Grapevine Wine Trail – July 5, 2008
Dad, Mary and me
What a great value! Tickets were just $40.
We started at Cross Timbers Winery. It is a cute little farm house with great grounds. There is a patio with quite a bit of seating, a gazebo and barn. The Wine Trial started in the barn where a country band was playing entirely too loud for the space. Each of us received a bottle of wine in a patriotic bag and an engraved wine glass to mark the event. The ticket price included tasting three wines at each winery and food at each winery. At Cross Timbers we tried a chardonnay, a dry white table wine and a rosé. All were very nice. The rosé was quite good. My expectations for the wine were low, and this first stop surpassed them. We were off to a good start! Many small production wines are a bit more than I normally spend on a bottle of wine. They can’t match the price point of a large-scale production. But the Texas White and Texas Red (I think that’s what they were called) were just $12.99 a bottle. The Chardonnay was $19.99, I think.
Next we were off to the downtown Grapevine area, just about ½ mile from Cross Timbers. Grapevine has a darling downtown area. There was a farmer’s market and something called “Grapevine Market” going on outdoors. There is a visitor’s center in an old train depot and a vintage train you can ride. The well-maintained old storefronts are filled with very cute shops and cafés, and the new storefronts are built in a complimentary style. Off of Main Street are lots of cute old houses, mostly pretty small. Most seems to still be residences, but a few are now restaurants, winery tasting rooms or other businesses. It is definitely a town where you could spend a full Saturday wandering around, eating, drinking and shopping in cooler weather – more on the heat later.
Su Vino Winery was our second stop. Su Vino operates a store front on Main Street. I had hoped to talk to the folks in the tasting rooms and find out a little bit more about their respective wine making operations. But they were far too busy for that. The Wine Trail event drew quite a lot of people, which was great. Su Vino makes quite a few wines, including a couple of sparkling wines and some dessert wines. There were a couple more I would like to try here – super fruity, summery wines that sounded so good on a Texas July day. Mary really liked the Summer Rain, and it smelled like a big, juicy green apple. But with only three tastes to be had, tough decisions had to be made. I tried the Almond Champagne, another I can’t recall right now, and the ruby port. Almond Champagne sounds kind of gross to me. But someone sent me a bottle from their favorite Temecula winery recently, so I wanted an idea of what it was like before I popped the cork. Not so much. I practiced that skill I learned in Napa of pouring out what you don’t want. There is much good wine to be drunk. No point in drinking what you don’t want. At least now I know. (By the way… it isn’t Champagne unless it’s from Champagne people! In the U.S. it’s just sparkling wine, though I wish we had a cool name like Cava or Prosecco.) I recall the second wine being fine, even though I don’t recall what it was. The ruby port was okay. I am just starting to drink port, so I don’t have much to which I can compare this one. Perhaps I started with one I enjoy so much (the Rutherford Hill 2003 Vintage Zinfandel Port) that the bar is set high. It’s hard to just stand around and sip port also – cheese or chocolate is needed. Sweet obviously is big here. In addition to the Almond Champagne, there is a Raspberry Champagne, five dessert wines and a sweet red blend. Though I don’t sound high on their wines, I like Su Vino and would like to go back and try some of their other wines. The folks working the tasting room were very nice. And there was a reasonably priced gift shop with some nice items.
Next there were two more “wineries” on Main Street, to which I can give very brief note. D’Vine Wines is a cheesy name. The place was far too cramped for this crowd and the wines were boring. They didn’t taste bad; they just didn’t have much taste. Although I must note that Mary said the Pinot Grigio was just plain bad. There were production tanks in the back, but any discussions with wine makers would have to wait for another day. Farina’s was across the street. It appears to be a café with a small retail wine area. They are just starting up their wine making, and do not have any of their own to serve yet. So they were serving some well-known Texas wines – a Llano red blend, a Becker cab and a white that I cannot recall. None were great. But there were yummy Italian snacks and comfy chairs for us to sit a moment and sip on a bit of water, which we should have done more during the day.
All along the way, Dad, Mary and I were having a great time. They were so pleasantly surprised by this excursion I planned for us. It was the most fun they had had in a long time, they said. They have worked so hard in their yard since the tornado and have been depressed by all the damage around town and by the damage at their own home. They needed a break. And this was right up their alley. I was thrilled by how cute the town was and what a good time we were having. I had never been up there, so planning this adventure was a wee bit dicey.
Inwood Estates, which makes their wine in Dallas, had set up shop in a coffee shop. They make very few wines. We tried their Palomino-Chardonnay, Cornelius (cab-temparanillo) and 100% cabernet sauvignon. All were nice. At $40-$80 per bottle, they should be. Dad and I had received the Palomino-Chardonnay as our bottle of wine included with our ticket price. After tasting it, we were pleased. A man who makes various rubs was sampling his product there also. I bought a sampler pack of those. They were quite good.
Next it was a walk of a few blocks to La Buena Vida Winery. This place is what Dad and Mary expected a winery / tasting room to look like. Since we left Cross Timbers, the tastings had been in store fronts on Main Street. At La Buena Vida, the patio area was all made of stone and looked as though it should be in Italy. There were tile fountains, live music, lots of seating outdoors, yummy food. La Bodega winery and La Buena Vida are owned by the same people, so there were six wines to taste here. Also, while we were here, it suddenly became brutally hot. Luckily our adventure had begun about 11:30 a.m., so it had been quite warm, but not insufferable. Suddenly it felt like the surface of the sun. I don’t know if any of us tasted six wines, but everything I tasted here was good. There were many more wines to sample that were not included on the Wine Trial. They also make a mead which I would like to try sometime. They have live music outside each Saturday, so I will definitely make a return trip to La Buena Vida – sometime after mid-September.
We then walked a few blocks to Homestead Winery, which was in an old house with just a couple of ineffective window unit air conditioners. We were done. We could/should have skipped it entirely. I got one taste and went outside. Dad and Mary got a sandwich, and we got out of there pretty quickly and walked to the car. I think at Homestead the heat hit all of us and the wine hit Mary. Of course it was 200 degrees inside the car. Mary was in the back and went to sleep as soon as we started driving. She didn’t feel too great, so she took a very long nap when we got home. Dad and I had short naps ourselves.
It was a lovely day, all in all. Grapevine is definitely worth a visit, and the wines should be investigated. I think there is a Wine Trail event sometime in the fall. But I would like to visit when there isn’t a crowd and I could have a chance to visit with the folks who pour and make the wines. I also want to visit Delany Vineyards. It was not included in this event. It’s fully operational winery and vineyard is there. I am not sure that any of these others grow their grapes there in the Grapevine area. I suspect most of them don’t grow their own grapes at all. Nothing wrong with that, but I am curious to learn more.
