Feature

BY KATHY GILSINAN

On a hot September Sunday in Missouri wine country, patrons lounge on a sundrenched patio at Balducci’s Vineyards in greater Augusta. Forests sweep up the surrounding hillsides, and though the tree leaves haven’t yet started to turn, elsewhere you can just see the hints of the seismic change coming to this small town of a few hundred people alongside the Missouri River. It’s in the new color scheme at the twentyyear-old winery — emphasis on orange — and in the eight-foot bronze bust of a Tocobaga Indian princess that now faces the vineyard. Most of all, it’s in the name stamped on the monument’s pedestal: Hoffmann Family of Companies.

In town, these pla ues are affixed everywhere, the namesake of husband-wife duo David and Jerri Hoffmann, whose conglomerate has bought and revamped large chunks of three other towns and now promises to plow upwards of $125 million into the Augusta area. Hoffmann at the gas station. Hoffmann at the general store and at the bike shop. Hoffmann on the new fences lining the road into town. Hoffmann on the bronze cowgirl in Augusta proper that prompted one resident

to grumble, “I’m sorry, this isn’t the ild est we have never, ever, had cowboys. offmann on the bron e ioux Indians that another resident pointed out aren’t the right Indians for the area, which was once sage country. ome locals have started o ing that ugusta, a rural town where some families have lived for generations, is morphing before their eyes into Hoffmannville. hat exactly that means is still in flux. It’s been barely eleven months since the offmann amily of ompanies announced it had been buying up properties in and around ugusta, aiming to consolidate wineries over an area of 00 acres into a mega venture that a press release vowed would be the largest winery and vineyards in the idwest. In anuary the apa alley in issouri branding too root and wound through news stories detailing the company’s plans to install a national tourist destination in the uiet hills, off a winding two lane highway about an hour west of t. Louis. y summer, the company had purchased four local wineries, six vineyards and more than a do en buildings, and was floating plans to build more attractions: a 60 room luxury hotel, a golf course, an amphitheater. rolley shaped Hoffmann-branded buses were ferrying people between wineries issouri iver boat tours were scheduled to start in late fall. In news reports, the offmanns, who met in high school in nearby ashington, issouri, seemed psyched to be bac near home and bringing the promise of obs, tourism and revitali ation to a struggling town that had been on an economic losing strea for decades. Several local business owners enthused to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about how great the place loo ed. et for other residents, this was all a bit much. he “next apa notion in particular spoo ed people that famed wine region of alifornia, after all, had hundreds of wineries and welcomed millions of tourists per year. Sure, nearly everyone agreed the downtown could use some investment and new businesses, and the issouri wineries that rivaled apa’s in their nineteenth-century heyday had been decimated by rohibition and underrated ever since. But the Hoffmann plans seemed to eep getting bigger he proposed golf course had grown from

nine holes to twelve the envisioned river paddleboats were out, at least temporarily, and a 96foot luxury yacht called the iss ugusta was in. t a oom meeting with residents early in 2021, avid and erri offmann had left the impression with some that they hoped to preserve the town’s uaintness. ow ugusta townsfol were learning of possible hot-air balloon tours and a zipline from a hilltop winery, none of which sounded very uaint to them.

“I’m not against the hotel. I’m not against any of the changes he’s ma ing in town, says o nn truc hoff, who lives on an ugusta area farm that’s been in her husband’s family for generations. “I ust thin it’s gotten a bit out of control. he worries that the pro ect is dividing a close nit community. Some residents see big potential benefits, in rising property values, new patronage for business, new sales tax revenues so they can finally repave some roads. he offmann amily of ompanies is already the town’s largest employer and vows to create hundreds more obs. ut others feel rapid change is being forced on them without enough consideration for the town’s culture, its uiet, the safety and capacity of the thin, curvy highway they all rely on. igh property values are great if you plan to move otherwise they ust mean higher taxes. any people agreed that ugusta needed revitali ation, but did it have to be this much, and move this fast? t the heart of the disagreement is the proper line between progress and preservation, commerce and community, in a place where everybody nows everybody and change has always come slowly, if at all. ost of all, the drama is about who gets to control the fate of a small town facing an influx of big money.

