or a thousand cows.

Let's milk less cows and make better quality product for local people in Missouri.

So back in 2016, we started producing cheese and first thing we did was come to Hermann Missouri to start selling our cheese.

And Adam Puchta was one of the first ones to start carrying it.

(bright music) Now I don't get off the farm that much, so it was nice to come here and see everybody else enjoying atmosphere like this.

And we had good music playing.

We had the other farmers here I was able to build connections with.

Yeah, it's just a good time.

(upbeat music) - Why does it actually matter for a small family-owned winery to be partnering with farmers and makers like Hemme Brothers?

- I think for me and and for the businesses, we all need the community.

It's a community involvement thing.

We're also looking at it from a health perspective.

We know that farmers and especially local small community farmers, they really take pride in producing a higher quality product.

And so do we with our wine.

So having that relationship with those farmers and being able to showcase their product, I'd rather do that than some corporation or something that doesn't have the buy-in from the community.

So it all starts with your farmers.

It starts with your growers out in the vineyard or out in the fields that gives you that end product.

Why not make the best food that we can make?

Yeah, I mean we can mess it up in the kitchen or in the wine making, but we try not to.

- You wouldn't mess it up.

(Cat laughing) (lighthearted music) So much is driven by values that are not focused on family and connection and community and what you're building here.

It all rotates around the idea of continuing on the love of this place and this land and creating the product and creating the connections through what you're making.

- [Parker] When you get to create something and see the smile, it makes it all worth it.

(ambient music) - Thank you for having us.

- I appreciate it.

Cheers.

- Cheers to you.

(crowd applauding) - No, we really appreciate this.

I hope everybody enjoyed it.

It was great to raise some money for the Hermann Food Pantry.

I hope you guys met some new people and create that relationship 'cause that's what we do.

We like to eat food and drink wine and share in fun times.

So thank you guys for coming out.

Thank you.

(crowd applauding) (lighthearted music) Being the seventh generation, it's just kind of, it's a very unique, it doesn't happen hardly at all, ever.

I think by the third generation, they usually sell the business off or it doesn't survive.

And we've survived through a lot of things.

So it's always kind of been a part of me.

It's something that's very important to me for our family legacy, but also I wanna make a huge impact on the families of our employees and the people that come here.

And we have employees that have been here for 20 years, but then we also have their kids working for us now.

And I wanna start building the opportunities for them to have their own careers.

Whether they stay here or they go off to work somewhere else, I wanna help facilitate that and let them grow here with their families because I'm very proud of what Dad created and what we've been able to build.

But also without our people, we wouldn't be where we are now.

And I think it's a very unique opportunity for kids to see their parents saying, "Hey, they created this as well."

And so I just wanna be able to do that for the next generation.

(lighthearted music) (birds chirping) - So after chatting with the folks from Hemme Brothers, I knew that I had to figure out a recipe that would combine wine and cheese and of course, that is fondue.

So what I have here is I've already shredded up Gruyere, Emmentaler, and then also some sharp cheddar.

And I'm going to kind of coat this in a little bit of corn starch, and then I'm gonna head over to the stove.

(bouncy music) So the first step in making a traditional fondue is to reduce a couple of cups of wine.

And I've chosen a Chardonel, and this is a hybrid grape that grows really well across kind of the Midwest wine regions, including where I'm based here in Missouri.

And Chardonel, as the name implies, is a hybrid grape with Chardonnay as one of its parents.

So it has that same kind of a flavor and it's not too tart, which is really important because we're going to be reducing the wine.

And if it is too tart, it'll just enhance that acidity and that's not what you want for fondue.

So I have a couple of cups of wine here (upbeat music) and a couple of smashed garlic cloves.

Now, I'm gonna turn this on high, let it come to a boil, and then let it reduce.

The wine is reduced by half.

So I'm gonna go ahead and turn this down to low and take out the garlic.

Now, all you do is start adding in your cheese one handful at a time over low heat.

Let it melt in until it gets gorgeous and creamy.

(bright music) Now, I'm just gonna top this with some fresh nutmeg and a little bit of pepper.

Not everybody has a fondue set.

You can easily use a bowl as long as your hungry guest devour that cheese sauce right away.

Look at those strings.

I mean, I can't wait to get into this.

(Cat laughing) (upbeat music) And that's it.

I mean, it is such a simple recipe with very complex flavors and it makes a wonderful use of wine.

And obviously, really a fantastic array of cheeses.

Now, there are so many things that you can serve with fondue.

I've chosen broccoli, peppers, cornichon, but you can also do things like salami cubes and bread.

Roasted potatoes are a classic.

(gentle music) And I am pairing my fondue with the same wine that I use.

And again, this is a Chardonel.

Hmm, it is delicious.

(lighthearted music) So if you're looking for the recipe, all the details are on our website.

Thank you so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time.

(bright music) (ambient music) Connect with us online at wearetastemakers.com or through social media on these handles.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] "TasteMAKERS" is brought to you with support from Missouri Pork Association and Global Foods Market.

(ambient music) (playful music)