Know Texas Wines – Taste and Learn About Our State’s Rapidly Advancing Wines

Know Texas Wines – Taste and Learn About Our State’s Rapidly Advancing Wines

Texas wines are garnering worldwide acclaim from Double Gold medals in the prestigious San Francisco International Wine Competition, and acclaim in international competitions in Lyon France and Vienna Austria. The Texas Hill Country was named to the 2014 Wine Enthusiast’s ten featured international wine regions. To the uninitiated, Texas wines are still a mystery, but to those in the know, they are savored. Why wait any longer?

The Specialist of Texas Wine course is a first-of-its-kind program that 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 knowledge gained in this will allow you to identify authentic Texas wines of high quality and where to find and purchase them. 

This course will meet with three classes for 3 hours each time: February 1, 7, 15 6:30 to 9:30 pm at the Texas Wine School at 2301 Portsmouth St, Houston, TX 77098. Click here for registration.

Instructor: Dr. Russ Kane is award-winning Texas writer, author and wine aficionado: Also known as Doc Russ, Texas WineSlinger – “The man that wrote the book on Texas wine.”

The class will also feature guest presenters actively involved in Texas wineries. The planned guest presenters for this series of classes are:

• Sergio Cuadra – Director of Winemaking, Fall Creek Vineyards
• Tiffany Farrell – Winemaker, Haak Vineyards and Winery
• Fran Pontasch – Texas AgriLife Extension Viticulturalist

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 Texas has to offer.

This three-part class will cover:

Details of each wine region, 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 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 wines. Tastings will include a range of grape varieties and blends originating from northern Europe (France & Germany), 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 will be awarded to those that pass the rigorous exam at the end of the series with a score of 80% or higher.