The Delta in the Rearview Mirror

The Life and Death of Mississippi's First Winery

Di Rushing

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781496849298
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496849304
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Business Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Nominee for the 2025 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Life Writing

After graduating from Mississippi State University in 1976, Di Rushing and her husband, Sam, found themselves back on their family farm near Merigold, Mississippi, with 350 acres and no real clue what to do. The couple decided to open the first winery in Mississippi, and with it, a successful business was born. Six years later, a small restaurant joined the Delta winery. Both businesses were thriving by 1990, with eight national award-winning wines, a beautiful vineyard, and a successful restaurant.

But in March of 1990, a series of unforeseen events rocked the operation. After the Rushings discovered one of the tour guides, Ray Russell, selling drugs in the winery parking lot, they fired him. He responded with a terrorizing vengeance that persisted over the next nine months. In the early morning hours, the former guide broke into the winery, crept into the wine cellar, and released the entire inventory—nearly a quarter of a million dollars' worth—down the drain. Fortunately, his incompetence thwarted his most destructive intention to blow up the restaurant. In his rampage, he broke all the windows, which allowed the gas from the kitchen oven to escape, sparing the premises. Though the Rushings rebuilt with the help of their community, Russell continued to stalk and threaten the young family. As his menacing behavior continued to escalate, the Rushings closed their business of fourteen years and moved to Ouray, Colorado, where they began rebuilding their lives. Culminating in the sudden, violent murders of Russell, his wife, and his father twenty-five years later, this book tells a story of both shock and resilience, charting Mississippi history in the process.

Intertwined with the true crime narrative, The Delta in the Rearview Mirror: The Life and Death of Mississippi's First Winery details author Di Rushing's life in and out of Mississippi, including growing up in 1960s Greenville, attending university, traveling overseas, and the relationships she cultivated along the way.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Prologue: Any Given Day
• Chapter 1: Living the Dream
• Chapter 2: An Otherwise Lovely Spring Morning
• Chapter 3: A Nice Place to Visit
• Chapter 4: Mississippi Mud
• Chapter 5: What Passes for Inspection
• Chapter 6: A Brush of Conscience
• Chapter 7: A Precarious Solidarity
• Chapter 8: Business 101: How to Work at a Real Job
• Chapter 9: Life in the Country
• Chapter 10: Creating Our Own Reality
• Chapter 11: And the Winner Is …
• Chapter 12: Mississippi Delta Estate Bottled
• Chapter 13: Hearts Are Broken
• Chapter 14: And Just How High Is That?
• Chapter 15: Waiting for the Other Shoe
• Chapter 16: Just Tryin’ to Pay the Bills, Ma’am
• Chapter 17: Living by the Sword
• Chapter 18: House Specialties
• Chapter 19: Trial and Error
• Chapter 20: When Memory Refuses to Serve
• Chapter 21: Time to Go
• Chapter 22: Standing on the Corner of Right and Wrong
• Chapter 23: Long List of Last Times
• Chapter 24: An Offer We Could Refuse
• Chapter 25: Di Has a Violent Streak
• Chapter 26: There’s No Place Like Home
• Chapter 27: Bloom Where You Are Planted
• Chapter 28: The Joy of No Joy
• Afterword
• About the Author