Piney Woods Wine Trail - Texas Wine Lover

Texas Vineyard & Smokehaus

April 24, 2012 by Jeff Leave a Comment

http://www.texasvineyard.org

Texas Vineyard & Smokehaus is located in Palestine and is owned by Rafael and Cheryl Hernandez. The winery opened in 2008.

The winery was not found on our GPS so we used the coordinates we found from Google maps. Fortunately the coordinates brought us to the winery fairly easily as we found the winery on a corner lot in the rural area.

As we entered the winery, Cheryl Hernandez was finishing up with a customer and welcomed us to the winery. She then handled our wine tasting.

There is a tasting fee for 4 wines and an extra fee for their special Sangria by the glass or pitcher. All the wines are corked and are poured with a measured pourer while we stood at the tasting bar. Cheese, crackers, and chocolate are available for cleansing your palate between the different wines.

Cheryl described how they used to live near a large city and they decided to move to the country. Rafael purchased ten acres of land in Anderson County and began to fulfill his dream of making Texas wines. He commuted to Palestine every two weeks to clear the land and the neighbors helped to clear the land too. Rafael erected a building which would eventually become the winery and tasting room.

Cheryl told us all their grapes are grown in Texas and they personally grow about 70%. They have 100 acres of vineyards in the Lubbock area. They use the Homestead Winery production facility in Denison to help produce their Texas wines.

A nice gift shop contains a nice selection of wine related items, candles, and other gifts. Personalized labels are available for wine bottles. A large front porch with a balcony is welcoming for relaxing with a glass of wine.

Music events are held at the winery and tours are available if you make reservations in advance.

Texas Vineyard & Smokehaus is on the Piney Woods Wine Trail. It is worth a drive to the countryside to visit the winery and enjoy their country charm.

Crump Valley Vineyards

August 26, 2011 by Jeff 2 Comments

http://www.facebook.com/CrumpValleyVineyards

Crump Valley Vineyards is located in Sulphur Springs about four miles south of Downtown and is owned by Travis Crump and Susan Jones. The winery is available by appointment only. There are a few reasons why this is the case. Number one is the winery does not have an adjacent tasting room yet. Another reason is one of the things that complicates matters, especially when it comes to scheduling tastings and tours, is that Travis and Susan both still work regular jobs. Travis works for the City of Sulphur Springs in Community Development and Susan works for Raytheon in Dallas where she has worked for 26 years. The final reason is the winery recently opened and they are concentrating on getting their Texas wine to be of high quality, consistently made, and also in distribution first, instead of having people come to the winery to buy their wine and then they can never find the wine again.

Travis Trump and Susan Jones bought the LouViney Vineyard and Winery in November 2009 and it became Crump Valley Vineyards. Susan Jones was the previous winemaker at LouViney and continues to be the winemaker with Crump Valley Vineyards. LouViney Vineyard and Winery previously helped Red 55 Winery in Lindale make their wines and Crump Valley Vineyards continues to do so. Travis said they are tweaking some of Red 55 Winery’s wine formulas.

We made an appointment with Crump Valley Vineyards and arranged to meet at the winery. When we arrived, Travis Crump was there and welcomed us into the winery. Unfortunately Susan was in the vineyard and Travis apologized she was unable to be at the winery. All the grapes used in Crump Valley Vineyards wine come from Texas grapes. They grow Blanc du Bois grapes on a two acre plot and they also use grapes from other vineyards in Texas. They have a 20 acre plot which they eventually plan on growing grapes, starting with Tempranillo. Crump Valley also works a lot with Llano Estacado Winery from Lubbock.

The winery is located on Travis Crump’s farm in a metal building which used to be Travis’ house and the current winery’s production area used to be his hobby shop. Since there isn’t a tasting room inside the winery, Travis had a counter set up with their wines for us to taste within the winery itself with the stainless steel tanks nearby. Even though it wasn’t a real tasting room, the feeling being within the winery doing a tasting was really nice. Travis also brought some cheese and crackers out of their “yeast” refrigerator for us to use during the tasting. He said “yeast” refrigerator because that is where they store the yeast used during the winemaking.

Travis uncorked the bottles and poured our tastings from the bottle. Some Texas Wines made by Crump Valley Vineyards include a Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, plus a few others. We tasted the Cabernet Sauvignon 2009. Travis said they had just moved the 2010 out of the oak barrels and into the stainless tanks getting ready to bottle it, and fortunately we got to taste it.

We learned Crump Valley Vineyards uses American oak barrels with French heads, in essence a hybrid barrel which helps smooth out the flavor. Some additional information we learned included during bottling, the winery uses nitrogen before filling the bottles with their Texas wine. We had previously experienced using argon gas while helping at one winery and other wineries do not use anything.