Before there was apa wine, there was ugusta wine. t least officially. hen the federal government started designating merican iticultural reas in the 1980s a way to mar geographic authenticity and uality ugusta was the first recogni ed apa, as issouri wine enthusiasts li e to point out, only got its designation eight months later. y then, both regions had been producing wines for more than a century, and bac in the mid 1800s it would’ve made more sense to wonder if apa could be the next ugusta than the other way around. erman settlers to the issouri iver region had brought with them their grapevine clippings and nostalgia for the ld orld, ultimately creating a ind of new hineland in a string of towns on the shores of the issouri. y the late 18 0s, they were producing roughly 2 million gallons of wine annually, and in their spare time also saved the rench wine industry sending over millions of hardy issouri rootstoc s to fortify rench vineyards then being destroyed by parasites. ver the next four decades, alifornia wines overtoo issouri’s in popularity, but issouri remained the country’s second-most important wine region until 1920. t which point, the wine industry that had saved rance’s was itself destroyed, not by parasites but by rohibition. ineyards burned wine cellars ditched their bottles and stored mushrooms instead. merica’s alcohol ban lasted only thirteen years, until 19 , but rebuilding issouri’s wine industry too decades, and it never recovered its former status. If not for the 18th mendment, ugusta and its neighboring river towns might have long since ceased to be uaint. s it stands, though, uaintness abounds. “It’s ind of a orman oc well throwbac , says o nn ilster, who heads up the local chamber of commerce. uring the annual hristmas wal , carolers sing in bene er hurch locals and tourists stroll the streets to admire the lights, chec out the glass blower’s shop and the hristmas mar et, maybe munch

on some chestnuts; this year, Glenda Drier, a self-described fifth generation farm gal from ugusta who now breeds Labradors, plans to dye her goat ertie green to play the Grinch at the event. If a storm comes through, people will show up “loo y looing at the damage and then wal bac to their truc s to get chainsaws and gloves to help clean up debris, and before long someone will show up with a roc ot of chili. “ his is a community where, if you get into trouble, everyone’s going to show up on your doorstep, ilster says. “ nd it doesn’t matter who you are. s for the wine, issouri has rebuilt about half its nineteenthcentury winema ing capacity and now sells roughly a million gallons of wine a year alifornia produces about 685 times that much. issouri has fewer than 200 wineries, and alifornia has well over ,000. issouri’s wine tourism is modest, its grapes obscure. mong wine consumers, apa’s hardonnays and erlots are standard fare. ut who outside issouri is tippling a hardonel or a orton “I’ve tasted some really first rate wines here, says oug rost, a writer and wine consultant based in ansas ity, who is both a master sommelier and a master of wine. It frustrates him that many people don’t ta e issouri wine seriously, if they now there’s such a thing at all. hen there is the land itself, “ od’s country to many locals. “ his place is 200 years of history, of cellars being dug and wineries being built and vineyards being planted and railroads built and converted to trails, says an ur hardt, the founder of agnificent issouri, which wor s to conserve and enhance the natural landscape of the issouri iver alley. “ ost of merica does not have those characteristics. o the offmanns had grounds to see potential in the region when avid offmann, as he told the Post-Dispatch, was driving through in late 2020 and noticed a resemblance to apa. nd ugusta itself, where businesses had been gradually shutting down and moving out to the point that the town lac ed its own gas station or grocery store, was a prime target for what the paper called the offmanns’ passion for “cityma ing. he offmann family, having initially struc it rich through outsourcing and executive recruiting, had already made big investments in three other towns aples, lorida von, olorado, near ail and innet a, Illinois, near hicago. he formula was to buy lots of commercial real estate in a given community, then update, renovate and welcome new businesses.

Yet the Hoffmanns had never attempted anything uite li e ugusta. rior offmann pro ects had centered on towns orders of

magnitude more populated, closer to existing tourist destinations or, as in the Naples case, already destinations in their own right. There were many reasons folks liked living in small-town rural Missouri, including family roots, natural beauty and solitude. The stars on a clear night and the changing leaves in the fall. They knew some change was inevitable. But they couldn’t help loving the place just the way it was.

