1. the 75% rule is correct for it to say Texas on the front label
2. just because it says for sale in Texas that does not mean there are no Texas grapes in it that just means there are not 75% Texas grapes
3. I can about guarantee that anything labeled Black Spanish is going to have a very large % of Texas grapes because Texas is about the only place on earth that still grows that for wine
4. MANY Texas wineries bring in juice from other places I would say the majority do and pretty much 100% of the larger ones do they simply HAVE TO as was explained earlier if they want to have the wine to sell then they need to have juice to make wine from and Texas does not come anywhere close to growing enough grapes to meet that demand
5. it is actually not controversial it is actually widely known and accepted.....why.....well because it is a chicken and egg dilemma.....what came first the grapes to be able to make the wine or the winery to buy the available grapes
well the answer is WELL KNOWN it is the winery needed to buy the grapes and the winery needed to buy the grapes cannot get open and running with any volume unless the grapes/juice are available for them to get open and running and a grower is not going to produce the grapes unless there is a winery to buy them
the grapes/juice are the perishable product with a life span.....so they need an outlet for their product and the only way that will happen is if a winery gets started and has demand for the grapes
it takes at least 4 years for grapes to reach full production you will get 20-25% the first year, maybe 50-60% the next year and then 75% or so the third and 100% the 4th and the quality should improve (provided proper vineyard siting and variety selection and viticulture practices) each of those years so the first 2 years at least those grapes are only good for blending or for making a very low price point wine (and probably still blending with them)
at the end of that 4th year a vineyard owner will probably have an investment of $25,000 per acre
then you have the real issue in Texas and that is freeze, frost and hail
the Texas vineyards especially those on the high plains are currently in terrible shape after a freeze that wiped many of them down to the ground last year it took most every vineyard up there (and down into the rolling plains near Mason ect) to ZERO production and it will take several years to recover from that
take the vineyard on the UTIMCO land (UT) with the 1,000 acre vineyard.....unless they have done serious replanting over the last several years that vineyard is down to around 800 acres and many of those are not well cared for and not near full production
and when they have an "event" like last year well they can lose all 800 acres of production literally overnight....and that can take many years to recover from as far as the vines are concerned and in the mean time you need to have wine to put on the shelf or you lose shelf space and possibly even distribution
they not only bring in juice from California they bring it in from all over the world.....it is COMMON practice all over the world to bring in juice from other areas of production and even from other countries
a story that a very well known and well respected LONG TERM grape grower in Texas told me is he had a foreign exchange student from Germany staying with him years ago and this young man came from a region of Germany that was known for a particular type/price point of wine.....and in Europe the wine/grape laws are much more strict and they are LAWS not just industry standards
well the person I was talking to was of course always talking wine with their guest and they guest had made the comment that basically his area made the best wine that cheap Italian grapes could produce......which would have been against the LAW.....and basically what the deal was is that region had elevated their grape quality to the point that it no longer made sense to make that lower price point wine with those grapes yet that price point of wine from that region had a large market to fill
so the end result was those vineyard owners in that region sold their higher quality grapes to another area of Germany (most likely resulting in another region of origin label law violation when it was all made and packaged and labeled) because that area had a need for grapes to meet their demand and higher price point and then the other region brought in cheap Italian lower quality grapes for their demand needs
to be clear it is not illegal to sell grapes anywhere you wish anywhere in the world it is the violation of the much more strict label and country, region, appellation label laws that are much more prevalent in Europe and honestly much more broken and violated
I would seriously doubt that any Texas wineries are violating any label laws simply because they do not need to.....TEXAS on the front label means nothing (or even do not buy) to many people that keep up with and follow such things (wine snobs that are not going to buy a Texas wine) and for the few that specifically do want a Texas wine there is enough available production to easily meet their demand and thus no need to put TEXAS or High Plains Appellation falsely on the label
for all others that may want to try a TEXAS wine well they will not know the meaning of the words on the label and if they ask well again there is plenty of TEXAS and appellation labeled wine to meet that demand......everyone else just buys and they are none the wiser or they do not care
after freeze you have frost.....frost is not a freeze event
grapes are pruned each spring.....the buds that are left produce a new cane and each cane has a cluster of grapes on it.....grape buds are tertiary compound buds they have the ability to produce a cane up to 3 times and each time the resulting cane and the resulting cluster is weaker and weaker and less desirable, less production and more uneven in quality and ripening