While tasting the Crump Valley wines, Travis said he was not going to bother us and just let us enjoy them. When we got to his Blanc du Bois though, he said he had to watch our faces. He said some people like it and others say it has a different taste. The reason is because they want to finish it like a European Sauvignon Blanc. He wondered if we could tell him what that taste was. Gloria has a better palate than me but after tasting, I said it tasted like grapefruit. He said that was right. I must be getting better! Well maybe so, but Gloria doesn’t really eat grapefruit so she is not familiar with that taste.

We had a really nice conversation with Travis including a very common topic, the time and troubles of getting labels approved. We had to ask a few times what the alcohol percentage was on a wine. That is because Crump Valley Vineyards do not list an alcohol percentage on their labels. The reason given was if it changes, that means they are in for another two month approval of a label.

Travis explained how they hope to have a tasting room available but in the meantime, tastings can be done at the Ladles to Linens store in nearby Winnsboro and also Handy Farms in Scroggins. He said Handy Farms is a winery with an elderly woman who is making watermelon wine. Another winery had mentioned somebody was attempting to make watermelon wine so we assumed it must be the same place.

Even though Crump Valley Vineyards is young, they have already won medals at wine competitions in Grapevine, the Houston rodeo, and New York State.

We had a great visit with Travis and highly recommend visiting Crump Valley Vineyards if you can arrange a time to visit. The Crump Valley Texas wine is sold at very reasonable prices. Crump Valley Vineyards is on the Piney Woods Wine Trail.

We said goodbye to Travis and since we had some time, we decided to visit both the locations previously mentioned where their wines are sold: Ladles to Linens and Handy Farms.

We found Ladles to Linens in Winnsboro and went inside to check it out. It was a nice store and in the back they have a location where you can do tastings of Crump Valley Vineyards wine and also purchase bottles of wine.

We then headed off to try and find Handy Farms in Scroggins. Our GPS didn’t direct us to the correct location so we took a chance and eventually found Handy Farms further down the road. Handy Farms advertised “Texas Wine” outside so we were not sure if there was going to be more than just the watermelon wine. Handy Farms has a little nursery with plants in addition to a store.

We parked and were met by Melvin Sparks. We explained Travis Crump had told us about them and we had to stop by. Melvin invited us into the store where we saw they had a number of Texas wines from local wineries in addition to all of Crump Valley Vineyards wines. We mentioned we heard they had watermelon wine. He said his wife was making it but it wasn’t quite ready yet. He called over the intercom to Blanche Sparks, told her about us visiting, and asked her to please bring some watermelon wine for us to sample.

Blanche Sparks arrived with some watermelon wine in cups for us to try. She said she really did not want us to try it since it was a few weeks away from being ready and she really wanted to make sure it was good, but she let us try it anyway. Drinking the sample, it definitely tasted like watermelon.

Melvin and Blanche Sparks are a very nice elderly couple. We were previously told Blanche was in her 80′s but we did not want to ask her. She said they are a true winery and when I got home and checked my Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission listing, sure enough, Handy Farms and Blanche Sparks was on the list. They are only making the watermelon wine right now.

Handy Farms sells Texas wine from other local wineries. One thing Mr. Sparks said was no matter what wine we might be interested in purchasing, he had a tasting for us to ensure we really liked it. That was one thing you don’t usually see in places that sell wine.

We had a nice visit with Melvin and Blanche Sparks and if you find your way near Scroggins, we recommend you stop by and visit with the couple.

Filed Under: Wineries Tagged With: awards, bottling, Piney Woods Wine Trail, Texas Wine, Texas Wineries, Vineyard

Texas Winery Passport Rewards and Los Pinos Weekend

August 8, 2011 by Jeff 6 Comments

As we have mentioned before, the Texas Winery Passport program is definitely something you should be involved with if you are visiting Texas wineries. The rewards get better and better as you visit more wineries. Even though the Texas Winery Passport program will be changing in some way at the start of September, we still recommend collecting passport codes as you visit Texas wineries.

We have reached a passport level where the rewards are now given out by the wineries instead of the Texas Department of Agriculture. The latest reward chosen for us was an overnight stay and private candlelit wine dinner for two in the barrel room at Los Pinos Ranch Vineyards. This of course sounded great to us, and it didn’t hurt that Los Pinos Ranch Vineyards is one of our favorite wineries.

The challenging part was trying to arrange a date that would work for both Los Pinos and us. Andrea Taylor from Los Pinos was very helpful in arranging a date. The issue was that Los Pinos currently has one cottage available and we had to find an available night where other guests had not already reserved the cottage. In addition, we had to choose a time period where harvesting would not affect the barrel room dinner. We decided on a date which should have fit between two harvest periods and have availability of the cottage.