Around the time the Augustaarea public first heard of the Hoffmanns’ plans for their region, David Hoffmann explained in a company press release that his company wanted “to provide not only great wine from the beautiful countryside of Missouri, but to create a national destination similar to Napa Valley.” And while the comparison proved irresistible to urban headline writers and newscasters, among several people in wine country it conjured more dread than excitement. If the greater ugusta area, with its five wineries, was to rival the tourism industry in Napa Valley, with close to 500, that would truly require a transformation. “That’s scary to me, Napa Valley, when he says that,” says JoAnn Struckhoff.

“Lemme give you a news flash, says Joe Brazil, the St. Charles County councilman whose district includes the Augusta area. “We don’t want Napa out here. Come on.”

Chris Armstrong, the director of marketing for the Hoffmann Family of Companies, says the comparison has created the wrong impression of what the Hoffmanns actually want to achieve. “We’re not going to be bringing millions of people through here,” he tells the RFT. “It’s just logistically impossible.” Even adding up all the Hoffmanns’ winery purchases and plans for new lodging, “we’re talking about four wineries and a maximum of 100 rooms.” The point of evoking Napa, from the start, he says, has been about the quality of the wine and experience, not the quantity of tourists.

But by the time both Hoffmanns logged onto a Zoom meeting in January to greet their new neighbors and explain their hopes, local suspicion had been seeded, and they have never been able to fully uproot it. Meanwhile, the physical changes to Augusta started happening quickly, and no one, not even the Hoffmanns, knew the exact end state. Fences went up. Sculptures appeared. Buildings got new coats of paint, sometimes very bright ones, oranges and yellows and greens and reds. David Hoffmann at one point allowed that “there might be some discussion about the paint colors” and that he’d heard a single negative comment from a skeptic, who later changed their mind. (Most of the half-dozen or so residents who offered their perspectives for this story complained about the paint.)

The bigger outcry concerned the fate of the trees at Montelle, the picturesque hilltop winery the Hoffmanns had acquired. Armstrong says some trees had to come out, because the roots were imperiling the winery’s deck, and that the unobstructed view down the hill is gorgeous. (The Hoffmanns had also initially planned to put their hotel there, before learning from Councilman Brazil that the location could not handle so much sewage.) But for Glenda Drier, the farm gal, the trees were the view. “That was the beauty of it, all those trees,” she says. “Now it’s just barren dirt.” The fact that the tree clearance lacked the proper permits when it started — St. Charles ounty briefly made the company stop work on that and one other removal operation while the paperwork got sorted, according to a county spokesperson — and that old oa s were sacrificed in part for a hotel project that never materialized, contributed to Drier’s sense that the Hoffmanns were steamrolling ahead way too fast.

Tensions went on building from there. Armstrong, hearing from residents that they wanted more communication about the Hoffmanns’ plans, joined the town’s private Facebook group in March and offered to answer questions. He hoped to reassure residents that the Hoffmanns wanted to be good neighbors — they were restoring buildings, not tearing them down; they were invested in the community and planning to stick around; they weren’t ust buying properties to flip and abandon; in fact they’d almost never sold a property once they’d bought it. Armstrong was in the Facebook group about a week before, he says, nasty messages to him and even his family members drove him to leave — the online forum and even Augusta itself for two months. In a farewell message, he said residents should go to their town council meetings to make their opinions heard and join a text-messaging hotline he’d set up if they wanted updates. (The number, which he asked me to publicize, is 636-249-2023.) “I got messages from complete strangers in town ust mortified by what had happened,” he says. A few months later, another simmering online showdown boiled over into real life when townsfolk learned that the Hoffmanns hoped, as part of their hotel development, to create a spot for helicopter parking. Loud paint was one thing, but the idea of loud rotors disrupting the peace, distracting the elementary school students and freaking out the livestock was another. Even the Buddhists got upset. A member of the Mid-America Buddhist Association, a space for retreats and quiet contemplation on a hill in greater Augusta, circulated a petition opposing the helipad and got more than 400 signatures. At an August meeting of the St. Charles County Planning and Zoning Commission, several residents and fans of Augusta took the mic to denounce the plan, its “abhorrent” proposed location near a cemetery where the town’s forefathers lie and the possibility of hot-air balloon tours. Drier read a letter from a 94-year-old couple living directly in the proposed flight path who begged right on the envelope, “Please no helicopter.” Onto the hypothetical helipad, it seemed, focused months of builtup angst. “People come to Augusta because they want the peace and the serenity that came with it,” said Kim Siem, who owns a farm

across from the Hoffmann-owned Balducci winery. “I don’t understand how someone can say they came to Augusta, and they liked it — and then they want to change everything about it. That, to me, doesn’t make sense. At all.”