so spring time comes.....your grapes start to bud out with that first primary bud.....you get 3-4 inches of green growth and then a frost event comes where the temp drops overnight to say 27 degrees for a couple of hours (yes below freezing but not near enough to kill a mature trunk like a hard freeze and sometimes not enough to kill a green shoot) and then you get a frost where actual frost settles on that green growth like on your car windshield......you are going to lose most of not all of that green growth
the result is the secondary buds start to come out some short period of time later.....well you are probably going to lose 30%+ of your production by tonnage right there and clusters will be smaller, less flavorful and more uneven in ripeness across the vineyard and you will basically have blending quality grapes
if you get another frost event and lose the secondary and the tertiary buds come out and quality and volume suffer again.....you lose those and you are SOL
then you have hail....hail before the buds come out, but hard enough to beat up the buds.....hail when the shoots are tender and small and they get knocked off the vine, hail when you have actual grape clusters forming in a tender state and they are damaged or knocked off.....hail when grapes are mature or almost mature and the grapes are damaged and fungus and rot sets in or the grapes are knocked to the ground......and you can even get hail one year that damages the buds that are forming for next years and that caries over to the next year
when you farm grapes you are really farming this years crop and at least next years crop because the buds forming on the canes this year are the buds that will bud out next year for next years crop.....so even if you lose 100% of a crop 1 year you do not get to toss in the towel that year and go fishing you still have to spray for fungus, scout/spray for insects, properly irrigate and do all the things necessary to have a healthy vine the next season
so with all of those very COMMON issues in Texas (issues that California and Oregon ect can also face, but not nearly as often) it means that grape production is highly variable in Texas and that combined with more demand that there is available grapes even in the best years means that Texas Wineries import many many tanker loads and other volumes of outside juice and some do so from around the world
also there are varieties that are just too difficult to grow in Texas.....Chardonnay is one....last I knew only Delaney vineyards in Lamesa, Texas had any significant acreage of Chardonnay on Texas because everyone else has given up on it or decided against growing it....there is other smaller acreage here and there, but not of significance (perhaps Certenberg Vineyards owned by former NFLer Alphonse Dotson as well (father to Baylor great Santana Dotson also))
Pinot Noir is another Pinot Meunier is another.....so basically that is why you see little if any TEXAS (front of label) sparkling wines from Texas because the three Champagne grapes do not do well here (Delaney does produce a sparkler and has a bottling machine to do it as well)
other varsities bud out too early and will almost always suffer frost damage.....the longer it takes a vine to bud out into the season the better suited (based on that single metric) it will be for Texas.....then of course it has to be suitable for the rest of the climate conditions and able to make a quality/salable wine
Mediterranean and Italian and Spanish varieties generally do better in Texas especially because of the hot day conditions and on the high plains specifically (less so the hill country) the cooler nights
as grapes mature the hot days help sugars increase, but also if the days are too hot and worse of the nights are too hot you get a corresponding decrease in other desirable flavor compounds and you can get an increase in vegetative or grassy taste that are undesirable
proper selection of varieties can help alleviate this, but it will always be an issue
as sugars get too high you get a wine that is too "hot" too high in alcohol and this has the burning sensation to the mouth like a liquor and worse you have lost desired flavor compounds.....one common solution to this is to concentrate on picking the grapes (harvesting they are not picked and actually grapes are "cut" not picked if harvested by hand) when the flavor compounds are at their most desirable with less regard for actual sugar content/brix which is the traditional and commonly used method for determining ripeness and if the brix is too low well then you ameliorate (which is often actually a prohibited/illegal method of wine production in many of the well known wine regions of Europe even though again that law is OFTEN broken, but it is 100% legal here in the USA) and you do that by adding sucrose (granular sugar) or even fructose (corn sweetener) and that is how you get your alcohol to the desired levels (not for getting drunk, but for TASTE)
how many wineries in Texas are doing that.....well I know of the ones that I know of and I know that many others are probably not even familiar with that concept so I will let you find out, ask, figure it out for yourself......and as far as using sugar VS fructose well if you know what fructose taste like you might even be able to figure that out in some because it will show up if you know what you are looking for
and to be clear the ones that I know of that do such things would be up front about it if you knew who to ask and you did in fact ask.....but at the same time some of those have tasting room personnel that would not know the meaning of ameliorate or what sucrose or fructose is so if you ask the first person you see when you walk in the door you will probably get a
