Welcome to

Vin Vivante Winery, Wamego, Kansas - - "The Wine sells itself"

Old-world. Hands-on. Small batch. Artisinal. Boutique. Authentic.

The home of Vin Vivante™ varietal wines.

And also the home of Flint Hills Winery™, WildKitten Winery™, Off-Leash Wines™ (Hey! It’s a Dog’s Life!), KS Highway Wines™. Even Wild Dala Wines™. And Little Apple Winery™ fruit based wines.

Welcome to our Winery (and art gallery).

Our winery is in The Bittman Mercantile Co. building, which is rich in history, from the amethyst-colored prism glass in the upstairs leaded windows to the hand-laid limestone walls and foundations. Vin Vivante Winery, 514 Lincoln, Wamego, Kansas Outfitted with a beautiful stamped-tin building façade and high stamped-tin ceilings from an earlier century, this building is steeped in hand-crafted beauty from a different era. All have stood watch on 100 plus years of history along Main Street in our riverside farming town. We follow history as a guide, not a rulebook.

We are a new kind of winery: different in a better way. We are hands-on when it comes to making our small-batch, artisanal wines in our authentic boutique farm winery.

Yet we are quite modern - taking advantage of every technical and scientific improvement that makes sense to incorporate into our winemaking process, yet also quite “Old School” adhering to the traditions of winemaking that have been successful for centuries.

Instead of owning a little Kansas vineyard, where we might grow a few acres of 3 or 4 kinds of grapes, we have the world of grapes to choose from. And, instead of making a thousand or more gallons of only those 3 or 4 wines, we hand-make much smaller barrels of many different wines. In parts of the world more steeped in “wine culture”, we would be called an Urban Winery, in spite of our beautiful, pastoral – even bucolic – setting.

In any year, we will make between 30 and 50 different wines in lots of between 20 and 100 cases only. While we know that each one is a gem in its own right, we also know that each one will be its own rarity. When each is sold out, we will move on to whatever strikes our fancy next. We are a world-wide wine adventure right here in your own back yard.

We pick the grapes.

We’ve picked grapes in beautiful vineyards from Kansas to California: from Washington to New York. Choosing Cabernets, Merlots, every Pinot from black to white, from gray to green, Chardonnays and Semillon; each grape attended to with care. We do whatever field work is required to preserve the grapes’ character and then rush them home to the winery to start the patient process of turning them into Kansas’ wine. We buy from established vineyards with a reputation for excellence. It gives us a much greater range of fruit and higher quality across a broader spectrum of wines than we would otherwise have if we were married to a little vineyard on the Plains: in order to make exceptional wines, we start with exceptional fruits.

While we buy as many Kansas grown grapes as are available – and we always have wines for sale that have earned the right to being labeled as Kansas wines – Kansas is home to only a few more than a hundred acres of wine grapes. And the varieties grown in Kansas are generally not the grapes and wines that you may already know. Where California, New York, Texas and even Arizona grow Cabernet, Zinfandel, Chardonnay and Riesling, Kansas vineyards grow Marachel Foch, Norton, Vignoles and Vidal. Good grapes in their own right – but rarely great. The tested motto for the state of Kansas: Ad astra per aspera – to the Stars through difficulties, is also a fitting motto for a Kansas winery. If we precluded our winery to Kansas’ grapes, our wines could never exceed the limits that nature has placed on those grapes. And while we, too, enjoy a wonderful Kansas’ grown wine, we strive to do better: always better. If an art gallery contained only art featuring things that exist in Kansas, it would be just as limited as a winery that purposefully excludes wines from grapes not grown in Kansas. We can’t – and won’t – have such a narrow scope. Using grapes grown by families with generations of experience from around the country gives us the best experience and the best opportunity to improve our wines.

We make the wine.

We make the wine here – regardless of where the grapes come from – in our restored and renovated 1897 building. Just as the winery is a blend of the old and the new, so, too, is the winemaking.

Our winemaker, who teaches winemaking at the nearby community college to professionals and amateurs alike, made his first wines learning the traditions of winemaking from a generation who hid their winemaking from the puritans and the prohibitionists. At one time, almost everyone’s grandmother or father had a little wine made from backyard fruit aging in the cellar, free from taxation - and free from the prying eyes of the government and the prohibitionists.

History and care and tradition inform – but don’t limit – our winemaking. While we try not to intervene with the wine when we don’t have to, we take advantage of many of the scientific advancements brought to winemaking in the last decade or two. We make the wine from the many kinds of grapes and fruits that we bring together in stainless steel, glass, bags and barrels. We blend these elements together to make the best of Kansas’ wines.

Our name and our trademark is “Vin Vivante”.

Kansans are straight forward people – they like to be free of pretension and airs. There is risk in giving a romantic European name to a winery along the sleepy Kansas river but our name: Vin Vivante™ - purposefully misspelled in French and Italian – means "Happy Wine" in every language.

We try to do just that in every aspect of our winery. We make happy wines. We make wine happily. And, we make other people happy enjoying our wines. Because, really, how can you go wrong with "Happy Wine"? Le vin se vend?

Join us, if you will, at Vin Vivante Winery in Wamego, Kansas.

OPEN DAILY Year ‘Round 10 AM til 6 PM, Sunday Noon to 6 PM

Free wine tastings at our marble topped barrelhead Tasting Bar!