Texas Hill Country Wineries Tasting Stop at Kalasi Cellars: Five Generations of Agricultural Heritage Continues with Growing Grapes and Making Wines in Texas. Get Ready for Rosé!
April 14, 2023 admin Food and Wine, grape growing, Great Places & People, Local wine, Road Trip, Rosé, Russ Kane, Sangiovese, Tasting Stop, Texas High Plains, Texas HIll Country, Texas Hill Country Wineries, Texas wine, Vineyards, Wine Business News, Wine Tasting 0
When visiting Fredericksburg these days, it’s easy to miss a tasting opportunity. There is so much going on the Route 290 Wine Road that you may not think to deviate. But, if you do, you will be rewarded by discovering Kalasi Cellars, a boutique winery, vineyard, and tasting room. Surprisingly, it’s located just 5 minutes from the center Fredericksburg, Texas, and only half a mile off Route 290!
It’s springtime in the Texas Hill Country and tooling around the highways and byways is a great way to spend it, even better if you stop for a tasting at Kalasi Cellars. Our tasting pick today, is as fresh as a Spring morning with the inviting red-pink color of a field of native Texas coneflowers or wine cups.
Kalasi Cellars Estate Grown Sangiovese Rosé 2022, Heritage Collection, Texas High Plains, is the wine. You might ask, how can the wine be estate grown if the winery is in Fredericksburg and the vineyard is in the Texas High Plains AVA. Well, its time for a glass of wine and the rest of the story behind this winery.
The Tasting: Kalasi Cellars Estate Grown Sangiovese Rosé 2022, Heritage Collection, Texas High Plains
As I pour the first glass of the Kalasi Sangiovese Rosé, notice its deep coloration in the glass yielding a combination red-pink color with coral highlights. When poured, the wine spoke to me saying… “This is a Rosé that carries the flesh of the ripe fruit from which it was made.” It also uttered an usually unspoken French word… “Saignée”… it means “to bleed” in French, and according to this method, rosé is made by taking the first run juice from red-skinned grapes after they have had a chance to rest on the skins for a bit, bleeding color and structure into the fermented wine.
On the taste, I was struck with ripe juicy notes of red cherries and plums followed by stone fruit playing in at mid-palate, and finally the essence of dry, chalky minerals on the finish. This wine is perfect for a spring picnic lunch complete with a wicker basket filled with soft cheeses and begets, fried chicken, sandwiches, salad, and/or a selection of fresh fruits, enjoyed under the big open Texas Hill Country sky.
More on Kalasi Cellars
Kalasi Cellars is a boutique winery in Fredericksburg established by the husband and wife team, Greg and Nikhila Narra Davis. They are producing world-class, estate-grown wines in Texas. They come with Nikhila’s long Narra family heritage started five generations ago farming in India, cultivating crops of cocoa, coconuts, rice, and turmeric. Today, the family home is Texas but they continue to honor the Narra heritage reincarnated in growing grapes and making Texas wine!
The reason why this wine can be designated Estate Grown is that Kalasi Cellars utilizes grapes from the family owned 140 acre vineyard in the Texas High Plains AVA (Narra Vineyards). Their tasting room and production facility is in Fredericksburg where they also have an onsite vineyard (Texas Hill Country AVA).
Getting a Start in Texas
According to Nikhila, “We started out as grape growers at our family’s estate vineyard in the Texas High Plains AVA. We now make 100% estate-grown wines at our winery in the heart of the Texas Hill Country. We believe growing our own grapes, and solely relying on them to make wine, enables us to craft some very special wines.”
Greg says, “I have a much different story to Nikhila’s. I wanted to build on my love of all things mechanical and become a mechanical engineer. From there I switched to physics and eventually took up an MBA degree. Along the way I met Nikhila and I learned that she had already started Narra Vineyards. Over the next two years, we began talking about the possibility of doing more in the Texas wine industry than ‘just’ growing grapes. Nikhila had an itch to make wine, and I had an itch to start a company. So we decided we’d start our own winery in Fredericksburg.”
Unique Kalasi Tasting Experiences
Their tasting room and production winery are situated on an estate of over 16 acres of relaxing Texas Hill Country land. It invites you to taste their wines either in the tasting room with its wrap around bar, or relax and enjoy the wines in Adirondack chairs under old pecan trees. You may even catch a glimpse of their Babydoll Southdown sheep and llama, Dalai, which are both integral parts of their sustainable farming practices.
I promised you a unique tasting experience at Kalasi Cellars, so here goes… When you visit the tasting room, you can do wine tastings, wine by the glass or by the bottle. It can be accompanied with food with an Indian twist, and they even have non-alcoholic Indian drinks so that everyone (non-imbibers and designated drivers alike) can enjoy their visit. However, if you can’t visit in person, then please check out the Kalasi online store (click here). It ships to most of the United States!
For more information, location and hours, click here. For the Kalasi tasting and food menus and merchandise, click here. Hope to see you there!
Photo Credits: Kalasi Cellars, Fredericksburg, Texas.
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