The commission voted down the helipad unanimously, to cheers and a partial standing ovation; a gray-haired guy in plaid chitchatted with two bald Buddhists in matching gray robes and masks as the meeting broke up. By then, the Hoffmanns were already planning to back off, according to Armstrong. In a letter David Hoffmann sent to every home in Augusta, he apologized. “I want you to know that you have been heard,” he wrote.

Siem hopes this is sincere. “I’m cautiously optimistic, is all I can really say about it. I’m not putting bets on anything.” She noted that the letter did not rule out helicopter tours flying over the town from the nearby Washington airport. In any case, her biggest worry remains traffic and safety on Highway 94, the two winding lanes of which already get clogged up, even without a lot of new tourism coming in.

Armstrong says the plans are still under discussion, but that elected officials and oversight bodies regulate what the Hoffmanns’ company can do beyond their own private property. “It’s not just a do-whatever-the-heckyou-want-type situation,” he says. At some point, he adds, residents need to trust, or push, their elected officials to help shape the pro ect — their representatives have the power of the permit process, and as the helipad episode showed, they could be persuaded to use it.

But Brazil, the county councilman, says that the Hoffmanns have never sat down with him to go over any kind of master plan for the project, and that he is more likely to read in the newspaper what they are planning. “Not that I’m the king out here, but I do represent the people out here,” Brazil says. And the Hoffmanns were prone to announcing things publicly, like, say, plans for a golf course, before even securing the proper zoning — though on the other hand, not announcing things publicly could just as easily lead to accusations that the Hoffmanns weren’t being transparent. Brazil describes himself as a probusiness, conservative Republican who believes in capitalism: He thinks it’s great the Hoffmanns want to buy local businesses. Like many people RFT spoke to, Brazil says Augusta needed investments, and he cheered some of the Hoffmanns’ initiatives. The wineries in particular, he says, were seeing new customers. But “at what point do the scales start tipping to a monopoly where one guy has control over everything?”

The defeat of the helipad has meanwhile left undisturbed a variety of other questions and fears, ranging from the aesthetic (those paint colors!), to the logistical where does all the traffic go , to the amorphous (where does all this end?).

Milster, of the chamber of commerce, isn’t worried, and she’s happy with the communication and support she says local businesses have gotten from the Hoffmanns. “I don’t have anything negative to say,” she says. “We’re always in favor of more business, and improving business, and improving the area. ... I think there’s a lot of opportunity here.” Especially if the Hoffmanns’ investments can bring in new people to patronize local businesses, “I think that’s great.”

John Alsop, too, a town resident who runs a construction company, says he’s glad to see tourists coming back. “It’s good for my town,” he says. “It was dead and now it’s coming back to life. Yes, there is turmoil in Augusta, but I’m certain you’ll find that in every town in America. I see what’s going on on both sides. And I’m actually pro both sides. I would like to see resolution; I would like to see healing.” He says he doesn’t know what that would look like, however. “I mean, how do you heal America?”

Even with the differences of opinion, Augusta’s community spirit is intact when it counts. Armstrong tells me how, when storms hit the area this spring, “the town came together and reached out to us to see if they could help, to make sure that we had generators” so the wine wouldn’t go bad. The Hoffmanns’ wineries reached out to competitors to see if they needed any assistance. “We’re all part of the same family here.”

And back at Balducci’s, with its bright-orange silo visible from Kim Siem’s driveway (“It looks like the top of a carrot,” she says), the big bronze Indian princess —Ulele, who according to legend lived in what is now Tampa — stares out at a strange new landscape. She’s not native to Missouri, but some things are universal. Her sculptor once had this to say about the expression on the woman’s face: “This work of art honors those lost to us. She is strong yet apprehensively looking towards the future.” n