The Wine Curmudgeon

Texas and Drink Local Wine's sixth annual Regional Wine Week

Regional wine week started yesterday, and what kind of co-founder and past president would I be if I didn't participate? So here are my links for this year's effort, focusing on the changes in Texas wine since I started writing about it:

• How much more accepted is Texas wine than just five years ago? The culinary students I spoke to on Thursday night at Dallas' El Centro College were interested not because they were supposed to be, but because they really wanted to know about Texas wine. Contrast this with the culinary students I taught at the Cordon Bleu, whose main interest in Texas wine came when I drew my not very accurate map of Texas on the board.

• Not only has Texas wine changed, but so have the people drinking Texas wine -- the focus of a story I wrote for the Texas Wine and Trail website. The new generation of Texas wine drinkers I talked to this fall were not "the older Anglos who have powered the local wine movement in the state since the 1990s, and doing yeoman work in the process. Rather, they were younger and, at Grapefest and especially at its People’s Choice wine tasting and competition, less white. I talked to a Chinese husband and wife who asked such detailed questions about what was going on and which wineries to visit that I couldn’t answer all of them."

• A French producer made sparkling wine in the state 30 years ago, though the winery eventually failed. Still, one has to admire the effort: "Texas-made sparkling wine is rare, even today. Thirty years ago, when there were only a handful of wineries in the state, it was much less practical. Sparkling wine is difficult, coslty, and time-consuming to make, requires top-notch grapes, and needs an established market for its products."

• The Hill Country is the focal point for Texas wine for most consumers, and it has undergone huge changes, too -- not only in the numer of wineries and quality of the wine, but in how the region sees wine in terms of tourism and its economy. Ten years ago, wine was an afterthought; today, Highway 290, with its dozens of wineries, could be a wine trail in California.

• And what would a Texas wine post be without reviews of Texas wine?

Once more on the wine trail in Texas

Last weekend was Kerrville. This weekend is Grapefest. To paraphrase my pal the Italian Wine Guy, the more time I spend away, the more I appreciate getting back.

The blog, all those years ago, was about Texas wine more often than not. These days, it’s rarely about Texas wine – my audience is all over the world, so I don’t write about something most of the visitors can’t get. But that doesn’t mean that Texas wine isn’t important to me.

I am reminded of that every year when I go to Kerrville. This year was no different – a smart, knowledgeable audience that asked intelligent questions and wanted to learn more about what was going on in Texas. More importantly, the quality of the wine we tasted was among the best in the six years I’ve been doing the festival.

And, as Tom Fikes of Duchman Family Winery noted more than once during the discussion of wines from Los Pinos, McPherson, William Chris, and Duchman, what we tasted were part of the next generation of Texas winemaking – wine made with grapes better suited for Texas’ climate and terroir, and wines made with grapes grown in Texas. As I’ve noted before, these are the two most important trends in Texas, and they are reshaping the business.

This is the fifth year that I’ll be speaking at Grapefest, which is best known for the People’s Choice Awards, a wine competition that is exactly what it sounds like. Almost 40 Texas wineries pour wine, and consumers taste and vote. Who needs wine experts anyway?

I’ll be speaking at 5:30 p.m. Friday, 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, and noon on Sunday -- and indoors, for all you who want to come but don't want to endure our 100-degree fall weather. The subject will be about Texas wine and cheap wine, and I may even plug The Cheap Wine Book, which should be available in e-book form later this week.

The good old days of Texas champagne

The Moyer Texas Champagne company lasted about a decade, long enough to reportedly supply wine for George H.W. Bush’s presidential inauguration in 1988.

An Ohioan named Ken Moyer founded the company and made his first bubbly in 1983. He sold Moyer several years later to a French wine executive, Henri Bernabe, who vowed to “compete head to head with the best of California. We plan to fill a void in the marketplace.”

Texas-made sparkling wine is rare, even today. Thirty years ago, when there were only a handful of wineries in the state, it was much less practical. Sparkling wine is difficult, coslty, and time-consuming to make, requires top-notch grapes, and needs an established market for its products. Moyer and later Bernabe used methode champenoise to make their wine, complicating an already complicated business.

That’s because Texas’ producers had neither the skill nor the quality fruit (nor much fruit at all) to do bubbly well then, and the idea that there was a market for it – when it took 20 years for a Texas wine identity to develop – is the definition of “Champagne wishes and caviar dreams.”

Yes, you’re asking, but how did it taste? The Wine Curmudgeon never had any, but my pal John Bratcher, who sold the wine during his retail days in Lubbock, says he remembers two styles -- dry and sweet, and they were OK, nothing more. What really hampered sales, though, says Bratcher, was the price, which was about as much as an entry-level Champagne cost in the mid-1980s.

The New York Times gives its seal of approval to regional wine

So now we can all take a deep breath, pat ourselves on the back, and enjoy the warm glow of a job well done.

Probably not. But we’re a lot closer to that point then we were when Drink Local Wine took its first steps almost six years ago. That’s what happens when perhaps the world’s most important news operation writes this in a front page story in Sunday’s business section:

As American palettes have evolved from Budweiser to Brunello di Montalcino, wineries have popped up in all 50 states, from the shores of Lake Michigan to the Texas Hill Country. While California dominates, accounting for 90 percent of the country’s production, state governments nationwide are looking to wine to drive tourism and bolster agriculture.

Even more important is that the story was in the business section, with its hard news slant. This was not a “Gee, isn’t it cute, someone is making wine outside of California and France” story, but a money-focused, results-oriented piece in a part of the paper where Gretchen Morgenson (who deserves about 20 Pulitzer Prizes for her work) tell us how Big Banking is playing fast and loose with our tax dollars. Can’t get much better validation than that.

And the Times’ piece will make it OK for editors at newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and other news outlets to do regional wine stories – even, and especially, if they had dismissed them before. That’s the way the news business works: If the Times says something is a story, then it’s a story. I can hear assignment desk bosses now: “Say, isn’t there a winery around here we can do something on?”

Yes, it would have been nice if Drink Local Wine had been mentioned, but who am I to quibble at a time like this? This spread, combined with Times wine guru Eric Asimov’s enthusiastic endorsement of New York wine in 2011, reinforces what we have been arguing since 2008: That regional wine is both economically and critically viable, and that the wine business and its consumers ignore local wine at their own risk.

Like Texas, where the Perry administration sacrificed wine (as well as education and highways and green energy) to the governor’s presidential ambitions in 2012, slashing the budget to establish his conservative credentials. We saw where that went. Hopefully, it’s not too late for the state to restore the pittance it spent on wine research and marketing so that Texas isn’t left behind as regional wine joins the mainstream.

Lone Star International Wine Competition 2013

We saw the future of Texas wine during one of the championship flights at the 30th annual competition this week, where there wasn’t a chardonnay in sight. The five wines competing for best white from Texas were all outstanding, and each was worthy of winning -- two Rhone blends, a viognier, a roussanne, and an albarino.

Can I write, finally and after 20 years, that Texas producers and growers have figured this thing out? More, after the jump:

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: