Chaumette Closing; Land Will House Christian Youth Retreat
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Hank Johnson poses with the rolling hills of Chaumette Winery and Vineyard behind him.
BY MARK EVANS
STE. GENEVIEVE HERALD
An era is ending next month.
After more than three decades in the grape, wine and lodging business, Hank Johnson is hanging up his grape pruning sheers and retiring.
He and his wife Linda have run Chaumette Vineyards and Winery since the early 1990s. On Aug. 15, they will officially close the business and turn the facilities and land over to Life Teen International (LTI), a Catholic youth organization who will use the land and its 30 buildings for Christian-focused youth retreats and leadership programs.
Johnson, 82, said most of his friends have long been retired.
“They’ve left work sometimes 10 years, 20 years ago, even for some,” he said. “So I’m way behind on that.”
He said the decision to close Chaumette was difficult, but made easier by his respect for LTI.
“It was very hard for me,” Johnson said. “I was worried about it. I mean, this is all my baby. I’ve built all these buildings. So it took me a while before I really kind of decided in myself that it was time to make a change, because I was 82. So we started looking, and we put stuff out.”
He said LTI showed considerable interest from the beginning. The more he showed them the grounds, the more comfortable he became with them taking it over.
“At first I thought, well, what is this? With kids here, they’ll be running all over and yelling,” Johnson said. “But that’s not the case at all. They explained it to me. There’ll be groups of seven and there’ll be a person that works for them, that’s part of them, a senior person, who will be attached to each of these people, each of these groups, for 24 hours a day. And so they will wake up with them.”
The Johnsons will be neighbors, hanging onto the adjoining 120 or so acres, where they already have a house.
The land the Johnsons live on is the original parcel they bought in 1990 as a weekend getaway from St. Louis. About that time, he became interested in growing grapes and began an intense study of the subject. They opened their first vineyard and built their house in 1992. Johnson was still making a living running an insurance company that specialized in covering helicopters.
“By that time I was hooked,” Johnson said. “I knew that I wanted this to be my business and that I wanted to sell my prior business, which I did do, in ‘03. And from ‘03 on, all my focus was on this place.”
Guests didn’t want to have to curtail their enjoyment of Chaumette wines early in order to navigate the narrow curving lanes of routes WW and B, so they begged Johnson to build overnight accommodations.
“So that’s how it came to be,” Johnson said, “and it’s worked fine.”
There are now 30 buildings on the campus. Other individuals own a few of them. They will have to decide whether they want to sell theirs to LTI, as well.
Things continued to develop, with a restaurant opening in 2003, to feed those guests and others. In fact, in 2022, the restaurant and chef Rob Beasley were honored as the No. 1 winery restaurant in the United States. They have also hosted numerous weddings and other events.
LTI will allow the Johnsons to hold the seven previously scheduled weddings.
“We wanted to make sure that we didn’t try to tell them, ‘No, no, we just sold the place, sorry,’” Johnson said. “They wanted to have it here.”
Johnson leaves the day-to-day operations with no regrets. He is eager to get on with the next part of his life, which includes getting caught up on work on his house and grounds on the adjoining parcel.
“I really look forward to being able to work on the old side, the east half,” he said. “We have a house there that we built in 92. I never thought I’d be living there, but here we are.”
Johnson feels good about the future, with more time on his hands and LTI next door.
“This is a really nice group of people that I have met along with this,” he said. “They are people that can see our side of things and they have been just very, very nice to deal with. And I was worried about that too, of course, but I’m not worried at all, now. I’m looking forward to when some of these people come. We’ll not be here, of course, we’ll be next door.”