mead - Texas Wine Lover

Enchanted Manor Meadery

November 2, 2012 by Jeff Leave a Comment

http://www.enchantedmanorwinery.com

The Enchanted Manor Meadery is located in Magnolia and is owned by Jonathan Odom. The meadery opened in 2010.

We have stopped a couple times at Enchanted Manor and it is convenient for us because they are located on the way to the Texas Renaissance Festival which is held each year in October and November. Speaking of the Renaissance Festival, Enchanted Manor Meadery makes mead specifically for the festival with the festival’s custom label.

Tastings at Enchanted Manor are held in the tasting room while you sit at the tasting bar. During my last visit there were four wines and meads available for tasting which cost $1 per taste. The tastings are poured from the bottles which have corks.

Enchanted Manor made a peach white wine previously for customers looking for grape-style wines but from now on they will only make mead with 100% local Texas honey. Enchanted Manor holds mead education classes which include a logo glass, tastings, tour, and more. Check their website for how to sign up.

Enchanted Manor produces about 2,000 cases of wine/mead per year and it peaks around Texas Renaissance Festival time. If you visit the Texas Renaissance Festival, be on the lookout for the mead made by Enchanted Manor.

Jonathan Odom

Mead is becoming more popular in Texas with more meaderies opening. As a result, Jonathan Odom with Wendy and John Rohan from the Rohan Meadery started the Texas Mead Association. The Association includes four founding meaderies: Dancing Bee Winery, Enchanted Manor Meadery, Rohan Meadery, and Texas Mead Works. The first Texas Mead Fest was held on September 22nd, 2012 at the Rohan Meadery. I heard it was a success and the people who attended had a great time.

Filed Under: Wineries Tagged With: Festival, honey, mead, Texas Wine, Texas Wineries

Dancing Bee Winery

September 21, 2012 by Jeff Leave a Comment

http://www.dancingbeewinery.com

Dancing Bee Winery is located in Rogers and is part of the Walker Honey Farm Store. It is owned by Janice and Clint Walker and their son Clint is also a vintner at the winery. Dancing Bee Winery opened in September 2011.

Dancing Bee Winery specializes in honey wine or better known as mead. The name “Dancing Bee” came from one of the ways honey bees communicate with one another which is with a dance language.

I easily found the Dancing Bee Winery which is located in a large building. Chelsea was my tasting guide and she also handles the social media for the Dancing Bee Winery. I found them on Twitter and was one of the main reasons I had to visit the winery when I was in the area. Tastings are held every day which makes it convenient.

Bees built into the wall

There is a tasting fee for five wines which also includes a logoed wine glass. The bottles use corks and the tastings are poured from the bottle. You stand at the tasting bar to do a tasting and fairly close to the tasting bar in the wall is a glass enclosed honeycomb complete with bees. It was interesting examining the enclosure and especially making sure there was no way for the bees to get out!

I learned more about honey wine and mead while at the Dancing Bee Winery. Honey wine dates back to at least 7000 B.C. and is a mixture of honey, water, yeast, and other added ingredients. Honey comes in many different varietals depending on the flowers the bees visit and each has their own unique flavors, sweetness, and color. For example a buckwheat honey is much darker than a clover honey which is what most people consider a normal honey.

There are different types of mead which Dancing Bee Winery offers. Mead is fermented honey and is also called honey wine. Melomel is a wine made from honey and fruit fermented together. Cyser is honey and apples fermented together.

Dancing Bee Winery also makes one wine with Texas grapes from Red Caboose Winery. This wine is called the Texas Two Step and is a melomel made of 60% wildflower honey, tallow tree honey, and 40% Merlot grapes.

Other meads produced are Citrus Tango made from orange blossom honey and fresh squeezed oranges which came out in June. The supply of Cyser-Apple wine bottles is low so unfortunately you are unable to taste that wine which is made with tart apples and wildflower honey. They will be coming out with a winter mead made with honey and cranberry.

For those people who do not care for mead and to supplement their wine menu, Dancing Bee Winery also offer a small selection of red and white wines from other Texas wineries Red Caboose Winery and Georgetown Winery.

A wine club will be coming soon. A gift shop is present primarily with honey products.

Private events can be held at the winery. They have had events before such as Wino Women’s Club, Book Clubs, and Girls Night Out. Other events are planned for the Fall season.

