St. Louis delivers a double surprise: A benign August and a classy winery

Thanks to the magic of digital communications, I'm working from St. Louis for six weeks while helping my Mom with some health issues. No one with any knowledge of this city, and certainly no one who spent her formative years here, would choose to visit St. Louis in August unless compelled by circumstances beyond her control. It is usually a hellish steam bath of heat, high humidity, relentless sun and little breeze.

It lived up to expectations the first few days. Fully acclimatised to England, I struggled to walk the dogs around the block. The air seemed almost too thick to breathe, the temperature draining. I stayed beneath the shelter of the trees, seeking any shade I could find. The view of forest out the back of my childhood home remains lush and green, but it was too hot to sit on the deck. Sticky and uncomfortable, even at night, when the mosquitos and flies attacking your exposed skin and the crickets and locusts sending there unnerving chorus from the trees are the only things that seem to have enough energy to move.

And then, thank God, rain. Serious rain of the type I've only ever seen in the midwest. Continuous, unrelenting streams lashing down for hours with the pressure of a garden hose on full bore. Lightening flashing and thunder rumbling continuously, all night long. Nature in all her fury rolling through the great plains, rivers and valleys of the heartland, consolidating all that nasty humidity into nourishment for the cornfields below.

And then: magic. In a once-in-my-lifetime event, the humidity hasn't come back. It's sunny and pleasant. High 60s and low 70s at night, low to mid-80s during the day. Which means you can actually enjoy what a lovely place this is, rather than cowering in dark, air-conditioned rooms waiting for the heat to break in late September.

I've been taking advantage of this miracle by getting outside a lot once I finish my workday. (Which is quite an early day to get maximum cross-over with the UK.) I'm taking lots of long walks around the sprawling subdivision in which my parents became the seventh homeowners 35 years ago; now there are hundreds of homes all aging nicely along streets shaded by mature oaks. I have my quick, one-mile and three-mile routes down, none of which seems to have the slightest impact on the energy levels of my mother's new cavalier King Charles puppy, Datchet. (My own beloved Darcy has never had this kind of oomph.)

Pleasant evenings meant we could enjoy one of the areas many free outdoor concerts in municipal parks. We headed to our local option, Chesterfield's Faust Park, for a rousing evening with a band called "Cornet Chop Suey" whose full brass section delivered a toe-tapping range of old fashioned jazz and big band music rich with the traditions of New Orleans, Memphis and St. Louis. A perfect night, except for the accidental run-in between my blackberry and a leaking picnic hamper. The water won. But that's another story.

The weekend before, we'd taken advantage of the weather to head to the wine country. Wine country, you ask? Yes indeed. In the early 20th century, Missouri was the top wine producer in the United States. (And was dominating beer production as well, of course. A veritable wellspring of alcohol.) The Missouri river valley had been settled in the mid-1800s by Germans fleeing political conflict at home, attracted by descriptions that promised conditions much like their native ones. With the Moselle fresh in my mind I can only violently agree with that original observation. Missouri wines in the German tradition flourished, we developed our own grape varieties (Norton and Chardonel) and all was well with the world. Then some spoil sports in Washington tried to regulate the nation's morality with the failed experiment of prohibition, and killed off an entire industry as a consequence.

The Missouri wine industry was mostly dormant until the recent past when American tastes started turning back to wine and some agricultural entrepreneurs thought they'd try to revive old traditions. There is now a wide variety of vineyards along the Missouri, some of them producing respectable and award winning stuff. (Following their German heritage, the whites have always been pretty good, the reds more challenging to produce.) But the vineyard visiting experience has never been a particularly elegant one. More Grinzing, Austria, than Napa, California, Missouri Valley vineyards have typically been picturesque spots where residents of St. Louis and Kansas City decamp with large picnic hampers to get wasted on multiple bottles of cheap plonk while the poor designated driver appreciates the view. It's been about wine guzzling, not wine tasting.

Spotting a hole in the market, a group of local investors has entered with Chandler Hill. My first impression? I can't believe I'm in Missouri. The architecture, ethos and atmosphere is all pure Californian. Only the view (which is, I believe, much better) is pure Missouri. There's a substantial tasting bar which can probably accommodate up to 40 people at a time, staffed with people who clearly know what they're doing and could provide a good description of what you were getting.

(A note to Europeans: unlike our wineries, where tastings are free and you try a few things you like before buying at least one courtesy bottle if the stuff was decent, American tastings are more formal and charge. You pay a fee for a certain number of tastes, then your host takes you through a range. This does at least free you from the guilt of buying wines you don't much like out of a desire to be polite.)

The cathedral-like space of the tasting room has plenty of space for tables, and one end is dominated by a limestone fireplace and chimney, fronted by big couches, that should make for a cozy space in the winter or for private tastings. French doors lead out to a massive deck, elegantly furnished in all-weather wicker couches, coffee tables and tables, with plenty of umbrellas and a wide veranda to provide cover from the sun. The hillside of vines stretches away and down to a lake and the 19th-century house of Joseph Chandler, a freed slave who'd travelled North and settled here on land next to more famous neighbours: Daniel Boone's family. The longer view takes in the whole Missouri River valley, all the way to the white limestone bluffs on the far side, shining starkly out from the otherwise unremitting carpet of green.

Despite only being open for three weeks, the place was packed. The magnificent weather had to help. The target market seemed to be turning up; the crowd looked older, less rowdy and more affluent than the typical denizens of some of the more established wineries. The food also looked good, although we'd just had lunch so didn't sample. The one missing element at this point is the local wine.

The vineyards are too young to produce anything good enough to ferment. Although their are plans afoot to make balsamic vinegar and cooking sauces with this autumn's crop. The owners are going the wholesale route to produce a range of Missouri wines they can label their own. They're drinkable, but to my (admittedly jaded) European palette, nothing particularly special. Surprisingly for anything bearing a Missouri label, the reds were better than the whites. We bought a couple of bottles of their Old Bridge Chambourcin, which improved considerably when matched, once home, with barbequed pork steaks. My pick was their top of the price range Savage Norton Dry. Undeniably good, but at $24.99 a bottle you can get far tastier foreign options for a better price. Chandler Hill has some work to do here. But the obvious investments in infrastructure and staff give me confidence they'll eventually produce something as impressive as their business plan.

Meanwhile, time, sun and vines will just have to be left to do their work. Humans may have some issues with Missouri's summer weather, but the grapes love it.