From Triumph to Terror

We all have dreams, and some of us are willing to work hard against impossible odds to turn them into reality.

Book Details

The Delta in the Rearview Mirror: The Life and Death of Mississippi’s First Winery

By Di Rushing

University Press of Mississippi

$25

But all that effort can’t always prevent things from going bad.

Di and Sam Rushing know this to be true. They opened the first legal winery in the Mississippi Delta since Prohibition. After 14 years of award-winning success, terrorized by a disgruntled former employee, they fled the state and left it all behind. Di Rushing recounts their story in The Delta in the Rearview Mirror.

Thirty years after the events leading to the shuttering of Winery Rushing, Di Rushing remains reluctant to tell her true crime narrative. “Sometimes it is difficult for a white woman to write her story set in the Mississippi Delta without coming across as ‘precious.’ …Mostly, I feared that some may perceive it as an indictment of the Delta, where many people I love still live.” However, after years of feeling unsettled, running from but never really coming to terms with what happened to her family, Rushing felt it was time to open the boxes of news clippings and memorabilia and find, perhaps, a sense of closure.

A strength in Di Rushing’s approach is in the nuanced account of her family’s godawful experience. She does not offer a flatlined narrative, an unexamined timeline of events, but rather considers the complex societal underpinnings and history of this impoverished region while drawing the reader inside her emotional struggle amid a terrifying series of events. For example: As the jury was selected in the trial for the destruction at the winery, Rushing recalls, “My friends in the courtroom that day told us that as the trial progressed, the circus became less about the events at the winery and more about a discussion about the haves and have-nots. It soon became apparent that the injustice of economic disparity was going to be the underlying premise of [the] defense.”

Rushing is a lyrical writer, the prose beautiful and metaphoric, as her life reaches highs and then crashes. “Sipping my tea, I looked up and pondered the delicate kudzu tendrils hanging from the cypress branches, light green curls gently swaying in the breeze. They looked as though they were patiently awaiting the opportunity to seize, seduce, and strangle their unsuspecting hosts.”

Sam Rushing and the future Diane Rushing, known as Di, first meet in elementary school in Greenville, Mississippi. Their lives take different paths until they meet again during their college years.

Sam is then drafted into the Vietnam War, a long-distance marriage proposal follows, and Di joins him in Ansbach, Germany. While in this region of Europe they drink, study, and visit wineries near Sam’s military post.

Returning to the United States in 1976, the Rushings move onto his grandfather’s 300-acre farm and “a small tenant house on the place he let us renovate to live in.” The next year, a crew of family and friends is installing grape trellises and planting three varieties of muscadines, “Carlos, Magnolia and Noble.” A huge cellar is dug for six 3,000-gallon stainless steel tanks. In 1979, their “Sweet White” is judged best in category in a national competition. Their two children, Matt and Lizzie, are born.

The Rushings work hard. It is a rewarding and lovely existence: “The vineyard was spectacular, especially during the fall harvest…. September was the best time of the year and people from the whole area often came to watch us crush the grapes on the back pad of the winery.”

Seizing upon success, they open Top of the Cellar Tea Room adjoining the winery. The couple’s restaurant and their vineyard tours become popular with both locals and visitors.

In May 1990, Sam Rushing fires vineyard tour guide Ray Russell for selling drugs from the parking lot of Winery Rushing. Soon after, late at night, Russell breaks into the winery and restaurant smashing windows, destroying furniture, and releasing 8,000 gallons of wine to flow downhill into the Sunflower River. As Sam shouts over the phone the next morning, “Yes! It’s ankle deep in the cellar, and it’s all going down the drain.”

I’ve lived in Mississippi for 32 years, more than half of my life. It is a beautiful region, with cypress trees, bluesmen as prodigious as our bird-sized mosquitoes, and a rich literary history (think William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and Jesmyn Ward). Yet, there is much here that is wrong, backward, and inexplicable.

Ray Russell is found not guilty, his defense team asserting that Sam and Di Rushing destroyed the wine and vandalized their own property for the insurance proceeds. The problem with this, as the Rushings consistently declare during the trial, is that they had no insurance, filed no claim, and of course received no payment for an uninsured loss.

Emboldened after the verdict, Russell intensifies his reign of terror. The Rushings’ family dogs are murdered, their collars in Russell’s bedside dresser drawer. He stalks the edges of the winery property at night and follows Di as she drives her children to elementary school in the mornings. “Windows down, he pulled up to my left on the road, his car inches from mine, loud music blaring from his radio. Panicking, I glanced over at him. The menacing smile on his face as he looked at me sent a chill down my spine.” Di Rushing learns to shoot a pistol and keeps it in her car, prepared for the next encounter.

Everyone in Merigold, Mississippi, watches in shock, silenced by their own fear that Russell would come after them if they show support for Sam and Di. A rare offer of assistance comes via an evening telephone call from a well-known and successful planter. “‘Mr. Rushing,’ the man began in a lazy Southern drawl. ‘You probably don’t know me, but I live right across the [Mississippi] River….’ He coughed a deep smoker’s cough and continued, ‘Well, sir, I guess what I mean is this. Some people just need killin.’” Sam Rushing had received an offer for a hit to eliminate Ray Russell.

Finally, to preserve their family and find safety, the Rushings quickly pack and move to Colorado—their life and dream in the rearview mirror. They land in Ouray, Colorado. Di finds work in the school system as an English teacher and Sam opens Ouray Glassworks and Pottery, which thrives to this day. I won’t say how the story ends for Russell, except that he is not available to contest the book’s telling.