High Plains Trip – Day 2 – Vineyards

Our second day arrived and we enjoyed delicious blueberry muffins which Janice Newsom had made. This day we would be mostly visiting vineyards. Earlier in the year when I was creating the blog post about wineries and vineyards on Twitter, I came across Dusty Timmons on Twitter and knew he had a vineyard, but wasn’t sure if he shared his brother Andy Timmons’ Lost Draw Vineyards or had his own. I emailed Dusty to get the information.

Dusty replied his vineyard was called Twin T Vineyard and then surprising me, said whenever we get to the High Plains, he would love to show us around the vineyards. It turned out that Dusty is one of four viticulture advisors in the state of Texas. He is responsible for the High Plains area so he certainly knew his way around the various vineyards. When we finally knew a date we would be visiting, I confirmed with Dusty a day and time to meet.

We met Dusty in Brownfield at 8:30am and took off in his pickup truck. We needed to cut the tour short at 2:00pm and even though he had a full tour planned, that was not a problem. We headed west and drove by numerous vineyards as Dusty pointed them out and explained who owned the vineyards and what they grew. Our first stop was at Tyler Oswald’s vineyard, son-in-law of Cliff Bingham of the Bingham Family Vineyards. We met Tyler and he explained the different varieties of grapes he was growing. Dusty also gave him a few tips on what was needed for the vineyard at that time.

After driving through (yes through, so I was glad we were in a pickup) and by some other vineyards, we next stopped at Reddy Vineyards. Local friend and wine owner Chris Caldwell of Eaglefire Winery and Vineyards had previously made some Cabernet Sauvignon from Dr. Vijay Reddy’s grapes and Chris asked since we were going to Lubbock, could we please deliver a couple bottles to Vijay. Not a problem. Fortunately Vijay Reddy was at the vineyard when we arrived and after delivering the two bottles of wine to him, we were able to go to the top of his building which overlooks his large vineyard. The view of his vineyard in addition to other vineyards in the distance was impressive. We had a nice conversation with Vijay and then Dusty had us heading to the next vineyard.

Dusty brought us to his own Twin T Vineyard and we then headed to his older brother Andy Timmons’ Lost Draw Vineyard. We met Andy and had a walk through his vineyard tasting some grapes and talking along with the way.

It was time to continue our tour and Dusty drove us by and through a few more vineyards. We then stopped at the future location of his next business venture. Soon his business partners drove up: Mike Sipowicz, Jet Wilmeth, and Steve Talcott. During our tour Dusty had explained a little about what the business will be and how excited he was since it is going to help the Texas wine industry. After talking with his partners, it was clear how excited they were too. I will go into more details in a later blog post on the business. We then got to take the first photo of the group.

We said our goodbyes and Dusty returned us to our starting location. We thanked him for his time and all the information we learned during the tour. There was so much information and so much we saw, so look for that blog post in the future too.

Since Llano Estacado Winery was having their annual Wine and Clay Festival the next day and there would be no tours given, we headed to Llano Estacado. We met Mike Laughlin (@LlanoWineMike) in the tasting room and he arranged for Kelly to give us a tour, which we then followed with a nice tasting.

It was time to head back to the bed and breakfast and Neal Newsom wanted us to call on the way back. Since the local town restaurant was closed, the decision was made for them to pick us up and go to New Mexico for dinner. Of course my first question was, “How far is that?” It turned out the New Mexico border was only 18 miles away. We had a nice dinner with Neal and Janice Newsom and after we returned to the bed and breakfast, the evening was ended with a delicious bottle of Llano Estacado’s 35th Anniversary Malbec, which of course was made with grapes from Newsom Vineyards.