Grapes on the Caprock: The Texas Wine Revolution
- Jody Slaughter
- Aug 26, 2024
- 28 min read
Updated: Sep 25, 2024
Season: 1 \ Episode: 5
Join us as we explore how Texas, once considered an unlikely place for wine production, has risen to become a significant player on the global wine stage. Through the stories of pioneers, scientists, and modern-day winemakers, we trace the history of Texas wine back over 350 years and uncover the pivotal moments that shaped the state and region's wine legacy.
Doc McPherson at Sagmor Vineyards, undated photo; Texas Wine Growers Association
CHAPTER 1: NEW SPAIN
The Origins of Texas Wine: Learn how Spanish missionaries brought wine to Texas over 350 years ago, planting the first vineyards at the El Paso del Norte mission.
Surviving the Pueblo Revolt: Discover how the Pueblo Uprising of 1680 led to an expansion of vineyards in El Paso, setting the stage for centuries of winemaking.
The Flourishing Vineyards: Follow the journey of “Pass wine” as it gained fame across New Spain, flourishing in the El Paso region until devastating floods in the late 1800s.
CHAPTER 2: ZEE GERMANS
Follow the journey of early German immigrants as they search for a home in Texas and plant their first vineyards
CHAPTER 3: FRANK QUALIA & VAL VERDE
An Italian immigrant builds the state's longest lasting winery and navigates prohibition
CHAPTER 4: THE PLAGUE
The Phylloxera Crisis: A detailed account of the devastating phylloxera plague that decimated European vineyards and the crucial role Texas played in saving the global wine industry.
TV Munson’s Ingenuity: Learn about the groundbreaking hybridization work of Texas scientist TV Munson, whose efforts helped French vineyards recover and thrive.
A Global Rescue Mission: The fascinating story of how Texas rootstock and innovation saved Europe’s wine heritage, leading to Munson’s induction into the French Legion of Honor.
CHAPTER 5: TTU & LLANO ESTACADO
Rebuilding After Prohibition: Follow the revival of Texas wine through the efforts of Texas Tech professors, who laid the groundwork for the state’s modern wine industry.
The Birth of Llano Estacado Winery: Discover the challenges, grit, and ingenuity that led to the founding of Llano Estacado, Texas’s first post-Prohibition winery.
A New Era of Wine Production: See how Llano Estacado’s success paved the way for other wineries in Texas, transforming the region into a hub of viticulture.
CHAPTER 6: STE. GENEVIEVE
The University of Texas gets in on the action with the Ste. Genevieve Winery, that would grow into the state's largest
CHAPTER 7: INTO THE PRESENT
The rapid growth of Texas’s wine industry from 1981 to the present day, marked by an increase in wineries, AVA designations, and national recognition.
CHAPTER 8: COTTON V. GRAPES
Explore the ongoing conflict between cotton farmers and grape growers in West Texas, centered around herbicide use and its impact on vineyards.
CLOSING
Reflecting on Texas’s potential to become a leading global wine producer, with West Texas at the heart of this exciting agricultural transformation.
Texas’s wine history is rooted in centuries of tradition, from Spanish missions to modern vineyards.
The state’s wine industry has faced significant challenges, from climate issues and disease to regulatory hurdles, yet has emerged as a strong and growing player in the global market.
The rivalry between Texas universities and their role in the development of viticulture underscores the innovative and pioneering spirit that continues to drive Texas wine forward.
Listen to the Full Episode: Tune in to this episode of WTX: A History of West Texas for a deep dive into the history, challenges, and successes of the Texas wine industry. Whether you’re a wine lover, history enthusiast, or just curious about Texas’s agricultural heritage, this episode offers a compelling look at the state’s journey to wine prominence.
Enjoyed the episode? Don’t forget to subscribe to WTX: A History of West Texas on your favorite podcast platform, and leave us a review! Follow us on TWITTER for more updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Join the Conversation: What’s your favorite Texas wine? Have you visited any of the state’s wineries? Share your experiences and thoughts with us in the comments below or on our social media channels using the hashtag #WTXPodcast.
Media:
Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission, Juarez, Mexico.
2005 Postcard, University of San Diego photo
Fray Garcia de San Francisco de Zuniga, the godfather of Texas wine, in front of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Church.
