Texas IS Wine Country
I realized this while sitting in the 110-year-old, 12-sided Cat Spring Agricultural Society Hall about ten miles west of Sealy. The program, assembled by Texas AgriLife viticulture specialist Fran Pontasch, presented a series of speakers at the 2019 Blanc Du Bois Symposium. The attendees at this meeting were interested in the not-so-well-known grape called Blanc Du Bois used in award-winning Texas wines being judged in international competitions from California to Europe.
The program featured a recent Texas grape growing survey showing that there are now more producing acres of Blanc Du Bois than any other white wine grape in our state. It even out produces Viognier, the variety that everyone thinks is our state’s top white variety. Interestingly, the “home turf” for Blanc Du Bois isn’t the hill country or the high plains. It runs from Brownsville, up the coastal bend all the way to upper east Texas, leaving the greater Houston area smack in the middle of it.
The hall was full of newbie-to-experienced grape growers. Some had family land in the area and were definitely “grape curious”. Topics discussed included benefits and pitfalls of growing Blanc Du Bois, use of grafted root stocks and vine trellising systems to enhance grape quality and production, winemaking basics and new approaches for better wines.
Pontasch says, “We owe a lot for Blanc Du Bois’ popularity to Austin Country winegrower Jerry Watson and Galveston County Winemaker Raymond Haak. It was their over two-decade collaboration that established methods for growing and making wine that resulted in Blanc Du Bois’ acceptance and mainstream appeal.” Read more about that story at Edible Houston.
Meeting attendee Army Colonel (retired) Jim Brooks with his wife Ruth went from wine cruising in the Mediterranean in off-time during his last Middle East assignment to homesteading in Sealy and developing their now five-year-old, 6-acre Blanc-Du-Bois-centric Cat Spring Vineyard. Brooks says, “Jerry Watson showed me a lot about growing Blanc and warned me not to start too big. Jerry was right, it’s been a lot of work. So, I enlisted our sons and daughter-in-law, and it’s all coming together. We have several wineries buying our grapes, and next year we plan to start our own winery.”
Evan Jones, production manager at wholesale plant nursery Spring Creek Growers who has land around Tomball says, “I majored in horticulture at Texas A&M and I took a class by Professor George Ray McEachern who talked to us about Texas grape growing. He was exciting and it stimulated me to try it. I’ve got about an acre of vines and see this is something that has a future and can offer careers here in southeast Texas.”
This program was organized with the idea of showing that there’s a lot of Blanc Du Bois activity in our region with growing technical support. There are many new people starting to grow and others establishing vineyards and wineries. There is serious interest in expanding our region’s wine country operations while making even better wines from this grape variety.
Interested in the history of our portion of this wine region? click here. For information on grape growing and winemaking, contact Fran Pontasch: (979) 458-0131; fmpontasch@tamu.edu.
