Texas Hill Country emerges as a wine region, thanks to hard work and luck

When co-owners Andrew Bilger and his brother, Mike, the winery supervisor and winemaker, surveyed the wear and tear, they discovered the ripening grape clusters have been in large part intact, cushioned by means of heavy netting put in a few weeks previous to offer protection to them from birds and hail.

The cavalry arrived tomorrow. Neighboring wineries despatched winery employees to assist. Club participants confirmed up to volunteer. It took two days to bend the vines upright and set up new trellising.

“We had two miracles,” Andy Bilger mentioned later. The spring were cool and surprisingly wet up till early June, rejuvenating the wines after a drought in 2022. “The vines were refreshed and supple so they didn’t snap in the wind. The second miracle was the community really came together and helped.”

Three months later, the ones grapes — most commonly sangiovese and a number of Portuguese types — have been harvested in just right form. Andy Bilger realizes any injury to his vines would possibly not display till subsequent 12 months, however he’s constructive as a result of they have been ready to deliver this 12 months’s crop to the end line.

That hurricane hit Stonewall within the early days of a warmth dome over Texas that despatched temperatures into the triple digits for greater than 40 days within the Texas Hill Country, an American Viticultural Area that takes in Austin, San Antonio and Fredericksburg. Similar prerequisites prevailed within the Texas High Plains AVA, the panhandle farm area round Lubbock, the place about 80 % of the state’s grapes are grown. Several vineyards in each spaces additionally suffered hail injury, a every year threat. Excessive warmth additionally hit the Texas Davis Mountains AVA, with elevations as top as 8,300 toes, and the Mesilla Valley AVA, a faraway mountainous house north and west of El Paso that produces extremely prized grapes.

I spent a week in Texas Hill Country in early October, simply as the warmth used to be waning. In visits to 11 wineries — there are greater than 50 within the Hill Country AVA — I were given a sense of a younger, assured wine area keen to inform the remainder of the sector its tale. Invariably the tale started with this wacky antique of 2023 and incorporated harbingers such as the “Halloween Massacre” freeze in 2019 that critically restricted the following 12 months’s crop and Texas’ personal “Snowpocalypse” of February 2021, when a statewide deep freeze shattered the electrical energy grid and drove Ted Cruz to Cancún.

The Hill Country is the tourism middle for Texas wine, given its proximity to Austin and San Antonio. Wineries right here steadily foster a sense of neighborhood, enlisting membership participants to assist at occasions. My San Antonio buddies, Miriam and Doug Juckett, found out this neighborhood 3 years in the past as refugees from covid lockdown fatigue and offered me to a number of wineries the place they’re now regulars. I additionally visited 4 older wineries that experience arranged as Texas Fine Wine to carry the Lone Star State’s wine profile nationally.

My advent got here at Siboney Cellars, the place Miguel and Barbara Lecuona hosted a rollicking Sunday afternoon celebration celebrating new wine releases. Events there steadily have a Cuban theme, with Panama hats, cigars and song to have fun Miguel’s heritage. (Siboney — pronounced see-bo-NAY — is called for a widespread Cuban love ballad written a century in the past by means of Ernesto Lecuona, Miguel’s great-uncle.)

Befitting a younger wine area, there’s innovation and experimentation. At Bending Branch vineyard in Comfort, Dr. Bob Young employs trendy era such as flash détente and cryo-extraction to squeeze as a lot essence from his tannat grapes as imaginable. More modestly, Lydia and Rob Nida at Pebble Rock Cellars apply a minimalist trail to make extra natural-style wines.

When I visited, the Hill Country had completed its harvest, however a number of lots of tempranillo and mourvedre, two of the Spanish and Mediterranean types Texas emphasizes, have been nonetheless putting within the High Plains, their ripening slowed after the vines close down from the warmth. The winemakers I met confirmed the weariness of constructing a number of 12-hour round-trip commutes to test at the vineyards.

“The High Plains is a mecca of grape growing, with 3,000-foot elevation and cool nights,” explains Dave Reilly, winemaker at Duchman Family Winery in Driftwood. “The Hill Country has tourism. You can grow great grapes here, but the land is expensive.”

Is all this wacky climate a signal of local weather alternate? It could also be too early to inform, because the Texas wine business is somewhat younger and lacks ancient knowledge.

“It’s just Texas,” says Ron Yates, proprietor and winemaker at Spicewood Vineyards in Spicewood and his eponymous vineyard close to Johnson City. “Hot, cold, we deal with it every year.”

“The one thing you can’t control is what Mother Nature will give you,” says Ben Calais, a French-born laptop engineer became winemaker and co-owner along with his spouse, Victoria, of French Connection Wines and Calais Wines. “What is the natural noise of Texas and what is climate change?”

Here are a few of my favourite wines I tasted in Texas Hill Country, indexed alphabetically by means of vineyard. In common, be expecting lush, full-bodied whites from Rhône types such as viognier and roussanne, with some just right sauvignon blanc and chenin blanc as nicely. Reds generally tend to be daring and mouth-filling. They give a sense of heat from the local weather, with out being sizzling in the case of alcohol. Most of those are offered without delay from the wineries.

• Adega Vinho Viognier Reserve 2021: Lush and floral, with tremendous stability. The 2022 just lately was the primary Texas white wine to take best prize on the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo International Wine Competition. (Adega Vinho)
• Bending Branch Tannat 2019 Tallent Vineyards: Savory and harmonious, with well-integrated black fruit flavors and oak construction. (Bending Branch Winery)
• Calais Winery 2021 Cuvée du Noyer Semillon 2021: From west of El Paso. Classic fig and praline flavors, with wealthy texture. (Calais Winery)
• Duchman Family Winery Aglianico 2017 Oswald Vineyard: Elegant dried-fruit flavors, with baking spices, black tea and olives over a lengthy end. (Duchman Family Winery)
• French Connection Wines La Connection Rosé 2021: Mourvedre within the vintage Bandol genre, savory and age-worthy. (French Connection Wines)
• Inwood Estates Magnus 2017: Extreme center of attention on viticulture and low yields (0.3 lots in step with acre) produces this inky, deep and velvety mix of tempranillo and cabernet sauvignon within the genre of Ribera del Duero. If Vega Sicilia have been in Texas … (Inwood Estates)
• Pebble Rock Cellars Sagrantino 2019: Light and hovering, spreading spice like pixie mud. (Pebble Rock Cellars)
• Pedernales Cellars Tempranillo 2020 Lahey Vineyard: Classic tempranillo flavors of blueberry jam, tobacco leaf, as nicely as a plush texture. (Pedernales Cellars)
• Siboney Cellars Merlot “Storm Breaker” 2019: So named as a result of a lightning hurricane struck all of sudden whilst the grapes have been being harvested. Classic merlot, polished with power and rigidity. (Siboney Cellars)
• Spicewood Vineyards Tandem Red Blend 2019: A Rhône-style mix of carignan and mourvedre. Ripe and juicy, with lip-smacking peppery spice. (Spicewood Vineyards)