A Letter From the Riley’s

Letter from the Riley’s

Greetings to our Shamrock Hills Friends and Family,

I apologize for not getting the May newsletter out so I’m combining it with June’s newsletter.  Mike and I enjoyed our friends at the Willow Springs Mercantile and Itchin’ to Go Travel along with a few other Excelsior Springs area/Liberty/KC friends on a Riverboat Cruise on the Rhine River through AmaWaterways.  39 in total on a ship of 149 guests.  What an adventure we had.  We started in Amsterdam and was supposed to end up in Basil, however, due to high waters from flooding on the Rhine—we had to do a switcheroo with a sister boat that was doing Basil to Amsterdam ½ way through the cruise.  So the last half we were docked in Strasbourg, FR along with at least a dozen other boats in the same predicament as us.  The government closed the River.  However, we still got to do the Rhine Gorge cruise and see all the cities on our itinerary and we still had an amazing trip.  However, this letter isn’t about our trip.  It’s about the winery.

We have been busy at the winery this spring.  Mike and crew have planted 250 new vines (given my brown thumb, I’m not allowed to plant)—we planted 50 Cordot Noir, a grape we discovered when we were in Indiana and are experimenting to see how well it would grow here and 200 Vidal Blanc plants.  We also lost some of our initial plants from last spring’s planting, so we are planting replacement plants.  We have hired Matthew Vincent to join our vineyard team.  He has previously worked at the Jowler Creek Vineyard and Amigoni winery and are excited to have him join our team.  He was a huge help with getting vineyard tasks and maintenance done while we were gone.

We have also contracted with an independent Drone Sprayer service to spray our vineyards for us vs. spending hours upon hours between our vineyard, the church vineyard, the Stubbs farm, and the Bowman’s farm spraying by hand.  This method is more precise and uses less chemicals and takes less time.  We hope more of our fellow vineyards will start using this service, because in the long run it’s better for the environment because it uses less chemicals and it’s more time efficient once you get the GPS coordinates set up.  

We had a fabulous first release party and was glad to welcome all of the new wine club members in to listen to music, enjoy appetizers, and sample the first wines in their club shipment.  We closed the winery to the public and everyone had a good time!  We are limiting our club to 50 people to begin with and right now we are at 32 members between Chloe’s Club and Finnigan’s Finest.  Our next release party will be this fall.  We have a couple of more wines ready to bottle once we get back from across the pond.

Speaking of upcoming events—we are excited to enter a few of our recently released wines in the Missouri Governor’s Cup competition this July.  Mike is a perfectionist and I love the passion he’s taken into making these wines.  He has definitely embraced the art of wine making.  We are also going to be representing Missouri Wines at the City Market at the River Market on July 6^th.  So if you’re in the area stop by and see Mike and I and sample some of our Shamrock Hills Wines!  We will have Shamrock Hills wines available for purchase as well.  Finally, the end of July, we will be the wine host at the Willow Springs Mercantile’s monthly wine pairing dinner they hold at the end of each month.   A lot is going on and not enough hours in a day sometimes but we are enjoying it all!  To check out our local winery events, visit our website at www.shamrockhillsvineyard.com/events.  We keep at least 2 months of events out there at one time.  

Summer is upon us!  We can’t wait for you to come and visit us.  Bring your family, your friends, and join us for a day of fellowship, wine, and fun.

Cheers!

Denise and Mike