Oovvda Winery: Intense fruit flavors

The winery's mural illustrates its Scandinavian theme.

A return visit to Oovvda, just north of Springfield, after several years reveals vast improvements that demonstrate the winery’s growth and also indicate a greater readiness on my part to enjoy the fruit wines in which the business specializes.

Brian and Fran Overboe make a gentle apple wine that looks like white wine and can be substituted for it with light salads and meals.

Fran Overboe behind the tasting bar.

For the other fruit wines, you need a different mindset. Forget about grape wines and focus on the intense flavor of each fruit wine, a flavor that usually comes into tighter focus with a little additional sweetness (Oovvda offers most of its fruit wines in semi-dry and sweet — but never excessively sweet). I found enjoyment in a slower rate of consumption and smaller overall quantity.

I liked the red raspberry semi-dry because it maintained the hint of tart that you taste when you pluck a berry off a bush and munch.

Blackberry and Blueberry seemed to work well at either level of sweetness. The sweet option for cherry veered toward pie filling, though.

Oovvda’s red plum wine, offered only as semi-dry, would be more drinkable with Asian foods than the heavily sweetened plumb wine that Asian restaurants typically serve.

For a yet-more-concentrated, super-intense experience, try the dessert wines. And don't forget the tomato, offered dry only.

Oovvda also offers two grape wines, Chambourcin and Norton. Both are presented with the force of their varietal flavors brought forward and smoothed out just a little in a manner similar to the way they make fruit wines.