By KAREN MADORIN
When people say western Kansas has nothing to offer, I shake my head. I could entertain someone for a year without repeats. Recently, an adventurous girlfriend joined me to wander Blue Highways 283 north to Highway 9, a favorite journey.
After turning onto 9, I shared details about Lenora’s role in Nex-Tech’s start up. As a result, northwest Kansas has access to internet service offering great personal and business opportunities to commune with the world. Journeying further west, I clued her to look for the site where Catholic priests performed the first Mass with a different sort of communion on the tree-lined banks of the North Solomon. Now days, the shiny steeple of New Almelo Catholic Church welcomes the faithful to an isolated but charming church.
Not far away, waited our goal--Wahlmeier Vineyard, a three-mile jaunt north of Hwy 9. Her GPS warned us to turn at an upcoming corner which happened to host a quaint white cottage. We chimed in unison, “Wouldn’t that be a great vacation rental for visitors who attend Wahlmeier Vineyards bingo, trivia, and harvest activities?”
That turn directed us down a graveled road to our destination while gale-force winds turned surrounding wheatfields into a roiling sea of green. Once inside the winery, we smoothed mussed hair and forgot nearly blowing to Oklahoma as bottles of wine, jars of jelly, and t-shirts snagged our attention. A framed architectural rendering offered building specs.
Vintner Cary Wahlmeier grew up on a nearby farm before working at IBM in Lenexa. Returning to his roots, he morphed from techie to winemaker starting in 2015 when he planted several acres to grapes. Five years later, he returned to make wine. The two-story rustic facility looks at home on the Kansas prairie and offers a cozy tasting area. Bigger parties can spread into an area filled with tables and chairs or high tops and stools.
As a boomerang Kansan, I love when ingenuity and creativity combine to return natives to their roots. Cary, good at sourcing local fruits to create wines and meads, epitomizes such talents. Our favorite was his last sample of Nick’s Plums and Kerrie’s Cherries. Apparently, others enjoy it too, and now all must wait on this year’s fruit harvest in Norton Co. before we toast with it again.
An elderberry fan, it pleased me that he sources elderberries from local John Gall. I also liked his Cherryliciousness, referred to as “Viking’s Blood,” a mead, fermented with wildflower honey. The nip in my tasting glass transported my imagination to an ancient Scandinavian mead hall lit by a giant fireplace.
The vineyard produces enough variety guests can return four different times before tasting every one based on selecting five wines per visit. This vineyard is rural so Cary’s menu offers meat/cheese trays or Brew Pub pizza to balance the wine tasting. We recommend Jalapeno Popper pizza, an added delight to our adventure. In addition to Cary’s wines, pizza, and meat trays, his daughter produces homemade jams and jellies. To support local agriculture, I took several jars home to try on homemade bread.
At WaKeeney, we left busy I-70 to find ourselves roaming a starkly beautiful, remote part of Kansas. When we mentioned the corner white house to Cary, he filled us in. That was once the site of Allison, bigger than Dodge City, and now a ghost town.
Perhaps businesspeople like Cary can banish ghosts while inviting the living to see what this vibrant landscape offers.