Dancing Bee is on the San Gabriel Wine Trail.

Filed Under: Wineries Tagged With: fruit, Hill Country, honey, mead, San Gabriel Wine Trail, store, Texas Wine, Texas Wineries

Darcy’s Vineyard

May 26, 2012 by Jeff Leave a Comment

http://www.darcysvineyard.com

Darcy’s Vineyard is located in Hallettsville and is owned by Darcy and John Warren. John is also the winemaker. Production of wine began in May, 2011 and a tasting room was opened with an official grand opening on April 14, 2012 when the main floor of the barn was converted into the tasting room.

Darcy and John were looking for a location to plant a vineyard and start a winery and found 24 acres of land in Lavaca County. They began planting the vineyard in 2005, experimenting with many different varieties to find the right match for the climate, soil, and ecosystem. Their vineyard now consists primarily of Lomanto and Champanel (red hybrid grape varieties developed in Texas by T.V. Munson) and Sangiovese. There are a total of 500 vines.

We arrived at Darcy’s Vineyard and saw a winery sign on the fence, but the entrance wasn’t entirely clear because the road was more of a path leading into a field. We took a chance and indeed we were eventually rewarded with a building that said “Winery.”

We were impressed with the main entrance and doors to the tasting room. The doors are a set of 100 year old compound doors from Rajastan, India.

Sarah greeted us and guided us through our tasting. Tastings are done standing at the tasting bar or you can sit at tables. The tastings are complimentary for, at the present, four wines. Darcy’s Vineyard uses corks in their wines and the tastings are poured with a measured pourer. Hummus and chipotle sauce on cream cheese is provided with crackers to cleanse your palate and to enjoy the tasting.

Darcy’s Vineyard’s signature line of wines is called Courthouse Wines (after the courthouse in Hallettsville) and features a Sangiovese, Chardonnay, and Blush. They also make a sweet Vanilla Mead from Texas wildflower honey, which is then infused with Madagascar vanilla beans. We were told when tasting the Vanilla Mead to taste the mead, eat some chocolate, and then taste the mead again. It definitely changed the flavor of the mead.

A small gift shop is present with logo shirts and logo wine glasses. The wine glasses were a little surprising since the tastings are done using plastic cups.

I learned a little about the wines from John Warren. They make their wine in small batches, bottling 14 gallons at a time, so each one is potentially a little different, but their winery is evolving fast. He thinks they may have produced about 250 gallons of wine in the past year.

Their Texas Sangiovese is about 80 percent Texas and 20 percent Italian made from must.

The Chardonnay is made with juice from the Suisun Valley in California (southeast of Napa). They had planned on using the out of state juice for the first year and then switch to local growers, but the response from their customers has been so positive they plan on continuing to make it the same way.

The Blush is made from white gamay juice also from the Suisun Valley. They have not found a Texas grower to supply those grapes, so they plan on experimenting with locally available varietals to create a Blush.

Each 30 gallon batch of the Vanilla Mead is made using six gallons of honey. They use five gallons of Texas wildflower honey and one gallon of off-the-shelf honey because the apiary doesn’t sell it in six gallon buckets.

We did not get a chance to try their 2011 Estate red wine because they plan on bottling it the following week. It will be about 85 percent Lavaca County, Texas grapes blended with a little Sangiovese from the Italian must.

Darcy’s Vineyard also has a bottled but unreleased Cabernet Sauvignon that is nicknamed Chateau Doublewide. It is mostly 80 percent Texas Cabernet, Lomanto, and Sangiovese with 20 percent wine from a Chilean Cabernet must.

In the future Darcy’s Vineyard is planning on getting peaches from the Fredericksburg area for a Peach Chardonnay. They also will be buying a ton of Blanc du Bois grapes from another Lavaca County vineyard this summer in addition to getting a ton each of Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon from north Texas later this summer. As you can see, Texas is on their mind.

I love this quote from their website: “We’re in Texas, trying to make a Texas wine. Our customers can easily get fine wines from other areas at the supermarket. Why should we go through the trouble of finding the right grapes for this land if all we are going to do is imitate someone else’s style? This place, this soil can produce a wine with a style all its own.”

Darcy’s Vineyard may be young but is already showing promise for the future.