Mendelbaum Cellars

http://www.mendelbaumcellars.com

Mendelbaum Cellars, owned by Nitzan Mendelbaum, opened in November of 2011 and is located in Fredericksburg on the famous Highway 290 stretch of road which many wineries call home.

Prior to our visit, I wasn’t sure what we would find at Mendelbaum Cellars as there was not much information on the web other than they would be selling Inwood Estates Vineyards wines and wines from Israel. Hence I wasn’t sure if they were a winery or just a wine bar reselling other wines.

When we arrived at Mendelbaum Cellars, out front was a 1929 Ford Model A flatbed truck with wine barrels in the back and Mendelbaum Cellars on the doors. It makes a nice conversational piece.

Entering the building there are tasting bars to the left and right so they have plenty of room for people to enjoy the wine they carry. In the gift shop are the wines for sale in addition to olive oil. Looking at the wall of wines showed wines from Inwood Estates Vineyards, Vineyard at Florence, and Mendelbaum Cellars wines. Looking at the back of the Mendelbaum Cellars bottles, we discovered they were cellared and bottled at Inwood Estates Vineyards.

Only the left tasting bar was currently being used and there were three guides helping people do wine tastings. Gloria struck up a conversation with a man walking around and eventually asked him if he worked there. He said yes, because he was the owner, Nitzan Mendelbaum. We talked a little bit including the involvement of winemaker and owner Dan Gatlin from Inwood Estates Vineyards. I mentioned how last time we were at Inwood Estates Vineyards at the Vineyard at Florence we had just missed him. Nitzan asked if we would like to meet him, and surprisingly we were introduced to Dan Gatlin, who was one of the three people working behind the tasting bar. Dan handled a tasting for us and explained how the tasting worked.

The tasting menu is divided up into three sections, with one list for $1 per wine, $2 per wine, and finally $3 per wine. The Mendelbaum Cellars wine was listed on the $1 wine list whereas the Inwood Estates and Vineyard at Florence wines were on the $2 and $3 lists. The normal tasting is $10 and you can mix and match to make up the number of wines tasted.

Since we have visited Inwood Estates before and tasted Dan’s wines there, we decided to try just the Mendelbaum Cellars Texas wine. The Mendelbaum Cellars wines have the Model A truck on their label. Dan explained how the fruit used in Mendelbaum’s wines is whatever Dan has extra from his winemaking at other locations and also includes other Texas fruit. The white wines are made at the Inwood Estates Vineyards Florence location and the red wines are made at the Dallas location. He pointed out the lone exception was the one blush wine which is made by Water 2 Wine.

We had a very interesting conversation with Dan during the tasting about all the wines including his wines from Inwood Estates. Nitzan came over at one point and when we inquired about the wines from Israel, we were told they had not arrived yet. More than one person said they had tried them though and thought they were great. We will have to stop by the next time we are in Fredericksburg to try the wines from Israel.