Collegio Online

Issue date: 3/26/09 Section: After Hours

Media Credit: Katie Swatek Each wine offered at the Keltoi Vineyard and Winery has a unique name that the Langan's created. The wine being poured, "Biddy Early," is named after a famous Irish woman.

Imagine walking through a field where there are rows with strategically planted grape vines that will soon be ripe with fruit. While walking along each row, you sip a glass of wine made from a past crop. The sun creeps down in the sky and all you can hear are bird song in the distance and water flowing over rocks in a nearby creek. Now imagine that all of this is within 20 minutes of Pittsburg.
Keltoi Vineyard, located just south of Pittsburg in Oronogo, Mo., has been in business for two years and offers an exotic escape right in your backyard.
Erv Langan, a PSU alumnus and an employee of Missouri Southern State University, had a dream of owning a winery, and a few years ago he finally made it a reality. In 1998, Langan purchased the land with big plans for the future.
"My wife came out here and thought I had a nervous breakdown," Langan said. "I said, 'We are going to own a little winery.' She was shocked and didn't want any part of it," Langan said.
Langan's wife, LeeAnn, soon had a change of heart after she and her father built a small cabin overlooking a creek on the very back of their land.
"We started camping out down there where the cabin is," Langan said. "She really wasn't too much into it until she and her father decided to build that cabin down there. Once we built the cabin, I had her. I had her."
The Langans' winery is open to the public and offers a wine tour that includes wine-tasting. The cost is $5 per person and after the tasting is over, the customer keeps the wine glass as a souvenir.
Langan explains that although he gets many types of people who come through the vineyard, most of them are relatively young.
"I think that wine has become more of an age group," Langan said. "Now it's the young group, 21-30-year-olds that are more likely to try wine, to drink wine, than the group that's right above them."
Visitors are not only offered wine, but also given open roam of the land, including overnight camping spots for $10. Guests are also welcome to take their wine down the creek-front cabin for a quiet place to sit and enjoy the wilderness.

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