Wedding Oak Winery: New Wines & Digs in Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country
It was our first trip to Fredericksburg since the warm summer weather settled in. However, there was a breeze and the wine was flowing in the shade of the front porch of Wedding Oak Winery’s new Fredericksburg location just east of town on Route 290 (see link below).
My party was met by general manager Lisa Wright and winemaker Seth Urbanek. Seth assumed his position at Wedding Oak Winery about a year ago after receiving his degree at Cornell University and experience making wine in New York’s Finger Lakes wine region.
He may have hired-in from a region known for its cooler climate and cool-weather grapes, but while apologizing for his wine “geek-itude”, it was obvious that he was keenly aware of how to make worthy, welcoming and stable wines from Texas’s sun-loving grapes by keeping a close eye on the wine’s acidity. With the growth of Wedding Oak Winery, Seth was a strategic hire by owner Mike McHenry that would allow Penny Adams to focus on growing the best grapes possible for their wines.
Seth started our tasting with white wines initiating with a Wedding Oak citrus-and-white peach-fruit dominated Wildseed Farms vineyard Albariño. It was Seth’s first Wedding Oak Wine that he made from start to finish. While not wanting to waste a drop of this satiating white wine, we relaxed a bit and lingered for a second and a third sip.
Then, Seth moved us on to his Trebbiano made “au naturel” with ambient yeast fermentation (the wine that nearly made itself) that manifested in the wine’s crisp citrus and exciting minerally notes, and then on to his Marsanne and Roussanne wines. These are normally two white blending grapes found in the Rhone Valley of France. In this case, as single varietal wines, it was an opportunity to compare and contrast the soft, silky butteriness of the Marsanne with the more showy and aromatic Roussanne that make white Rhone-style wines so inviting.
We moved onto Wedding Oak Rosé of Sangiovese finishing with Petit (often misspelled Petite) Verdot offering increasing color, weight on the palate and flavor. Tasting so many well-made Wedding Oak wines, then came the hard question… What wines to take home? On this trip, we came away with Roussanne and Petit Verdot. Since this winery is one of the closest to the north of my hill country cottage, I knew that we would be back for others very soon.
Wedding Oak Winery in Fredericksburg is located on the south side of Route 290 nearly across the highway from the Aldstadt Brewery: Wedding Oak Winery in Fredericksburg – 6009 Suite B US, Hwy 290 E, Fredericksburg, TX 78624. If you are near San Saba, please check out their original winery location – 316 E Wallace St, San Saba, TX 76877.
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