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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.

A taste of the old country

Local vineyard offers hospitality, wine and Irish heritage

By: Krystel Pakitsos

Posted: 3/26/09

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.
"Some of them go down there and take bottles of wine and glasses and sit down, especially when it's raining with the tin roof," Langan said. "You can see the creek down there and it's pretty when the water is flowing."
Langan's interest in wine began when he was in the military. His last assignment was in Germany, where he was working with German-American relations.
"I liked wine, and I would go and visit wineries and sample the wine, furthering the relationship between Americans and Germans," Langan said. "I thought, 'If they can do it, by God, I think I can.'"
When Langan made the decision to start his winery, he knew that he would be nearing retirement soon. Although he says he was ready to move on from education, he wasn't done working.
"I knew I was going to retire from higher education and I wasn't going to sit around watching color TV," Langan said. "I wanted to do something."
Although Langan says that the winery has come a long way since he began, he says he didn't get there overnight. He and his wife planted an acre of grapes a year for six years.
"You can read all you can in the books about doing something like this, but it's a lot harder to actually do it," Langan said. "Doing it, we've kind of learned and we are a lot faster about stuff."
He says that originally his passion with the winery was actually growing the grapes, but over the years his interest has broadened.
"I love to be outside in the vineyard," Langan said. "But now that I'm enhancing my wine-making skills and I'm learning from older guys how to better perfect the wine. That's what I'm really enjoying."
Prices range from $8 to $12 a bottle and can be purchased at the winery. For more information, visit their web site at www.keltoivineyard.com.