Texas Midwest Wineries Create Bottled-Up Excitement
Published Feb 19, 2009
The Texas Midwest offers some ideal conditions for growing grapes.
Is the Texas Midwest the new Napa Valley? Not quite, but Pat Brennan wouldn’t mind if it happened. In 1997, the Fort Worth physician and his wife, Trellise, purchased a historic home in Comanche County known as the McCrary House.
The couple used the house as a getaway where they could relax on weekends, and they soon purchased 33 acres adjacent to the house – but had no idea what to do with the property.
“We decided one day to put in five acres of grape vines,” Brennan says. “We planted them in 2002, and the quality of the subsequent grapes was excellent. In fact, everyone was so impressed with the fruit that we decided in 2004 to move full time to Comanche, and we opened a winery in early 2005.”
Today, the Brennans bottle seven different wines under two labels – Brennan Vineyards and Austin Street.
“I’m proud to say that one of our wines was named the 2007 Top Product at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo International Wine Competition, which is a major competition,” Brennan says. “Our vineyard is only three years old and we are already producing 4,500 cases of wine a year, which is pretty good. Overall, I’m very pleased with our progress. We continue to grow slowly and steadily.”
At Rising Star Vineyards in Eastland County, Michael Oubre and his wife, Vicki, sell their grapes to other established wineries.
“Rising Star has been in operation since the 1980s, making it one of the oldest vineyards in all of Texas,” Oubre says. “We get incredible quality from our grapes, and as a result, we have multi-year contracts to sell our fruit to other bigger wineries.”
Those wineries include Llano Estacado in Lubbock and Becker Vineyards in Stonewall.
“The 2006 cabernet grapes we grew for Llano won a gold medal at the Dallas Morning News Wine Competition, which is a prestigious event in this business,” Oubre says. “Our grapes have been producing so well in recent years that we finally decided to open our own tasting room and winery in Rising Star in 2006.”
Oubre says that for now, the small Rising Star winery only produces 600 cases annually from the eight wines under its label. However, grapes that Oubre still ships to other wineries are enough to produce close to 10,000 cases a year.
“This area seems to be an ideal place to grow grapes,” he says. “We are in the middle ground between the Hill Country and the High Plains, and far enough north in Texas that we get some comfortable cool weather. This seems to be a premier area for raising tasty, consistent fruit.”
Story by Kevin Litwin
Photo by Jeff Adkins
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