On Saturday there was an annual wine tasting event just around the corner from my house. Let’s Wine About Winter, organized by
Liberty Square sunshine on the day of "Let's Wine About Winter"
Historic Downtown Liberty Inc., involved the shops on the pretty Liberty square (site of the first daylight bank robberyin US history, thought to have been performed by the Jesse James gang) providing a selection of free wine on a sort of round the square wine crawl. You bought a wine glass for $10 and then strolled around on a gorgeous sunny spring like winter’s day, popping in and out of the shops, tasting wines. Each participating shop chose its wine and the great thing about their selections was that about half of them were local Missouri wines. This surprised me given that you might expect high-end clothes boutiques, antiques and nick nack stores to favor high-end Californian or French stuff – but not on Liberty Square!
Cathie Meyer, owner of "Quotations" boutique, and to her right, Amigoni Winery's Cabernet-Franc
While the restaurants in Kansas City might generally be neglecting their local wineries, the Liberty shop owners proudly poured wines from Jowler Creek Vineyard, Amigoni Urban Winery, Westphalia Vineyards and Crown Valley Winery. It was a popular event – there we dozens of people out. In fact, since moving to Liberty in November, I haven’t seen so many people on the old downtown square. It was a great way for the locals to explore the shops and for the owners to get to know their potential customers over a vino.
Heather Chaney and Anna Wright with Jowler Creek wines in their "Catfish & Tater" boutique
Liberty square's "Let's Wine About Winter"
Daphne Bowman from "Willow Spring Mercantile", that specialises in Missouri wines, pours for two wine tasters in "The Polished Edge" jeweller
In the foreground, Vicky Burnett considers her next wine stop after sampling some Spanish vino in "Crepes on the Square", as owner Neil Battrum serves wine tasters
A nice comment from Vicki Vance, Executive Director of Historic Downtown Liberty, Inc – Thanks Vicki and yes to next year’s committee :
Thanks for the attention in your blog, Danny. We actually had about 260 wine glasses purchased – which we felt was a great turnout. It will be an annual event (Saturday of President’s Day weekend) so we hope to see you back in 2013! If you have an iPhone, go to the appstore and download the free Liberty app to stay up to date on all we have going on downtown. You can also get our monthly events calendar off the website. Would you like to be on the Let’s Wine About Winter committee next year? We can never have too many volunteers!
Thanks, again, for sharing you blog. I will pass it on.
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