Pen and ink drawing by Jose Cisneros. UTSA Libraries Special Collections.
The German immigration route to the Fisher-Miller Land Grant.
Texas State Historical Association
The Val Verde Winery, Del Rio Texas, modern photo.
Sketch of phylloxera aphid (Dactylosphaera vitifolii); the individual pictures represent: phylloxera unwinged, phylloxera winged, phylloxera sucking. a suction trunk of phylloxera.
Wikimedia Commons.
TV Munson, savior of the European wine industry
(left) Portrait, Eric W. Pohl, Texas Highways; (right) a nursery advertisement, Grayson College
Doc McPherson shows off first harvest at Sagmor Vineyards
Montgomery County Courier/McPherson Family Archives
Ste. Genevieve Winery, Ft Stockton, TX
Texas Monthly photo.
Map of Texas AVA regions
Texas Wine Growers Association graphic
Further Reading
The History of Texas Wine: From Spanish Roots to Rising Star - Katherine Crain & Neil Crain, PhD, American Palate, 2013
Forked Tendrils: Llano Estacado Winery and the Rise of the Modern Texas Wine Industry - Eric D. Sanchez, 1996
Credits:
Writer: Jody L. Slaughter
Producer: Jody L. Slaughter
Editor: Jody L. Slaughter
Engineer: Jody L. Slaughter
Music by Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos (in order of appearance):
Contact:
Email: lubbockistATgmail.com
Twitter: @Lubbockist
Listen on:
Thanks for listening, and so long...from West Texas.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
s01e05 - Grapes on the Caprock: The Texas Wine Revolution
Chapter 1: New Spain
While it may seem like a fairly recent addition to the West Texas agriculture industry, wine has actually been produced and consumed in West Texas for some 350 years.
Even though grapes have grown wild in Texas for thousands of years, there is no record of Native American tribes producing anything like wine, so it wasn’t until the Spanish arrived in the 1600s that “vino” made its first appearance in Texas.
When the Spanish arrived in the New World, they began systematic explorations of North and South America, hoping to find more of the gold and silver riches that they had found in the Aztec empire in present-day Mexico and Central America.
Early expeditions through New Mexico and Texas didn’t find evidence of any of these riches, so these areas were largely ignored initially.
But the Catholic Church, seeing an opportunity to convert the Native people they found here, were the exception. The problem was, without gold and silver to send back to fill the Spanish coffers, they would be on their own, with little to no assistance from the Spanish government or military.
In 1659, Franciscan missionaries led by Fray Garcia de San Francisco established Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission at a site called El Paso del Norte, at a pass between two mountain ranges along the Rio Grande. It still stands today on the Juarez side of the river, the oldest structure in the El Paso area.
Now wine, was an absolute necessity for these Spanish missions, how else would they provide the Holy Eucharist to their converts? But shipping wine on a month’s-long trans-Atlantic journey from Spain just wasn’t feasible. So Fray Garcia planted a vineyard at the mission. By 1662 (it takes vines 2-3 years to produce fruit), the vineyard was established and the first West Texas wine was produced. And before you email me with WELL ACKSHULLY IT WAS ON THE MEXICO SIDE OF THE RIVER!!! I would just refer you to the last 2-3 minutes of this podcast which will answer that question. But if you really want to get technical then Garcia founded a mission on the Texas side of the river at Ysleta 20 years later, that also featured a vineyard.
There is some controversy about what grape varietal Garcia planted, but accounts at the time reported that it was the Lenoir grape, also sometimes referred to as Spanish Black or Mission Grapes.
Now this mission was largely a backwater, with the real Spanish activity in New Spain happening in modern day New Mexico centered around the Colonial capital of Santa Fe.
That would change with the Pueblo Uprising of 1680, when the Pueblo tribe of New Mexico, suffering from Spanish diseases, drought, and Apache raids, attacked Santa Fe, killing 400 settlers and missionaries. The Provincial Governor ordered a retreat, and three thousand Spaniards fled down the Rio Grande to the safety of El Paso del Norte and the Garcia missions there.
It would be 12 years before the Spanish would recapture Santa Fe, and having such a population influx in El Paso would necessitate largescale expansion of agricultural efforts, including grape production.
