Jowler Creek Vineyard & Winery

December 16, 2011 Colleen Gerke owner & vintner of Jowler Creek vineyards will be at the store signing bottles at Ensminger Retail Liquor Store

Great Holiday gifts! She will personalize them!! Great wines, local sustainable farming. Fun interesting lady who grew up in California wine country.

913.469.9006



Jowler Creek Vineyard & Winery
16905 Jowler Creek Road
Platte City
816-858-5528
www.jowlercreek.com
Tasting room hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday
It’s not unusual for regional wineries to be launched by amateur winemakers, but it usually doesn’t work out as well as it has for Jason and Colleen Gerke. The path from wine lovers to amateur winemakers to successful winery owners would seem torturous for most, but for the Gerkes it seems like fate, even if they still carry a sense of amazed joy that it’s working out so well.
“I grew up in the central coast of California,” Colleen Gerke says, “and everything around me was vines. I went to Cal Poly, majoring in agriculture, and I had to choose either chemistry or winemaking for my major.
“Well,” she says, giggling at the ease of the decision, “free wine?”
So she chose winemaking, though she admits that she never really thought about using her degree. She and Jason met in college and started to date. After they married, they moved to Kansas City.
Jason Gerke had grown up on a farm in central Missouri. So when they settled into their little house in Waldo and started making wine out of the basement, it was natural that they eventually thought about finding a more suitable place.
“Both of us grew up in rural areas,” she says, “and we wanted to get back to farming some land. We found our piece of property in Platte County, and we thought grapes would look really pretty there.”
They planted grapes around their new house, but after they did more research, “we realized that it was not the best place for our grapes right along the driveway!”
They continued to plant, focusing on Missouri’s official state grape, Norton, “just as a hobby,” she says, “but we kinda got bit by it. We planted two acres our second year, still thinking we would sell everything (all the grapes), but then we realized that we already make our own wine and we like drinking wine. So why are we going to sell our grapes to somebody else?”
Before long, people started knocking on the door in search of their wine. “We ended up putting a little tasting bar down in our basement,” she says.
They planted more and more vines: more Norton, and then Vignoles and then Traminette and Cabernet Franc, and they’ve outgrown their basement.
In fact, their tasting room and winery is a far cry from those basement days; it’s a lovely spot, and the wines have quickly earned an excellent reputation among the ranks of area wineries.
Their Norton is robust and substantial, and their Chambourcin is living proof that this red raspberry-tinged grape has a bright future both in this area and for Jowler Creek. Their Vignoles has the richness and complexity of that grape, in a sweeter iteration, and their Traminette is intensely floral, as befits a grape with parents that include that wonderfully aromatic grape, Gewurztraminer.

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