Poteet Country Winery

Poteet Country Winery is located in Poteet and is owned by Bob Denson and Jim Collums. The winery opened on July 4th, 1998.

I arrived at the winery greeted by a lot of windmills lining the driveway. I learned later that co-owner Jim Collums is known as the “windmill man” across the United States. He builds windmills for various purposes such as for movie sets.

I met Ginger Walker when I entered the winery, daughter of co-owner Bob Denson. She guided me through a wine tasting of Poteet Country Winery’s wines. The inside of the winery continues the country décor with the decorations and the large country gift shop. The winery and store actually dates back to the 1800’s.

You stand at the tasting bar to do a tasting and the tasting is complimentary, but you can buy your tasting glass to bring home. The tastings are poured from the uncorked bottles.

The wines available were:

• Poteet Strawberry
• Blackberry Reserve
• Mustang
• White Mustang
• Peach
• Strawberry-Mustang
• Strawberry Reserve

The Poteet Strawberry wine is their signature wine and signature wine of the yearly Poteet Strawberry Festival. 250 cases of the Poteet Strawberry wine are sold in just that one weekend. The Strawberry wine is cloudy looking and has a two year shelf life.

All of Poteet Country Winery’s wines are made with local fruit whether it be grapes or other fruits like strawberries and blackberries. Gabriel Planas now does the winemaking and the winery makes a total of 1,000 cases of wine a year.

I was told that Poteet Country Winery is one of the few commercial wineries who can make a Mustang grape wine in the United States. A law passed which restricted wineries from making Mustang wine but Poteet Country Winery was grandfathered in. When making their White Mustang wine, they use the full grape first. They press the juice from the center of the grape to get a white color, but the colors can look different. The one I tasted looked more like a Rosé. They originally created the wine like a White Zinfandel. Jim Collums also has an agreement to have an experimental grape vineyard at the winery using Mustang root stock.

The sweet reserve wines are made like Ice Wine. They freeze the fruit to draw out the sugars. The sweetest wine Poteet Country Winery makes is the Strawberry Reserve.

The gift shop has a large selection of country gifts, jams, clothing, and wine accessories. The winery can be used for events such as anniversaries. There is a fall festival ever year on the weekend before Thanksgiving. This year in 2014 will be the first Valentine’s dance.