Episode 20: Kansas - a podcast by The Wine Monk

Welcome, my friends, to episode 20 of the Make America Grape Again Podcast, which will center around Kansas.  Our wine today is the 2015 Panape Rosé, from BlueJacket Crossing Winery, located in Eudora, Kansas.

This is a wine made from 100% estate grown St. Vincent grapes from their vineyard on site.  St. Vincent was discovered in 1973 in a vineyard in Missouri, growing about 100 feet from where there once had been a row of Pinot Noir. At the time, Chambourcin vines had been growing next to the Pinot Noir. The official parentage of St. Vincent has yet to be established, but it is suspected that this grape is a cross between these two varietals. It was initially named "Stomboli," due to this varietal's bright red leaves in the fall and that it was explosively vigorous, but the name was changed to honor the patron saint of the Cote d'Or in Burgundy, St. Vincent of Saragossa.

The fascinating viticultural history and mysterious origins of St. Vincent aside, Kansas provides our main introduction to the major blight across the history of American wine: Prohibition.  Lasting from 1920 to 1933 in America as a whole, Kansas was among the first states to experiment with this trend, due to its location at the center of the growing movement.  This movement nearly killed the industry in the United States as a whole, and many states have not fully recovered as of yet--or are only recently coming out of its shadow.  Today, Kansas has 23 vineyards, totaling about 250 Acres, which is a far cry from the thousands of acres reportedly under vine in 1901, when a work called "The Grape in Kansas" was written by William Barnes.

This bottle was acquired from the winery directly by my friend Tiffany Poth, the Wine Hippie, who also appears in this episode.  Enjoy!

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