Once the situation stabilized for Spain, El Paso’s location along the important Camino Real from Santa Fe to the Spanish capital in Mexico City meant that a constant flow of travelers would sample the “Pass wine” and its notoriety would spread throughout New Spain.
The El Paso vineyards would flourish for over 200 years, until flooding would wipe most of them out in the late 1800s.
Chapter 2: From Republic, to State, to Prohibition
Now fast forward a couple centuries from Fray Garcia’s mission vines. Not much has happened in Texas. Just a Mexican Revolution, A Texan Revolution, joining the US, leaving the US, and joining the US again.
The population of who lived here drastically changed during that time. Native American tribes rose and fell, the Comanche arrived and conquered most of West Texas before being conquered themselves. The few Europeans who lived here during Fray Garcia’s time were Spanish missionaries and government bureaucrats. Now there were immigrants - and lots of them. Germans, French, Italians, and Americans. Many from countries where wine was an ingrained part of everyday life. And of course they brought that culture with them.
In the 1840s, a German named Einwanderer (eye-n-vahn-der-er) formed a society to promote German colonization in the Republic of Texas. His society, the Adelsverein (odd-els-ver-eye-n), purchased a land grant - the Fisher-Miller grant - for almost 4 million acres in West Central Texas.
To think about this in modern terms, it extended basically from San Angelo in the northwest, to Marble Falls in the Southeast. And from Goldthwaite in the Northeast to past Junction in the Southwest. This massive land grant encompasses 7 modern counties.
It was also, unbeknownst to the Germans, the heart of Comancheria.
So these Germans began arriving by ship at the Texas Coast by the thousands in 1844, and made their way inland towards the land grant. But poor timing meant that they weren’t going to make it to the grant and get settlements built before winter hit. A fact relayed to the Germans by legendary Texas Ranger John Coffee Hayes. So the Adelsverein setup way stations along the route for the settlers to winter, before resuming their journey to the promised land.
Due to financial mismanagement by the Adelsverein (odd-els-ver-eye-n) and upon learning of the existence of the Comanche, most of the immigrants decided that these way stations suited them perfectly fine. We’re good. No need to go any further West. The names of these temporary stopping points? New Braunfels and Fredericksburg.
Now that the German immigrants had a permanent home, they began to farm the surrounding areas. Some of the settlers had brought grapevine cuttings with them and vineyards were planted. But there was a problem - one that plagues Texas grape growers to this day.
Vitis vinifera (v-eye-tis vine-if-er-uh) is the term used to encompass all European grape varietals, and vitis vinifera doesn’t grow well in most of Texas. The vines don’t tolerate our late wanter freezes and dust storms well, and these natural calamities have historically led to the complete loss of grape production every 7 years on average. Funguses like root rot and black rot devastated crops before fungicides became prevalent, and Pierce’s disease (a bacteria spread by insects) is still a problem today. Finally there’s phylloxera (fuh-locks-er-uh), an aphid that feeds on roots, eventually killing the whole vine.
European varietals are susceptible to all of these issues, and the first German vineyards were a disaster. There’s no record that they were ever able to produce actual wine.
But there was a solution, wild Mustang grapes grew over much of this area, these were immune to many of the plagues that faced the European grapes. So the Germans began planting Mustang grape vineyards and producing wine from those, but these grapes had a much lower sugar content than European grapes but after much experimentation and a lot of trips to the dry goods store for bags of sugar, they were able to make it drinkable. These German settlements would continue to grow and produce wine all the way up to prohibition.
The Italians would arrive en masse later, recruited to overcome a labor shortage following the Civil War.
In 1900 there were 4,000 Italians living in Texas, concentrated in several ethnic communities around the state.
One of the most impactful of these immigrants was Frank Qualia (kwaa-lee-uh), a farmer from Milan, who was recruited in the 1870s by Mexico to help build an agricultural community. Upon arriving, he learned that Mexico wasn’t going to hold up its end of the bargain, and Qualia ended up in the modern day Del Rio area in 1881.
There he found cheap land, plentiful water from the Rio Grande, and Lenoir grapevines. Likely sourced from the many Spanish missions up and down the Rio Grande that had taken up production after Fray Garcia’s success.
