Hill Country wineries have their own ways

Josh Noel Comments 0
Published: July 5, 2009

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas — At Dry Comal Creek Vineyards and Winery, in the Texas Hill Country, there’s a recommendation for how to try the 2008 sauvignon blanc.

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Texas Hill Country is home to more than 60 wineries. For more information, go online to texaswinetrail.com.

Take a small sip and swallow. Then scoop some habanero jelly onto a cheap cracker, chew, sip the rest of the wine and swallow the whole mess.

Sure enough, it is delicious — sweet, spicy and salty, finished with a bright, dry alcoholic flourish. But wouldn’t that make the French wince?

"Yeah, they wouldn’t like it one bit,” said David King, 50, the bushy-haired redhead pouring samples in Dry Comal’s quaint, low-ceilinged tasting room. "But it’s a flavor combination we discovered a long time ago. Quite tasty.”

They do things their own way at Hill Country wineries.

Fifteen years ago there were a handful of Hill Country wineries; now there are more than 60. Because the dirt is shallow and rocky, few grow all their own grapes, and some grow none, buying from farmers elsewhere in Texas or some other Western state.

A few refuse to dabble in the grapes that won’t grow in their finicky soil, such as cabernets or merlots.

But something else fuels the area’s burgeoning industry: People want to be there.

Unlike dusty and desolate west Texas or smoggy, sprawling Dallas and Houston, the south-central part of the state is lush by Texas standards, cut by rocky cliffs and wooded with twisted junipers. Most of the wineries encourage long, relaxed tasting sessions, offering five or six samples for about a dollar a glass. Some have bed-and-breakfasts. The Texas Hill Country Wineries Tourism Bureau encourages road trips, offering passports to be stamped at each vineyard.

"When my sister told me we were going wine tasting in Texas, I said, ‘Oh, that should be great,’” said Stacey Roesberry, 24, of Portland, Ore., recounting her sniff of sarcasm. "But it has been great.”

"Texas has outdone Napa,” a Sister Creek winery employee told me. "They would probably disagree, but we have a lot of customers from Napa.”