‘Wine is the most healthful and hygienic of beverages.’ Louis Pasteur
There is quite a treat in store between Busch and Beaver for people who love to visit unique, artisanal farm wineries. The Railway Winery & Vineyards owned by Greg and Vicki Schneider has become a destination for travelers including some from Bentonville and Oklahoma who come on a near weekly basis.
“We are out here with the wild turkeys and the deer on the Highway 187 loop that’s popular for people to come out to see the Little Golden Gate Bridge in Beaver and visit Beaver Park on Table Rock Lake,” Greg Schneider said. “We have a pavilion and grilling areas for picnickers. Families like to come out and do cookouts. We have a big open field so they bring their dogs and let them play. Our cat, Ginger, who lives underneath the winery building, puts up with them.”
In addition to 12 unique wines made from local grapes and fruit, they also sell other local jellies, coffee, wine accessories and more.
Greg has been living in the area since 1972. Vicki is a seventh generation resident of Carroll County. The previous owners of Gaskins Cabin Steakhouse, they bought the Railway Winery property in 2008, were licensed to make wine in 2011, and opened to the public in 2012.
The Schneiders started out as hobby winemakers.
“We’ve made a lot of wine in a glass carboy in the corner of the kitchen,” Vicki said. “It has been a hobby for thirty years.”
Greg was encouraged when he was told by the owners of Strauss Distributing that they thought he had a good palate. So Greg and Vicki learned how to cultivate grapes to become viticulturists. That takes time and patience as it takes four years after vines are planted before they start producing.
Railway Wines’ number one best seller is a peach wine that was part of the winning beverage called Garden of Eden, a peach Martini made by Rain Equine that won the Fifth Annual Fleur Delicious Fleur Delicious Weekend Ciroc Vodka Bartender Competition.
Greg said a lot of wine makers make the wine high in alcohol content, which burns off the fruit flavor. Or they use oak casts that flavor the wine.
“We don’t use a lot of oak,” he said. “We use stainless steel tanks. Even our regular wines are considered a fruit-forward style.”
The labels on their wine include artwork by Eureka Springs artist Teresa DeVito. Their Little Ed’s Big Red label has a photo of Greg’s father as a child in a cart. There is the Strawberry Trainwreck 100 percent strawberry wine that harkens back to the 1956 wreck of a train a mile away.
That the Railway Winery still exists is a testament to dogged perseverance. On August 8, 2013, a flash flood in Butler Creek delivered 20 feet of water to the previous winery building. It was considered a 1,000-year-flood, or the amount of rainfall in one day that would be expected only once in 1,000 years. The Schneiders were uninsured and lost their vineyard, winery building, and equipment.
The Carroll County Quorum Court has consistently voted against joining the federal flood insurance program, which puts property owners in a bad position as you can only purchase flood insurance from the federal government.
“You can only get it inside a city that has voted separately from the county,” he said. “Even the little town of Beaver has flood insurance, but we can’t get it here. Anything that stinks of regulations, the other half the county doesn’t want. They think of it as zoning. It is not zoning. Some people think it might make them liable if you do construction that changes the floodwaters on your neighbor’s property. But it is already against the law to direct water onto your neighbor’s property. If you make changes that damage any type of building, insured or not, you are liable for damage. It doesn’t change anything except whether you can get flood insurance for the property.”
The Railway Winery had previously withstood a couple of 100-year floods. But when there was 15.5 inches of rain in the Butler Hollow watershed upstream in Seligman, Mo., and 12 inches of rain in Beaver – all in one day – water levels got higher than ever recorded.
“So it just piled up,” Greg said. “Scientists say greenhouse gas emission result in warmer air that holds more water, giving the potential for more torrential rainfalls. Yet many still deny climate change. That is ridiculous.”
The Schneiders have prepared for such an event happening again by building their new winery building 22 feet higher than the old building. Their patio is concrete so even if it does flood, it won’t float away.
The winery couple had a lot of local support to get back on their feet. Doug Hausler from Keels Creek Winery started a recovery fund that raised more than $5,000. That was invested in new tanks.
“They gave us space at Keels Creek while we were doing construction of the new building,” Greg said. “That way when we had the building built, we had wine ready to sell. Lots of local people started coming out and buying wine. Our local support is truly amazing. And we get people who come weekly from Bentonville and just across the line in Oklahoma. They come again and bring friends. We get lots of people from Branson.”
One recent Sunday afternoon while serving a steady stream of customers, Vicki reflected that the sacrifices have been worth it.
“Even with all the things that went wrong, it is still a great place to be,” she said.
The two winery families in town are hoping to be joined by other local winemakers.
“The more wineries there are here, the more it becomes a destination point,” Greg said. “People don’t go to Napa Valley for a particular wine. They go to Napa Valley for all the wineries. It would be nice to have the same thing here.”
The winery and tasting room are open Wednesday-Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. and on Sunday from noon until 5 p.m. For more info, see the website www.railwaywinery.com/.