Tag Archives: Texas wine

Gov. Perry to California: Bring your wineries to Texas

rick perry
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, said 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?

Winebits 261: Joe Pollack, Texas wine, most powerful women

? College scholarship: The St. Louis Media History Foundation has established a college scholarship in honor of Joe Pollack, who died earlier this year. Joe was not only a great wine writer, but a fine human being who was a huge supporter of what we did with DrinkLocalWine. He could also tell a story with the best of them, and I missed that this year. I can hear him analyzing everything that happened, whether the presidential election or Robert Parker. Contributions to the scholarship fund are tax-deductible; contact the foundation for donation information.

? Best Texas wines: Two of the state ?s best critics have published their top 2012 wines, and there are some impressive efforts on both lists. What struck me about Jessica Dupuy at Texas Monthly's selections was the breadth ? not just the same old names. Russ Kane at Vintage Texas had red and white posts; Russ does love his tempranillo (which I note because I never thought it would amount to anything in Texas, and I was quite wrong).

? Most powerful women: The Drinks Business trade magazine, based in Britain, shows why it may be the most insightful liquor trade in the world with this top 50 list. It includes two Americans in the top three, neither of whom has initials after their names or has anything to do with Bordeaux, which are usually the only types who make these lists. Gina Gallo is No .1 because her family ?s company, E&J Gallo, ?sold 75 million cases of wine last year, up 7 percent on 2010, dwarfing second place Concha y Toro ?s 29.7 million. ? In third was Costco ?s Annette Alvarez-Peters, one ?of the most powerful wine buyers in the world, responsible for influencing hundreds of thousands of consumer palates. ?

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

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:

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Kerrville Wine & Music Festival 2012

This is the fifth year that I’ve done the Kerrville Wine & Music Festival, and it always reminds me how passionate ordinary wine drinkers are about local wine. Which is a good thing, because even I sometimes need a reminder.

This year’s audience asked the usual sort of intelligent questions (and they always want to know the price, of course), and we got a very favorable response when I asked them to contact their local legislator to help restore state funding for grape research. The Texas legislature convenes next year — God save us.

? I spent two days tasting Texas wine in the Hill Country (at the festival and at several wineries). It’s not so much that the wines were well made, because I expect that. Rather, it’s that I didn’t taste any embarrassing wines, which is always the risk when one walks in the door of a regional winery. Case in point was the Los Pinos moscato reserve, which could have been sweet and syrupy but was sweet and mostly balanced. The level of professionalism in Texas is much, much improved, which is the key to further success.

? How else have things changed? I spent an hour or so on Sunday afternoon at the Messina Hof tasting room outside of Fredericksburg, and I was far from the only one there. If someone had told me 20 years ago, when I started writing about Texas wine, that so many people would be at a winery on a Sunday afternoon having such a good time drinking Texas wine, I would not have believed them.

? Wines I enjoyed on this visit: The McPherson rousanne, which is so well done that I wish people elsewhere had a chance to taste it; the Llano Estacado sauvignon blanc, which always surprises me given that it should be too hot here to make quality sauvignon blanc (and it’s only $10 or so retail); the 2011 Haak reserve blanc du bois, which takes blanc du bois where it has never gone before; and the William Chris Emotion, a sturdy red blend with some potential.

? The music was, as always, worth the trip. Whit Hill pulled out her legendary “Cook a Chicken,” which I need to run as a holiday post if there is a video of it. Alicia McGovern is one of my favorite kinds of folk singers — vulnerable, poetic, and questioning. Though I will never understand the current popularity of the ukele.

? A tip o’ the Wine Curmudgeon’s fedora to Josephine Street restaurant in San Antonio, which pairs its Texas cuisine with Texas wine (though it would have been nice to see a couple of reds to go with the two whites on the dozen bottle or so list). I don’t eat at Josephine Street every time I’m in San Antonio, but when I do, I’m always glad I did. It’s cheap, the service makes some of Dallas’ five-star restaurants look like Chili’s, and the food is always what it should be.

? The speed limit on State Highway 130, the toll road bypass around Austin, is 80 mph. It was quite a shock to see the 80 on the speed limit sign, and what was even weirder is that half the cars weren’t driving 80. Or that the toll road is barely used at all.

Lone Star International Wine Competition 2012

The first day of judging in the 29th annual event, which focuses on Texas but includes wines from other regional states, California, and the world, was not much fun. The quality of the wine was uneven at best, and many of the judges I talked to wondered if the 2011 competition, perhaps the best ever, had been a fluke.

Not to worry. The second day, when we judged best of class, reaffirmed my faith in the quality of Texas wine. In many ways, it was a landmark for the state ?s producers. The wines that earned top honors were distinctive and reflected Texas ? terroir, demonstrating that wineries here finally seem to have figured out that they should not make chardonnay and merlot, but wines better suited for our climate and soil.

I can ?t emphasize enough how disappointing the first day of the competition was. Regional chardonnay is often poorly made, but the ones we tasted were even more poorly made than usual ? green and stemmy and unripe. Someone entered a white zinfandel in a red wine category, which was either a cynical attempt to fool the judges or just plain dumb. Most of the sweet wines, usually a pleasure to taste, were candy bar sugary sweet, hardly the stuff great wine is made of.

All that changed on the second day. We judged seven best of class flights, and almost all of the wines were exceptional. That rarely happens; there are always several wines that raise eyebrows and make us wonder how they got a gold medal. There were 34 gold medals among the 515 entries, compared to 58 golds and 650 entries last year.

Best yet, six of the seven wines that won were made from a lesser known vinifera or hybrid ? exactly the grapes that should be grown here. And the seventh was a red blend developed for Texas, which was also good news. A few highlights:

? The winner in the the best white table wine from Texas category was a blanc du bois from Chisholm Trail in the Hill Country. It ?s not so much that a blanc du bois won, which was impressive enough, but that it beat two outstanding wines in the process, an albarino and a viogner (two other grapes that have made great strides in Texas).

? In the Texas red table wine category, Texas ? Llano Estacado won with its sangiovese blend, the 2008 Viviano. I ?ve always enjoyed this wine, which is an excellent example of how grapes that don ?t like it here, like cabernet sauvignon, can be blended with something like sangiovese, which does like it here, to make excellent wine.

? A syrah from Kiepersol in east Texas was astoundingly well made ? blended with a little viognier to produce an elegant, supple wine and well deserving of its gold medal.

? Presque Isle in Pennsylvania makes some fabulous dessert wines, and if you can find their Lake Erie Eskimo Kisses, made with vidal, buy it (despite the name). I actually drank the whole glass, which never happens at a judging.

? A big thanks to Sonya Terpening, our table captain who put up with us, and to my fellow judges, including Hunter Hammett of Dallas ? Pyramid Room, whose palate is matched by his wicked sense of humor; and my old pal Bill Rich of Glazer ?s, the distributor.

Finally, a note about something that has emerged as an issue in many regional competitions ? local wineries that use grapes from elsewhere (mostly California) and then enter them as local wines. That happened at Lone Star this year, but the competition czar, Michael Zerbach, said the rules will likely change for next year. He wants to add a special category for these wines ? call it local wines made with un-local grapes– so that they compete against similar wines and not in the Texas category. That ?s a terrific idea, and one I support wholeheartedly.

Photo from the 2010 Lone Star competition courtesy of Russ Kane at Vintage Texas