Hermann Visitors Guide

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Page 32 - Fall Edition, 2015 - Hermann Area Visitor
The Hermann Wine Trail offers
quaint stops along Missouri River
The Hermann Wine Trail is made up of seven
wineries in and around the historic German com-
munity of Hermann. The trail meanders 20 miles
along the Missouri River from Hermann to New
Haven. It accounts for about a third of the state’s
total production. Their story is rooted in a fasci-
nating chapter of America’s winemaking history.
In 1837 a band of German settlers from
Philadelphia arrived at the site of their new colo-
ny, later to be called Hermann, expecting a land
of milk and honey. Instead, they stepped off the
last steamboat of the season into a howling wil-
derness. Inspired by the tangles of wild vines that
covered the craggy hillsides, the resourceful
Germans planted grapes and began making wine.
Town fathers nurtured the infant wine indus-
try by selling "grape lots," vacant city lots a set-
tler could buy or $50, interest free, over a five-
year period. The only condition was that the lot
had to be planted in grapes.
A total of 600 grape lots eventually were sold-
the entire town was growing grapes, building
wine cellars and making wine. Home wine cellars
were common, and wine halls were a favorite
Sunday gathering place where families socialized
after church.
The quality of the wines improved dramatical-
ly in the 1840s, thanks to the introduction of the
first cultivated grape varieties--Isabella, Virginia
Seedling, Catawba and Delaware--and the work
of George Husmann, a self-taught scientiest
whose father had purchased a Hermann lot while
the family was still living in Germany. Husmann
studied soil types and crossed wild and cultivated
grapes to create hybrids that could tolerate
Missouri's hot, humid summers and freezing win-
ters. Some of his vines still thrive today at
OakGlenn Winery in Hermann.
Husmann's research proved invaluable in the
1860s when the vineyards of southern France
were devastated by phylloxera, a bug blight
spread by aphids.
Missouri grape growers shipped 17 carloads of
phylloxera-resistant root stock to France. In com-
memoration of the event, two statutes were
erected in Monpellier, France. One depicts a
young woman cradling an old woman in her
arms-the New World saving the Old World.
Husmann, who was recognized by the French
government, later moved from Hermann to
California, where he became a founding father of
the Napa Valley wine industry.
Hermann held its first Weinfest in the fall of
1848, a tradition that continues in today's
Octoberfest celebrations.
Comfy Landing Guest House
230 E. 8th Street ~ Hermann
4 blocks fromHermann’s Historic Downtown
Sleeps 8-10 comfortably
Check us out on Facebook or at to
view pictures, rates, and to book now.
Call:
636-221-4256 - Monica
636-667-5485 - Kurt
or e-mail:
One night stay available per owners descrection