of an investor group that remains rather opaque.) Genevieve winery, but sold it and now it is the privately owned L.P. (What there hasn't been yet is any lasting foreign investment similar to that by French, German, and Italian wine producers in places like Washington State, Chile, and China France's Domaine Cordier briefly came into the market in the 1980s to build Ste. Cuadra was recommended by Paul Hobbs, who makes acclaimed wines in California and Argentina, and close observers note that he has already had an effect with the winery's impressive 2013 sauvignon blanc and 2013 GSM. In 2013, there was a visible example of this when Fall Creek Vineyards of Tow, in the Hill Country, hired Chilean winemaker Sergio Cuadra, an alumnus of Concha y Toro, where he served as principal winemaker at its Curicó, Puente Alto, and Colchagua facilities. Another is that Texas wineries are stepping into the worldwide labor market for winemaking talent. Medals are only one metric of quality, of course. We are observers at a moment when the Texas wine industry is undergoing a seismic shift. The only explanation for the increase is improved quality. Since these are out-of-state competitions, there is no "home field advantage." In fact, 80 percent of these medals came from shows in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Finger Lakes. However, in 2011, the medal count took a dramatic turn up, reaching 164 medals in 2014. The number hovered around 30 medals per year for about a quarter of a century. Perhaps the most important trend of all is the number of medals won by Texas wines in out-of-state wine competitions from 1984 to 2014. There are now around 300 bonded wineries in the state, although fewer than half are producing about 40 of the wineries are aspirational, in the sense that they consistently strive to make the best wine possible from Texas grapes. That is the area where blanc du bois and Lenoir plantings are most common. In the south and east of the state, a band of Pierce's Disease susceptibility runs from the Louisiana border down the Gulf coast to Houston. With these conditions, Vitis vinifera (European wine grape) varieties are ubiquitous in this region. In the High Plains, the near-desert humidity produces low disease pressure, but the area is prone to late-spring frosts that can destroy the crop if they follow bud break. It is an area the size of France, though, so there are localized issues. The state has no statewide disease or climatic problems.
Seventy percent of these grapes grow in the High Plains region, although the state's wineries are concentrated in the Texas Hill Country. ( Elsewhere, I have written other articles on Texas enology and viticulture that provide a more complete picture.)Īccording to the 2012 USDA agriculture survey, Texas has the fifth-largest acreage of wine grapes of any state in the union, with about 8,000 acres. However, there is a huge amount going on. We still don't know exactly where to grow grapes and which varieties are best. Texas is at an early stage on the path to a fully mature winegrowing state. The most important issue is the real story taking place on the ground. Faced with this double whammy of vacuousness, maybe the lesson Texas wine lovers need to learn is that we are doing a terrible job of telling our (overwhelmingly encouraging) story - doubly bad for a state with a reputation for having a big mouth.
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