Coming to America Scenic hills with tall pine trees fringed my East Texas path to produce a cloistered environment with an emerald cast. As I drove, I thought about how modern man conjoins with nature on a grand scale in Texas: acres under barn, vast countryside dedicated to row crops, white wooden fences extending to […]
Archive | Terroir
RSS feed for this section
The Supreme Expérimentateur
The Supreme Expérimentateur I headed out across the vast prairie on Highway 81 past Decatur in the region once dominated by this seemingly impenetrable forest. The land opened around me with only remnant fingers of dense Cross Timbers brush tucked into prairie folds, the last vestige of this barrier once called the “iron forest.” Hawks […]
Sun on the Skins
Sun on the Skins This high, flat plain [around Lubbock] didn’t exactly conjure up the image of wine country to me. The scenery was dominated by shades of burnt red below and indigo above. At the conjunction of these two domains, lean and well-drained soil combines with intense high-altitude sun, a little water, and copious […]
Chihuahuan Love
Chihuahuan Love My stop on this trip, over a hundred miles to the east [of El Paso, TX], a mere stone’s throw in Texas terms, was Dell City and the Mont Sec Vineyard nearby. This vineyard, first planted over two decades ago and now consisting of over two hundred acres of wine grapes, constitutes the […]
A Sip with the Good Friar
A Sip with the Good Friar “When we entered the region, we saw grapes growing wild along the rivers of Tejas and they looked like I imagined they did for hundreds of years. The vines were thick, hanging from the trees on the river banks, and sometimes covered rocks and ledges.” This is how Father […]
Limestone Ledges and Red Sandy Soils
Limestone Ledges and Red Sandy Soils The spring sun warmed my face as I gazed out over freshly greened prominences to the north from a perch high on an eastward-pointing finger of the Edwards Plateau: my personal piece of the Texas Hill Country. I sat there wondering how and where did the Texas wine experience […]
A Wineslinger is Born
A Wineslinger is Born One evening, I wrote about this seemingly odd comparison between Texas and southern Australia. Most wine aficionados know the Coonawarra (also known by its terra rossa, or red earth) as the most sought-after vineyard soil in Australia. It too covers bedrock of porous limestone, assisting good drainage but offering summer moisture […]
