The Wineslinger Chronicles: A New Texas Wine Industry Emerges
By Russ Kane, www.vintagetexas.com
The year was 1979, only three years after the Judgement of Paris where California wines were victorious over the best Chateau and Domaines of France. Optimism abounded in many other states that they could do what California did. Even some in Texas believed they could do it, too.
According to a story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram dated February 25, 1979, once limited by climate and disease to little known grapes, Texas vineyards and wineries now appear to be able to grow what was called the “Rolls Royce of Grapes”, European Vitis vinifera, and make their wines and widely market them like they did in California. One thing little emphasized at the time was that California had a 100 year head start.
Looking back from where we are now almost 50 years later, you might say that the above mentioned comments on rapid growth were a bit overblown or, at least, too optimistic; maybe even a bit naive. The perspective I take is that most people underestimated the amount of time and work needed to create a new wine region. In the story, you can get a feeling for the optimism by Texas winegrowers like Dr. Bobby Smith.
Big Texas Wine Plans
At the time, general sentiments were that Texas winemakers had to go large or stay home. By this I mean, according to Dr. Bobby, they needed to plan to export Texas wine to major out-of-state markets like California, Chicago and big cities in the north east known to have a passion for wine drinking. Some in Texas even discussed plans to attract big-name corporations, like Coca-Cola, John Hancock and even big oil companies, to come and establish a major play in Texas wine. However, as shown in the cartoon at the top of this page from the news story, Texas’s also needed an image change, and in many regards, this has proven to be a difficult nut to crack. More people relate Texans to beer and bourbon than to wine.
But, Let’s Put Things Into Perspective
In the 1970s, Texas only had 40 winegrowers and produced maybe about 30,000 gallons of wine. By comparison, there were nearly 200 California wineries and million of gallons of California wine being produced. At the time, Texas wine amounted to literally only a “drop in the bucket”. Also, consider winemakers in California had been making and distributing wine and selling it nationally for over a 100 years. From 1920 to 1933, National Prohibition may have shut down its wine industry, but immediately upon the repeal of Prohibition, California avidly ramped up its wine industry again. Texas and many other states didn’t seriously start making an earnest go of a commercial wine industry until the mid-1970s.
Nevertheless, vineyard scientists like UC Davis’s Cornelius Ough proclaimed that there was a bright future for Texas vineyards and wineries even though they knew next to nothing about Texas’s weather, disease pressures, and what wine grapes would actually do well here. Once, I was told that the wine consultants from California told Texas growers that you could grow anything you wanted, but if it wasn’t Cabernet, Merlot, Pinot or Chardonnay, no one would buy it. Dr. Roy Mitchell, Texas Tech University chemist and an initial shareholder in Lubbock’s Llano Estacado Winery, looked at this situation a bit more reasonably by saying that in the years to come, Texas wines could compete in the marketplace and flourish albeit locally. And, mostly that is what has happened.
Need to Handle Behind the Scenes Issues First
Soon after starting his winery in Springtown in a dry area just west of Fort Worth, Dr. Bobby Smith realized that Texas really didn’t have laws in place that could handle sales from family-owned wineries like his, many of which were in dry areas (those that banned the sale of alcoholic beverages). However, confronted with this situation, Smith decided to take a drive to Austin and work with his legislators and find a way to write a law that would solve his dilemma. The solution formulated during his drive to Austin was to take his wine made in a dry area and sell it to another winery in a wet area (also his) and have the sale take place legally in the wet area.
This legislation was just one of a series of new wine laws that were enacted in Austin that culminated over 20 years later in an amendment to the Texas State Constitution. This important bit of legislation gave Texas wine (as a Texas agricultural product) a special distinction given to no other type of alcoholic beverage. This legislation made it possible to produced wine made with primarily Texas grapes and sell it anywhere in the State of Texas no matter if the area was heretofore classified as wet, dry or damp for the sale of alcoholic beverages.
Finally, Texas wine is free of many archaic and prohibitionist limitations that stymied its growth in it youth. As a result, the Texas wine industry has now grown to provide an economic impact of more than 20 Billion dollars to Texas and its citizens, similar to the 24 million dollars associated with Texas’s number one recognized agricultural product – cotton. I hope that our legislators in Austin have now finally figured this out. If not, it is up to our wine growers, winemakers and winery owners to drive this message home.
Cheers & Enjoy!
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