Russ Kane VintageTexas on SommChat Wednesday 1/28 11AM CT – Discuss Texas Hill Country Wines & Wineries
This January marks my 20th year since first finding out that Texas had a native (yet still infantile) wine industry and operating as a consumer, wine group director, wine writer and blogger. In 1995, there were less than 40 wineries in the whole state, but now Texas stands with over 300 wineries with at least 50 of them in the Texas Hill Country alone. January also marks this anniversary with the publication of my second book on Texas wines: Texas Hill Country Wineries (from Arcadia Publications) – a pictorial history and wine trail guide to the central Texas wineries and the Texas Hill Country wine experience.
This Wednesday morning at 11 am until 12 noon CT, I will go live on Sommchat, a one hour long twitter chat hosted by Keeper Collection. I will be there to discuss my book and answer your questions on the Texas Hill Country Wineries and why the Texas Hill Country was names to the Wine Enthusiast’s 2014 List of Top 10 Must See International Wine Destinations. I will be joined by members of the Texas Hill Country Wineries wine trail. I have also invited some of Texas’s best and brightest sommeliers to join us.
In my opinion, the Texas Hill Country is the culmination of over 300 years of wine culture that has evolved in Texas.
Texas grapes grows in soils made from ancient sea limestone deposits, similar to the grape-growing regions of Europe. Texas wine culture arrived in the 1600s with Spanish missionaries who settled and planted vineyards in El Paso Del Norte. The 1800s brought German and Italian immigrant farmers to Texas.They considered wine a staple of everyday life and found ways cultivate grapes in their new land and ways to keep the industry alive even during times of Prohibition.
In what is now America’s No. 5 wine-producing state and the Texas hill country contains the highest density of wineries in the state and one of the three largest American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) in the United States. It may surprise some, but not the wine aficionados who have visited the Texas Hill Country’s 50 or more wineries that wine-and-culinary tourism is currently the Texas Hill Country’s fastest growing sector.
Hope to tweet with you on SommChat this week.
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To participate just use your Twitter account at www.twitter.com, but don’t forget to use the hashtag #sommchat so others can see and follow what you tweet. You can also go to the TweetChat room set up for #Sommchat (http://tweetchat.com/room/sommchat). No registration is required; you can login using your Twitter account info. In the TweetChat room, participants are invited to follow tweets, add comments or tasting notes and share thoughts as participants taste and discuss the wines. Another Twitter chat website which works well is: http://www.tchat.io/rooms/sommchat. On TweetChat and TChat the hashtag #sommchat will automatically be added.
