The Wine Curmudgeon

Texas wine -- 10 years after (part II)

This is the second of two parts looking at where Texas wine has been, where it is, and where it’s going. Part I, which discussed the most important changes in Texas wine over the past decade, ran April 12. Today, some of the best wines I tasted during my trip to Fredricksburg.

Much has changed in the Hill Country wine business over the past decade that little has to do with the quality of the wine. The tasting rooms are more modern, more California in style and quite sophisticated; gone is the old “Mom and Pop, welcome to our dining room and have some wine” feel that was so common then.

Also new: tasting fees, which were unheard of a decade ago. Because, frankly, no one would have paid them. Consumers are also willing to pay top dollar for Texas wine. Few of the wines in the eight wineries I visited cost less than $20, but given the crowds, no one seemed to mind.

What I liked, after the jump:

Texas wine -- 10 years after (part I)

This is the first of two parts looking at where Texas wine has been, where it is, and where it’s going. Part II, detailing some of the best wines I tasted during my trip to the Hill Country, ran on April 15.

In the first years of this century, there were fewer than 100 wineries in Texas, and I knew almost everyone in the Texas wine business. Today, there are almost 300 wineries, and not only don’t I know them, but they don’t know me.

That growth is a function of two things: First, more favorable state regulation, which no longer treats a Texas winery as the work of the devil. Second, the increasing influence of all things local, and especially the local wine and food movements, which has helped to create an increasingly viable market for Texas wine.

Nothing demonstrates this better than Texas wine on restaurant wine lists. When I started going to the Hill Country in the early 1990s, it was almost impossible to find Texas wine in restaurants, and I annoyed more than one employee by asking why they didn't have Texas wine. This time, there was Texas wine on every list (including a brewpub), and the Cabernet Grill only has Texas wine.

In addition, the locals have made a commitment to Texas wine that didn't exist before. Ernie Loeffler, the director of the Fredericksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau, is knowledgeable about the local wine business, and sees it as a crucial part of the region's identity. Five wine country tour buses check in at his office every Saturday, and the percentage of visitors who say wine is why they're in town has tripled.

Even better, the quality of Texas wine was markedly improved. There was very little difference between the best Texas wines (at any price) and wines from the rest of the world. This does not mean that the state has solved all of its wine problems, and there is still too much poorly made and indifferent wine. But the changes have mostly been for the better, and there is no reason to believe that things won’t keep improving.

More, after the jump:

Wine of the week: Brennan Vineyards Buffalo Roam 2010

One of the greatest wines in the history of Texas was the 2006 Brennan syrah (and the 2007 wasn’t bad, either). I have waxed poetic about both, and the 2006 helped form the tweet that launched the local wine movement in 2009: “Texas wines aren’t s---.”

Unfortunately, Brennan no longer makes syrah. But it does make a red Rhone-style blend, the Buffalo Roam ($18, sample, 12.9%).

Yes, the wine isn’t $10 or $12 and availability is limited, two things I rarely do for the wine of the week. But this week, with the fifth annual Drink Local Wine conference just a couple of days away, I wanted to use this wine to show how far local wine has come – not just in Texas, but in much of the U.S.

Because there are hundreds of wines like this in the 47 states that aren’t California, Washington, and Oregon:

• It’s professionally made, without the flaws and off-flavors that were all too common in regional wine a decade ago.

• It reflects Texas terroir and a Texas style of winemaking – lower alcohol, earthy, spicy, less fruity and, above all, balanced. In this, it tastes like a Rhone-style wine that was made in Texas, not a California-style wine made with Rhone grapes that could come from anywhere, including the Rhone.

• It uses grapes suited to Texas, mourvedre and syrah, and not grapes grown in Texas because consumers have heard of them.

How impressive is this wine? So much so that I don’t even mind the name.

Gov. Perry to California: Bring your wineries to Texas

Perry: "Give us your high-dollar wine innovators, yearning to breathe free of taxes."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, calling California a bloated, over-sized mess of a state where the gummint makes it impossible to do bidness, announced today that all of California’s 3,400 wineries should move to Texas.

“Building a winery in California is next to impossible," said Perry, marking a whirlwind tour of the state’s leading wine appellations. “That’s why I’m here -- you fish where the fish are. You're at a tipping point in California from the standpoint of high-wealth wine innovators. Many are looking for somewhere else to go, and we'd like them to consider Texas."

Among the incentives Perry offered California wineries:

• Special appellation laws so that Napa and Sonoma wineries that move to Texas can still label their wine Napa and Sonoma. “It’s all about getting gummint out of the way of bidness,” he said. “Who are we to tell entrepreneurs how to run their wineries?”

• Elimination of the state’s three-tier system, allowing the relocated wineries to sell their wine to whoever they want, where they want, and how they want. “Gummint red tape and bureaucracy stifle bidness, and we don’t let that happen in Texas,” he said.

