Texas Wine School Offers First-Of-Its-Kind Texas Wine Authority Course
This course will meet in three classes, 3 hours each on consecutive Wednesday evenings (January 13/20/27, 2016), 6:30 – 9:30 pm each day at Houston’s Texas Wine School. Course instructor: Dr. Russell D. Kane (Doc Russ, Texas Wineslinger) of VintageTexas.
Course Summary
Texas Wine Authority is a first-of-its kind program offered by the Texas Wine School in the Rice Village area of Houston. It offers a comprehensive series of classes featuring the unique wines and wine regions of Texas. Never before has there been a wine program with specific classes focused solely on Texas.
The program exposes students to unique landscapes of the major wine regions in Texas: Texas High Plains, Texas Hill Country, Texoma, Escondido Valley, and Davis Mountains AVAs, as well as non-AVA regions of East Texas and Gulf Coast. This learning and tasting intensive program features important topics critical to the success of today’s wine professionals and savvy consumers that are looking for the best wines and wine values that emerging wine region of Texas has to offer.
Class Bonus
Each of the three classes will include a visit from a representative from the Texas wine industry who will share experiences applicable to Texas grape growing, winemaking and retail/wholesale sales, and guided tasting of four wines. Currently scheduled class guests are:
January 13 – Doug Lewis, Co-owner & Winemaker, Lewis Wines, Johnson City, TX
January 20 – Fritz Westover, Viticultural Consultant, Westover Vineyard Advising, Houston, TX
January 27 – Greg Bruni, Executive Winemaker, Llano Estacado Winery in Lubbock, TX.
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Course Details
This three-part class will be presented by Dr. Russell Kane who has followed the Texas wine industry for 20 years and who has provided extensive commentary, tasting notes and articles covering this topic. The course will include:
- Details of each Texas wine region (American Viticultural Area), including location, geologic history, soils, climate and leading grape varieties grown in the region.
- The evolution of Texas winemaking from its early Spanish and immigrant European period (1600-1800) and early post-Prohibition (1940-1990) and modern period (1990-present), with a focus on winemaking techniques and grape varieties; the major role of Texas in Europe’s vineyards overcoming Phylloxera infestation in the 1800s; milestones and contributions of key people to the development of the Texas wine industry.
- The links and contrasts between Texas wines and their old & new world counterparts through lectures, and guided and blind tastings with benchmark wines.
- Each class will have a representative from the Texas wine industry’s grape growing, winemaking or winery owner communities in Texas that will be available to provide first-hand knowledge, Q&A and guided tasting.
The guided tastings will include over 24 Texas and benchmark international wines. Tastings will include a range of grape varieties and blends originating from northern Europe (France), Mediterranean (Italy, S. France, Spain, Portugal) and hybrid wines from Texas and other American appellations. These tastings will help students understand the distinctions of wines from selected Texas regions and grape varieties and their attributes versus their counterparts in the American and global wine world.
The program concludes with an opportunity to test your knowledge of the wines, regions and laws on an exam. The credential of Texas Wine Authority will be awarded to those that pass the rigorous exam at the end of the series with a score of 80% or higher. The examination is optional and is held at extra cost.
Further details and registration at:
Texas Wine School
Date: January 13, 2016
Time: 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Cost:$174.60 (auditing students without exam) – $242.50 (students with exam certification held the last hour of the final class)
Venue : The Texas Wine School
Address : 2437 Bartlett Street, Houston, TX 77098 United States
Phone: 713 882 8773
Registration Link – http://thetexaswineschool.com/?page_id=10861
The class can also be registered through Eventbrite at – https://www.eventbrite.com/e/texas-wine-authority-tickets-19804720452
Dr. Kane’s Bio
Dr. Russell Kane is an award-winning Texas writer, author and wine aficionado with articles, tasting notes and quotes that have appeared in local, regional and national publications over the past 20 years. His bestselling book, The Wineslinger Chronicles: Texas on the Vine, was released by Texas Tech Press in 2012. Arcadia Publications released his most recent book, Texas Hill Country Wineries – a wine trail guide and pictorial history of the Texas Hill Country Wineries, in January 2015. Dr. Kane has served as the executive director of the Wine Society of Texas, as a board member of the Texas Wine and Grape Growers Association (TWGGA), and a member of the Texas Department of Agriculture’s Wine Industry Development Advisory Committee. He is a two-time awardee of the TWGGA Press Award for media coverage of the Texas wine industry. He currently contributes articles for Edible Austin and Edible Houston, provides Texas wine recommendations in the Houston Chronicle and blogs at: ww.vintagetexas.com.
Dr. Kane received his introductory level certificate from the Court of Master Sommeliers in 2002. He is also a Ph.D. and an experienced and awarded technical researcher and writer with over 250 technical publications as author or co-author, and editor on five technical books and two on Texas wines. In 2015, Dr. Kane received his certification as a Texas Master Naturalist.
