la bella vineyards & winery

La Bella Vineyards & Winery sits amid rolling hills of Missouri farm country. It's a bit off the beaten path - I imagine very few people just stumble across it, with its out of the way location - but worth the trip, especially for their drier wines.They have a nice banquet/reception hall, a big patio with a wood fire oven for making pizzas, and lots of tables overlooking a pretty little lake (for anyone more accustomed to big lakes like Michigan or Erie, you would call this a pond, but it's still pretty). The owners did a very nice job of creating a pleasant atmosphere where customers feel comfortable hanging out on the patio or at the tables in the tasting room. In addition to pizza, they offer a couple kinds of sandwiches as well as the expected cheese basket one finds at wineries. We didn't eat, but apparently they are known for their wood-fired pizza. Guests may also bring their own food or snacks to the winery to enjoy with a bottle of La Bella's wine. As for wines, I am happy drinking a wide variety, from dry to sweet, whites and reds. I found I preferred their drier wines at La Bella. Certainly their fruit wines (strawberry and peach) were so sweet I couldn't really enjoy them, but I bet they'd be good combined with a drier white, like their Bella Shepherd. For comparison purposes, at other wineries I have had peach, blueberry, raspberry and blackberry wines I liked very much, but the two fruit wines at La Bella were off-the-chart sweet, in my opinion. Their sweet white (Sunday Driver) and sweet red (Renegade Red) were quite nice. We bought a bottle of Bella Shepherd to enjoy on the patio.Each person can taste four wines at no cost;additional tasting carries a $4 price tag. My husband and I each selected four different wines to taste which, by sharing, allowed us to try eight wines. That's a good number, but it didn't cover all the offerings at La Bella, so we will need to return soon to try the others.