In addition to farming other produce for sale in San Antonio, Qualia planted a small vineyard of Lenoir grapes and petitioned the State of Texas for a winery permit, founding the Val Verde Winery, permit #17 issued by the state. In 1900 he produced 200 barrels.
In 1919, Prohibition would close almost all of the vineyards and wineries in the state, but Val Verde managed to stay in operation, producing grape jelly, sacramental wine for the Catholic Church (exempted from Prohibition), and sold grapes to do-it-yourself winemakers to make illicitly at home.
After the fall of Prohibition, Val Verde would be relicensed by the state in 1935 and would continue producing wine through successive generations of Qualias. Today, Val Verde is the longest operating bonded winery in the state, and in 2008 received a Land Heritage Award from the Department of Agriculture for 125 years of continuous operation.
Chapter 3: The Plague
By the mid 1800s, hobbyist and experimental gardening was growing in Europe. This along with the influx of European immigrants to the US, and the advent of fast steamship travel, meant that vine cuttings were transversing the Atlantic in both directions. Americans wanting to try their favorite varietal in their new homeland, and Europeans itching to experiment with novel North American grapes from across the pond.
One of these hobbyists was a man named Borty (bor-tee) who lived in the French village of Roquemaure (rock-eh-more) along the Rhone river. In 1862, Borty received a shipment of American grapevines, and he planted them in his small garden. They appeared to thrive.
The next spring, inexplicably, grapevines in the nearby village of Pujuat (P’jew-it) began to suffer. Their leaves began to yellow before turning red. Something that would normally happen in the fall. By summer, the leaves had dried totally and fallen from the vines.
The growers in Pujuat (P’jew-it) examined the plants and found no obvious source of the disease. Agricultural science was in its infancy, and superstitions ruled the day much more than scientific analysis.
The plague began to spread from village to village, field to field, and by 1870, 40% of French grapes were devastated by the mysterious illness.
It’s impossible to overstate how bad this was for France. Some 25% of French jobs at that time were somehow related to the wine industry. Farms went bankrupt, businesses, closed, and agriculture laborers fled the country after wages were cut in half.
France, for the first time in its history, began importing more wine than it exported. And the impact to the French economy was tallied at more than 10 billion francs. That would convert to somewhere around 140 billion US dollars today.
So even with all this devastation starting in 1863, it would take 5 years until France would make a serious academic attempt to explain the plague, convening a committee to do so in 1868.
They would dig up and examine some of the effected plants, but could still find no source of the disease - no insects, and no fungus.
On a whim, Jules-Emile Planchon, (jewels emile plon-shon) a professor and one of the investigators, dug up one of the healthy vines nearby. They found some yellow spots on the roots and, after examining with a magnifying glass, found that they spots were clumps of tiny insects. They had found their culprit.
Or had they? Planchon’s insect theory had trouble grabbing hold in France. These fields had been growing grapes for centuries. How was it possible that a bug could be the culprit? Where had these aphids come from?
It would take another year before that question would be answered. Another Frenchman, Leo Laliman (luh-lee-man), had been importing and studying grapevines from the US. He noticed some leaf galls on his American vines (think of a leaf gall as something resembling a tumor growing on the leaf).
Later, he noticed the same galls on some of his European vines. The American vines seemed healthy other than the galls, while the European vines soon succommbed to the plague. He sent his findings to Planchon.
Back in the US, in 1869 Charles Riley, Missouri’s state entemologist, read a report about the blight in Europe describing these aphids that were destroying grapevines across Europe. This sounded a lot like a bug he was familiar with. The phylloxera (fuh-locks-er-uh) aphid that had successfully kept most of the European varietals from successfully establishing in the US. But native grapes like the Mustang had a natural immunity to the pest.
In 1873, Europe sent Planchon to the US to meet with Riley. And they hatched a plan to ship native US root stock to Europe to graft onto the European plants, hopefully making them resistant to the pest as well.
Riley sourced rootstock from around Missouri and elsewhere in the US and shipped it to France.
But the project was a failure. The French had trouble grafting the two species together, and when they were able to do it successfully, they were difficult to root. The plants that did root did not fare well in the much different French climate and soil than was found in Missouri. Just planting the American varietals didn’t work any better. The project was abandoned.
