Wimberley Valley Winery

Wimberley Valley Winery, founded in 1983, has had a tasting room in Old Town Spring for years which we have visited many times. We were always told we could not visit the actual winery which was located in Wimberley with the primary reason being the production facility was located in a “dry” precinct.

Wimberley Valley Winery is managed by Dean and Jana Valentine and other parties are also involved. Dean Valentine is the winemaker. Over the years the original winery which began construction in 1982 has undergone renovations and additions with continued growth. Fortunately the “dry” law changed in 2008 and the winery was able to build a beautiful tasting room and have it available for visitors in April 2011. The winery resides on thirty acres of land adjacent to a double rock wall cottage house in which Dean Valentine lives.

We visited the winery and initially had some problems with the GPS conflicting with the website’s address, but we eventually found the winery. As mentioned previously, the winery and tasting room is in a very beautiful building. When we went inside the tasting room, there were already a number of people present. We found a spot to stand along the large tasting bar to do a tasting.

There is a tasting fee for five wines. The bottles use corks and the tastings are poured from the bottle. Crackers are available to cleanse your palate.

While tasting we learned at the time of our visit, Wimberley Valley Winery does not use any Texas grapes. We were surprised even the fruit is from New York State. The Moscato was from California. The winery makes mostly fruit wines so to supplement their wine tasting list they provide wines from Robert Hall Winery of California like the Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. They also had a Chilean wine available.

There was no gift shop available at the time and no tours were given. They want to hold music events but nothing was scheduled at the moment. One nice thing Wimberley Valley Winery does do is provide wine tasting classes. One class was being held when we were there and it would be nice to live nearer to take advantage of the classes.

The winery is capable of storing and fermenting 25,000 gallons of wine. One innovative method at the time was the use of an Apple iPad as a cash register. I purchased with a credit card and was able to sign with my finger.

As mentioned before the building is very beautiful and even outside is nice with miniature horses grazing in a field of wildflowers.

Wimberley Valley Winery is on the Texas Hill Country wine trail.