Tomorrow, Thanksgivings Day, marks the official kick off to our year end holiday season, complete with food, friends and family, but don’t forget to include the wine.
Texas Fine Wine is excited to offer you again this year their Texas Fine Wine Holiday Pack. I prefer to call it a “Bundle”… so, if you will, it’s time to Bundle Up!
If ordered by December 8th, the Texas Fine Wine Holiday Pack will arrive in time for your for Christmas or other year-end holiday celebrations. Click here to order it from Pedernales Cellars online store and they will ship it direct to you. The bundle includes four wines that will marvelously compliment your holiday festivities:
- Duchman Family Winery 2021 Roussanne, Oswald Vineyard
- Pedernales Cellars 2020 Tempranillo, Daniel Vineyard
- Spicewood Vineyards 2020 (Black Label) Tempranillo, Dutton Vineyards
- Bending Branch Winery 2020 Petit Verdot, Newsom Vineyards
Last week, I participated in the Texas Fine Wine Texas Talk and Taste via Zoom to taste and chat with winemakers and owners about these four wines and what developed into some other newsy topics.
Duchman Family Winery, Driftwood
Duchman Family Winery 2021 Roussanne, Oswald Vineyard ($26) – It is no secret by now that Roussanne is one of my Texas favs. Winemaker Dave Reilly said, “This is the fourth year that we’ve made a Roussanne at Duchman. It’s really filled in nicely while our flagship wine, Vermentino, was not available for us to make.”
This Roussanne offers pear, white peach and tropical fruit with a silky mouthfeel, and ends with toasted almonds and dry minerals. Food pairings include: seasonal roast turkey, chicken and flavorful seafoods like salmon.
Reilly also highlighted something news worthy. NEWS FLASH: Duchman Family Winery was selected to make three new wines for the HEB supermarket chain in Texas. HEB’s request for them made to specifically pair well with BBQ. In fact, the name on wine label Reilly held up for us to see says in big bold letters…“BBQ”. The three wines are designed to drink easy and pair with your favorite BBQ dishes. Each wine is a blend: the white (Trebbiano and Roussanne), the red (Montepulciano and Dolcetto), and a dry rosé (Dolcetto and Sangioveses). Stay tuned for updates on this.
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Pedernales Cellars, Stonewall
Pedernales Cellars 2020 Tempranillo, Daniel Vineyard ($45) – The folks at Pedernales Cellars are no strangers to what has become known far and wide as the “National Grape of Texas”. That is Tempranillo. This one is particularly interesting with a combination of characteristics of red and blue berries and licorice combined with lots of secondary notes from thoughtful oak aging that brings out smoke, vanilla, graphite. Thys Smit, the winery’s assistant winemaker, who came to Texas after making wine in South Africa presented this wine.
Smit mentioned that the Pedernales Tempranillo expresses high elevation winegrowing at the Daniel Vineyard on the Texas High Plains. This vineyard is situated at 3,600 ft and has this wine region’s famous vineyard soil of red sandy loam over porous caliche limestone. For reference, another famous high elevation wine region, the Argentine Mendoza, sits only at an elevation of about 2,600 ft and only occasionally gets to 3,600 ft. Food pairings for the Pedernales Tempranillo include: a variety of red meats, BBQ brisket, and spicy Indian food (think Hyderabadi Lamb Biryani).
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Spicewood Vineyards, Spicewood
Spicewood Vineyards 2020 (Black Label) Tempranillo, Dutton Vineyards ($40) – Ron Yates, owner of Spicewood Vineyards and more recently Yates Wines both in the Texas Hill Country, presented this wine. It is another Texas High Plains Tempranillo, but one with a different flair. The grapes used in this wine were grown at Dutton Vineyards near Tahoka, Texas, due south of Lubbock at an elevation of about 3100 ft.
This wine accents ripe macerated black cherries, cola, figs, hazelnut, and vanilla with a full-bodied, rich fruit and alcohol-driven presence in the glass. The good news is that this wine still remains in balance by delivering enough ripe fruit extract to bind it together with enough acidity to carry it through to the finish. Food pairings include: Flavorful red meats like lamb, game and garlicky smoked sausages.
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Bending Branch Winery, Comfort
Bending Branch Winery 2020 Petit Verdot, Newsom Vineyards ($42) – As you likely know, winery owner Dr. Robert Young (Dr. Bob to most people that visit the winery) is a big bold wine lover that brought Tannat to the forefront of the Texas wine scene and high acidity in Picpoul Blanc. He also uses innovative winemaking processes. In this wine, he used Flash Détente along with whole berry fermentation to get a bit of forward-fruit-instilling carbonic maceration.
While Petit Verdot is mostly known as a blending grape in some Bordeaux-style red blends, this wine provides this grape variety as a standalone varietal composition. It’s pleasantly laden with blackberry as if just pick ripe off its brambly vine followed by a finish of herbal notes often associated with Cabernet Franc. Food pairings include: Lamb, veal chop, osso buco with roquefort butter sauce, or pasta with red sauce.
Dr. Bob, also brought out a NEWS FLASH: He said, “You know that I’m always on the lookout for something new in the way of big bold wines. So, I’m announcement that Bending Branch is making an Amarone della Valpolicella-style wine. We are using the traditional method of air-dried grapes, that took place on my back porch this past summer. However, rather than using the classic grape varieties used in Veneto, Italy, we are using a blend of High Plains Malbec, Tannat and Petite Sirah. Stay tuned for more on this as the “story” develops.
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For more information on Texas Fine Wine events and member wineries, check out Texas Wine Fine (click here). To order the 2023 Holiday Wine Pack, check out Pedernales Cellars online store (click here).
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