Wineries uncork plans in Branson

Construction of a new winery in the Branson area is set to begin in November, while another is slated to open early next year.

Branson already is home to Stone Hill Winery, which draws about 450,000 visitors a year, according to company officials.

Joining the field is a $2 million Mount Pleasant Winery, under construction and set to uncork in February, and an $8 million Branson Ridge Winery, planning for an early 2009 unveiling.

Four years in the making

Branson Ridge Winery sits on 18 acres at 648 Sunrise Drive, north of Branson on the west frontage road to U.S. Highway 465/Ozark Mountain Highroad and U.S. Highway 65.

Jim Fleig, Branson Ridge Winery LLC’s CEO, and his son, Jacob Fleig, director of operations, are among the 38 partners who have privately invested in the Branson-based company. Jacob Fleig said his father, an Idaho real estate developer with a $650 million project portfolio, has owned the Branson site for about 15 years.

“It wasn’t until four years ago that we decided the winery was a fit for this area,” Jacob Fleig said.

The 35,000-square-foot complex comprises an 1890s-era stone barn for the wine museum and banquet hall, a 1918-era Americana barn and bistro, a 1930s-era specialty foods market, and a modern glass-and-steel-covered foyer for special events.

Fleig said the winery will dedicate six acres to an on-site vineyard. He said the soil is currently being sampled, and planting will begin in the spring. It normally takes two to five years to grow and harvest wine-quality grapes. The winery also will contract with other grape growers to meet production demands, he said.

Pleasant bottling

The 9,200-square-foot Mount Pleasant Winery, 3125 Green Mountain Drive, is a retail branch of the Augusta-based company, west of St. Louis. When announced in January, Mount Pleasant officials targeted an October opening. Now, they say it is scheduled to open Feb. 1, due to difficult excavation of rock on the site.

Ralph Schrader, Mount Pleasant’s director of operations, said customers will be able to bottle their own wine at the Branson winery, which will produce port wine but will not have on-site vineyards.

There are 72 wineries operating in Missouri according to Danene Beedle, marketing specialist for the Wine and Grape Board with the Missouri Department of Agriculture. A study by the Travel Industry Association in Washington, D.C., ranked Missouri third in a tie with Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Oregon in the Top 12 states for wine-related travel. Missouri received five percent of the responses, while New York was second with 10 percent, and California led with 31 percent of the votes.

The idea of Branson becoming a wine destination was met with mixed responses.

“We hope that it comes to be that. It would increase the tax revenue (in Branson),” Schrader said.

Added Branson Ridge’s Fleig, “You would increase the wine tourism down here if we had several more wineries. Then, we would become a wine destination.”

Thomas Held, an owner of Stone Hill Winery in Hermann, with wineries in Branson and New Florence, is more skeptical, even though his Branson winery is approaching half-a-million visitors a year.

“Do people come for wineries in Branson? No,” he said. “Will they visit wineries when they visit Branson? Yes. We’re one of many attractions in a tourist destination.”

Fleig said construction on Branson Ridge Winery is expected to be finished by November 2008, but the opening date to the public will be in March 2009, when the spring tourism season gears up.