T Staging a Texas Renaissance: The Wineslinger Chronicles Forward by Doug Frost MS, MW If you picked up this book, you’ve already demonstrated a keen awareness for the sleeping juggernaut that is Texas wine. Perhaps you’re curious about Texas’s current role in the wine industry, or at minimum, the evolution and likely future of Texas […]
Tag Archives: Texas wine
Coming to America
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 […]
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 […]
A Strong Texas Brand
A Strong Texas Brand No sooner did I arrive at the winery than a barrage of words shot in my direction without any encouragement or provocation from my side. “I’ve been doing this for far too long . . . I get rocks thrown at me. Why? I guess that I just don’t play nice […]
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 […]
Blood, Sweat and Tears
Blood, Sweat and Tears Bobby Cox is a larger-than-life character both in stature and reputation among grape growers and winemakers. He’s something like a Texas version of Paul Bunyan, and Neal Newsom’s large blue grape harvester parked beside him appeared as the mechanical equivalent of Bunyan’s large blue ox, Babe. While Bunyan was a legendary […]
Deep Roots in Texas
Deep Roots in Texas Looking out from the road, the isolation in this part of Texas provides little to identify the era. It could be the present day, or just as likely the countryside of the nineteenth century when Frencesco Quaglia and his Italian immigrant countrymen scouted this area. As I slipped into Del Rio […]
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 […]