Our overnight stay was going to be on a Saturday night but since we were driving four hours to the winery, we decided to see what else we could do during the weekend. We headed to East Texas Friday night and went to KE Cellars in Tyler. I had arranged with Twitter friend Darlene for us to meet her and her husband Roger there to enjoy some of the Texas wine KE Cellars offers and to listen to the live music.

We arrived earlier than expected but enjoyed looking at the variety of Texas wine KE Cellars sells. We bought a bottle of Llano Moscato and found a table in the live music room to wait for Darlene and Roger. It was not a long wait as they soon arrived. None of us had met before, but after almost two hours of a fun conversation it seemed like we had previously been friends. Upon leaving, we all said we would have to get together again when one was in the others part of the state.

The next morning Gloria and I decided to do something a little thrilling – zip lining. I had previously done it near Austin but it was Gloria’s first time. Wired (http://www.ziptheusa.com) claims to have the tallest towers and longest zip lines in Texas. They definitely were taller, longer (longest being 1,115 feet), and faster than the previous ones I had done. Fortunately we had decided to get there at 8am because as expected, the heat eventually got extreme. Gloria had a fun time and said she would do it again.

After making a nice visit to Crump Valley Vineyards (post to come soon), we headed to Los Pinos Ranch Vineyards. As we drove down the narrow bumpy road to their winery, I received a phone call from Gerald Jones, their Sales Director, asking if we were there yet. Talk about timing. It turned out he was on the road again with a refrigerated truck and probably wouldn’t be back at the winery that evening. He was checking to see how late we would be staying in the morning. We said we could wait until he got back. In the morning however, he texted us saying he probably would be much later than he had anticipated. It turned out to be another missed opportunity to see Gerald again. Gerald, if you’re reading this, just request us to help work your table at the next Old Town Spring SpringFest.

We checked in at the tasting room and met Andrea who I had been corresponding with, so it was nice to put a name with a face. She told us earlier in the week that harvesting was unexpectedly happening sooner than normal because of the heat, so we probably could not have the barrel room for the dinner. We were given a choice to either reschedule or just eat in the main dining area. The dining room was fine for us. We were told to pick any table and they would reserve it for us for the evening. We chose a nice corner table in the rear where it was a little more private but still had a nice view of the stage where jazz would be happening later in the evening.

Andrea said the barrel room and production facility was busy at the moment with workers harvesting Sangiovese which had just come in. She brought us in to show us what was happening and they were loading the grapes into the destemmer. Owner Jeff Sneed was helping out and said hello to us. I mentioned how we saw they just came out with a Moscato and couldn’t wait to try it. He told us he thought it was the best label yet on their wine. That made sense because when you see the label, it has a picture of Jeff on it. Yes, he’s one funny guy.

We received the key to the cottage and checked it out. The cottage was very nice and romantic, complete with Jacuzzi. After unpacking, we headed back to the tasting room to quench our thirst.

After sitting at our table, our waitress asked what we would like for dinner. We had a choice between the normal tapas menu or the Chef’s Special that evening: scallops in prosciutto cups with sautéed spinach and potatoe crispadoros. That sounded delicious so it was an easy choice for us. We also would receive a bottle of wine and the Chef’s Special menu said the vintner recommended either the Chardonnay or Moscato Reserve. This was working out perfectly so we of course chose the Moscato.

We chose to get a pizza margherita as an appetizer. The bottle of Moscato arrived but we decided to do a tasting of their sweet and dry wines first to decide if there were any other wines we would like to drink later or buy to take home. As mentioned previously in the Los Pinos Ranch Vineyards post, the tastings are done a little differently than other wineries since they are served at once in test tube-like bottles. We are normally white wine drinkers but we really liked the Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, so we decided to ask later to get some bottles to take home.

We finished our tasting and the scallops arrived. The dinner tasted as delicious as it looked. The jazz trio started and we enjoyed listening to the music while eating dinner and of course enjoying the wine.

After we finished dinner and the band had taken a break, we were pleasantly surprised when Jeff Sneed sat down at our table. He apologized for the way he looked since he had come from finishing the grape harvesting, but he looked fine to us. We had an enjoyable and fun conversation talking about wine, wineries, problems creating wine labels, and how they used to have themed events. One event he held was how he met his wife who is now the Chef at the winery. He said the Sangiovese from last year was made with New Mexico grapes, but the current one which they had just crushed was from Texas. He could not wait to get that wine bottled and have 100% Texas wine. He thought the band was on a really long break, so he excused himself to check on them.

We had a fantastic evening listening to jazz, eating dinner, drinking wine, and feeling like we were part of the family. Staying in the Los Pinos Ranch Vineyards cottage was an even bigger plus. After a peaceful night of sleep, we packed up and headed for the long trip home.

If you ever get the chance to visit East Texas, we highly recommend spending some time at Los Pinos Ranch Vineyards. Tell them Jeff and Gloria sent you!