if you talk to someone that is actually in production and you are not doing it to try and "call them out" (even though it is VERY COMMON EVEN IN CALIFORNIA AND OTHER REGIONS OF THE WORLD AND LEGAL IN MANY OF THEM AND EVEN COMMON WHERE IT IS ILLEGAL IN AREAS OF EUROPE BECAUSE OF GOOFY LAWS) they will probably talk with you all about it....in Europe it is probably common to add a bit of water and same in California because again with the cooler nights specifically they can take grapes to full ripeness without sacrificing other flavor compounds and they still can have a wine that is a bit hot so they water it down just a tad after rounds and rounds of taste comparisons at various levels of amelioration
so at the end of the day it is well known and accepted and even encouraged by Texas grape growers for wineries to establish demand even with non-Texas juice and then as demand is established approach vineyards about meeting production and many wineries will because as they develop a name and an audience and educate that audience they can let the facts out and their audience will be generally very understanding and accepting of that message and they will look forward to more TEXAS on the front label down the road
6. now as to will the hill country be the next Napa
the answer to that for now and well into the future is NO.....and the #1 reason for that is because of a disease called pierces disease
this is a disease that is endemic in the hill country and pretty much every area of Texas that is south of I-20 and east of I-35 and even some more area than that and it has showed evidence even on the high plains
this disease is like Oak Wilt for grapes it functions the exact same way....and it is like citrus greening on citrus crops
basically a bacteria is spread by sap sucking insects usually (but also other methods) and that bacteria gets into the xylem in plants (where water is transported) and in plants with segmented xylem the bacteria does not pass through the xylem and it builds up and the plant reacts and it ends up clogging the xylem and water no longer flows and the plant slowly dies
100% of vitis vinifera (French/European wine) grapes are susceptible pierces disease so that means if you have a vineyard with those grapes in the areas of Texas that have PD there is a very good chance that in the long term it is going to die off either slowly (the vines die rapidly in 2-3 years, but if you rogue hard and spray for insects and scout hard you can extend the life of your overall vineyard for a long time) or if it gets bad it pretty much takes you out quickly
Muscadine grapes are not susceptible (but then again they are NOT ACCEPTABLE for any decent wine haha)
American grapes like Vitis riparia (baco noir, marechal foch, and frontenac) and labrusca (concord and niagara) are not susceptible and many of these types of grapes you will see in Missouri, Arkansas, and Michigan wineries and others although there are some vinifera vineyards in Arkansas as well
Black Spanish (or can be called Lenoir or as Jaquez) (Vitis aestivalis) is one that has been grown on Texas for a long long time and is resistant and is what the Del Rio winery was using for the longest time (and still is)
Norton and Cynthiana are two others that are resistant and that have been used in Texas and the vineyard at the Grapevine location of Deleany is one of the two I can't remember which (an "eye ball" vineyard it is called)
the above 3 and many others are the types of grapes that (got here as soon as he could) Texas grape breeder TV Munson worked with and that have been and still are grown in Texas for wine production and are PD resistant
a new one that is more and more popular was bred by Florida A&M (FAMU) specifically to be a wine grape is Blanc Du Bois
HAAK winery has used it a lot and others have to
so unfortunately until the PD threat is figured out for the long term it is a poor proposition for a vineyard owner to plant a Vitis vinifera vineyard anywhere within several hundred miles in any direction of Fredericksburg and while that is not going to hold back the growth of the winery industry there the reality is Napa is Napa because it has the outstanding climate to grow the best known and most popular Vitis vinifera grapes and to grow them to a quality that can compete with France and elsewhere and the wine makers have the knowledge and ability to ferment them to their highest potential
Texas has some winemakers with the ability to get the most out of Texas grapes and or to get the most out of any grapes/juice that they get from anywhere in the world, but the reality is that cost money and if you do not have the market to sell into that price point consistently and profitably to do so does not make sense so instead you use your knowledge, skills, taste, and talents to produce a wine that is consistent year in and year out and that meets your market demands and produces a profit
that is not to say that Texas wine makers will not recognize when they have grapes with potential to go for the gold or double gold in San Francisco (and TEXAS on the front of the label wines have done just that Bobby Cox, Craig Parker and Greg Bruni to name 3) but the reality is you cannot turn grapes without the potential on the vine into something special and you are wasting your time to try, but you can take very good grapes and make them crap as well instead of making them into a very desirable wine that will sell and sell well for a nice price point and profit
getting rid of PD is like getting rid of Oak Wilt or treating Oak Wilt with survival success and we all know how that is going in the hill country (not well), but they are researching and working on PD, Oak Wilt and Citrus Greening and areas of California have PD as well into the central valley and California has actually been conduction research on it longer, but it just takes time and money and resources.....so until that is done the hill country will not have the (most likely Spanish and Med popular varieties planted in a significant amount to support their local wineries) and until that happens there is no point to really try to compare to any real "wine region"
sorry to ramble
TexasVines
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