• Repeal of Texas’ environmental and labor regulations, allowing the re-located wineries to ignore federal EPA and hiring and firing rules. “It’s not like we had many of those to begin with,” said Perry, '”so it was no trouble at all to get rid of them.”

Reaction from California was swift, coming as it did after the state’s unsuccessful plan to let its wine regions secede from the United States. Said Gov. Jerry Brown: “I used to date Linda Ronstadt. And he presumes to tell me how to run the state? Who has he ever dated?”

In Texas, the legislature, debating whether it should offer Texas A&M tax incentives to re-join the Big 12, issued a statement saying that wine was fine as far as it went, but that it would never replace sweet tea and Dr Pepper in the hearts and minds of real Texans.

The Texas wine industry, which lost its state funding for research and marketing after a Perry budget edict in 2011, said through a spokesman that it completely understood the governor’s plan and would stand in the corner and not make any noise or complain in any way.

On the road in search of Texas wine

The Wine Curmudgeon has not done much with regional wine lately, and especially with Texas wine. Just too much going on, what with The Cheap Wine Book, a new consulting gig, keeping the blog up to date, and even some freelance magazine writing.

Which is why I’m spending next week in the Texas Hill Country on a media tour, visiting as many wineries and tasting rooms as possible. My reports will appear on the blog over the next couple of months; I want to try and put Texas wine in perspective, not only with other Texas wine, but with other regional wine – and, even, the stuff made in California.

There is no doubt that Texas wine long ago passed what the noted Texas food writer Dotty Griffith calls the Chateau Bubba stage. The quality of Texas wine has never been better, and more wine drinkers than ever know this. A Texas wine Twitter event in January was such a success that #TxWine was the site's most popular hashtag that evening – not easy to do on a social media network where the Kardashians are the top attraction. And how about a Texas wine stunning the food types at a barbecue cook-off in the Pacific Northwest earlier this year, besting wines from California, Washington, and France?

But does that mean, at all prices and for all producers, that Texas wine is ready for the big time? That’s the next challenge regional wine faces, that it can compete dollar for dollar with wine from the rest of the world. And that’s what I’ll be looking for.

One personal note: I’ve resigned as president of DrinkLocalWine, and won’t be at the Maryland conference next month. Just too much else going on to allow me to organize my fifth conference in five years. I have no doubt that the Baltimore event will be DLW’s usual smashing success, thanks to the efforts of people like Michael Wangbickler, the new president, and Richard Leahy, who is spearheading the conference.

This will be the first DLW event that I’ve missed since Dave McIntyre and I started the group almost six years ago. I’ll miss it (though not managing the bank account) – not only for the wine, but for the wonderful people I’ve met who make regional wine so much fun. But not to worry, becasue I’m still a regional wine guy, and anyone who doubts that doesn’t know the Wine Curmudgeon very well.

Texas wine, Ming Tsai and John Besh

The Wine Curmudgeon, ever vigilant, fully expected to write one of those "Well, what do you expect posts?" when I saw Ming Tsai cook with John Besh on the former's PBS show a couple of weeks ago. Both men, and Besh in particular, are ardent supporters of the local food movement, but I don't know that either has really been associated with or embraced local wine.

So I didn't expect them to pair a Texas wine with their meals, prepared at Luke, Besh's new restaurant in San Antonio. Imagine my shock -- and pleasure -- when Besh poured a Texas cabernet sauvignon to drink with his country fried quail and Tsai's pan roasted chicken. He didn't say whose cabernet it was, but the restaurant wine lists includes the Becker Vineyards Iconoclast.

How happy was I? Enough to overlook the fact that cabernet is not what we do best in Texas, and that a tempranillo would have paired better and been more representative of Texas wine. Also, Besh said Texas sells grapes to other parts of the country. Which we don't, because we don't have enough for Texas winemakers to use.

It was enough to see two big-time, celebrity chefs drinking local wine on national television. What better way to get ready for DLW 2013 in Baktimore, featuring Maryland wine, in six weeks?

Good news about Texas wine -- no thanks to the state of Texas

Texas legislature? We don't need no stinking Texas legislature.

The fall wine season in Texas continues this month, and the Wine Curmudgeon will play his part at Grapefest at 4:15 p.m. on Thursday. I’ll talk about the changes in Texas wine, what to look for in the next couple of years, and how the situation is much improved from a year ago.

The Texas wine industry has finally figured out that the state will be about as much help in the future as an umbrella in an earthquake. The Texas legislature, which had done so much to assist local wine, decided last year that creating jobs and boosting the rural economy was not nearly as important as whining about big gummint and worrying about college football.

Hence the news late this summer that the Texas Wine & Grape Growers Association will start taxing itself to replace some of the money lost when the legislature cut funding for research and marketing. The program, similar to what trade groups in other states do (see California milk), is at least a year away, but that the state’s 250 wineries could agree that it needed to be done speaks volumes about how desperate the situation has become.

More good news, as well as a few things we still need to fix, after the jump: