Originally aired on YPR’s Flavors Under the Big Sky
Rick Sayre, winemaker emeritus of Rodney Strong Vineyards reigned as this year’s MSU Billings Foundation Wine and Food Festival Winemaster. For the second time since 2005, Sayre returned to educate those curious about wine to help raise monies for scholarships for students.
“Rodney Strong was considered a pioneer and he fell in love with wine when he was in Europe,” Sayre said. Strong and his wife were ballet dancer in Paris and “they lived on wine and cheese when they were not dancing.” They separated upon return to the states. Strong then met his second wife, Charlotte, “a red headed fireball, and they came, and they moved to California in 1959. He started a little wine shop in Tiburon.”…