Paris tradition on display at winery’s grape stomp
PARIS — The traditions continued as usual at the 33rd wine fest and grape stomp at Cowie Wine Cellars on Saturday, but for founder Bob Cowie, this year’s event wasn’t quite the same.
Cowie said the past year has been a tough one. In June, he lost his wife of 50 years, Bette. Her death, as well as the long hours needed to harvest the grapes and put up the wine, have taken their toll.
Next year, though, Cowie said he plans to bounce back and combine the winery’s three annual events — the amateur wine contest, museum day, and the wine fest and grape stomp — into one event that he thinks will generate more of a turnout.
On Saturday, about 100 people showed up at the winery west of Paris to watch Kristi Pfeiffer take the first turn stomping the grapes, just as she has every year for the past 33. The Rev. Don Gregory Pilcher, a Benedictine monk, blessed the wine in another festival tradition.
Cowie said Pfeiffer first began stomping the grapes when she was a little girl.
“Now, she’s a grandma,” he said.
Cowie said the festival used to be a bigger affair, drawing as many as 3,000 people. The Cowie winery even held grape stomps on the steps of the Arkansas Capitol in Little Rock, he said.
Linda Hixson, executive
director of the Paris Chamber of Commerce, said the grape stomp is a local tradition and fun to watch, especially for people who have an interest in wine or who haven’t experienced a grape stomp.
“It’s not a big festival,” she said. “It’s more of a celebration of the end of the growing season.”
The grape stomp is just for fun and not part of the wine-making process, Cowie said. He said the winery uses a machine to crush the grapes.
The Cowie winery, which opened in 1955, is a small operation, Cowie said, making about 6,000 gallons of wine each year.
The Cowie Wine Cellars complex includes a chapel that houses part of Cowie’s large bell collection, a bed and breakfast, and a wine museum system, with a second location in Hot Springs that is dedicated to preserving the state’s wine history.
The Arkansas River Valley is a good area for growing grapes and making wine, thanks to the sandy soil and the Ozark Mountains acting as a buffer against the cold north winds, Cowie said.
The hilly country also makes for good conditions for growing grapes, Franklin County agriculture extension agent Michael Sullivan said. The hillsides and hilltops keep the grapevines welldrained and make them less susceptible to frost.
Immigrants from places such as Italy and Switzerland recognized those favorable conditions and took up wine making in Arkansas. Those immigrants also took advantage of the native muscadine grape, Sullivan said. They cultivated the grape, which is hardy and disease-resistant, and made it into a wine that is popular in the South and Southeast United States.
The area’s best-known wineries are Post Winery and Wiederkehr Wine Cellars and Vineyard, which opened in the 1870s and 1880s in Franklin County’s Altus area.
However, wine making in Arkansas is not limited to Cowie, Post and Wiederkehr. Cowie said 152 wineries have come and gone since the end of Prohibition, concentrating mainly in Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas River Valley, and even as far away as Smackover.
Among the wineries open today are older ones such as Tontitown Winery, which opened in the 1920s, and Mount Bethel Winery in Morrilton, which opened in 1956. Others have opened in recent years: Chateau Aux Arc at Altus in 2001, Keels Creek Winery in Eureka Springs in 2006, Raimondo Family Winery at Lake Norfork in 2008 and Movie House Winery in Morrilton in 2011.