By the late 1870s, the phylloxera plague had spread to Spain and Portugal, Germany and Italy. By the late 1880s, more than two million acres of French vineyards had been destroyed. It didn’t appear that the plague could be stopped.
In 1876, TV Munson, a scientist working to apply Darwinian principles to grape hybridization, had set up in Denison, Texas. His mission - to improve the American grape. Up until this point, vineyards were built and expanded through cuttings from a parent plant. Essentially endless cloning of one forgotten plant from generations earlier. There was no genetic diversity, natural selection, evolution - whatever you want to call it. Each plant was an exact genetic copy of another plant.
Munson was interested in hybridization - combining two parent plants that, through sexual reproduction, would produce an offspring plant that shared genetic traits from both parents. Through trial and error, this process would allow for scientists to select beneficial traits from many different plants and combine them into a brand new plant that didn’t exist before. This is commonplace in agricultural science now, but was a new idea in the 1870s.
Denison, situated near the Red River, proved a great place for this kind of study, with six distinct vegetative region, each with their own microclimates, soil types, and varieties of wild grapes. it was the perfect laboratory.
Munson would eventually publish a book on American grapes that would catapult him into renown as a leading authority on the subject, and bringing his work to the attention of the French.
In 1887, France dispatched an envoy, Pierre Viala (vee-all-uh), to Denison to meet with Munson. Many parts of Texas share the same limestone chalk and alkali soil as France. Maybe our roots would fare better than the Missouri disaster. So the duo, along with representatives from the US Ag Department, traveled around Texas finding vines that would grow in similar soul to France. Munson also shared with Viala his hybridization techniques that, if they hit on the right combinations, could potentially produce a plant with plague-resistant roots, that would grow in French soil, and produce the native fruit that the country had become famous for.
Viala returned and the grafting solution was tried again, the plants still had difficulty rooting, but the ones that did produced good fruit. They were onto something. While the grafting would serve as a bandaid, French scientists then went to work on the hybridization program, taking the Texas plants and combining them with the French varietals until they were able to create brand new species that could grow, while being resistant to the plague. It took decades, but the phylloxera was eventually defeated. Thanks to Texas ingenuity.
Viala nominated Munson for the French Legion of Honor. An award that, at the time was only held by one other American - Thomas Edison.
In 1888, a French delegation would travel to Denison to present the honor to Munson.
And that, is the story, of how Texas saved the entire European wine industry.
Chapter 4: Llano Estacado
Fast forward now through Prohibition. Val Verde kept operating during Prohibition and after, but there were no other wineries that would open in the state within the next 40 years. Prohibition, for all intents and purposes, killed the Texas wine industry
There were a few reasons for this. The 21st Amendment that ended Prohibition gave state's absolute control over the sales and distribution of alcohol within their borders.
Several states continued Prohibition at the state level for many years after the 21st Amendment.
Other states, wanting to encourage their own small but growing wine industries, needed to protect them, and many passed anti-competitive laws prohibiting the import of wine from other states.
Texas put the decision at the county level, and many counties kept alcohol bans in place for decades. At its peak, 199 of 254 Texas counties remained dry, many of these in the state's prime agricultural areas conducive to grape growing
For all of these reasons, the next successful winery in Texas wouldn't appear until 1976.
But that doesn't mean there weren't grapes grown in Texas.
In the 1940s, Texas Technological College horticulturist named W.W. Yocum planted small batches of grapes around campus, but construction expansion around the college removed many of these plantings and there wasn't much actual research done on them. They were decorative at best.
In the early 1950s, several South Texas farmers formed the Lower Rio Grande Valley Grape Growers Association, growing the popular Thompson Seedless table grape varietal.
But frost, root rot, and Pierce’s disease would wipe out these crops in less than a decade. This failure led to a near total absence of Texas grape research for two decades.
By 1960, only one small batch of Yocum’s grapes remained, but Regents greenlit their removal so construction could proceed on the new Texas Tech Museum.
Another horticulture professor, Robert Reed, dug up a few of the vines and transferred them to his backyard as a landscaping novelty. He wanted an ornamental shade canopy over his patio. This act, taken more on a whim than as a major research endeavor, would nevertheless plant the seed for the entire Texas wine industry as we know it today.
To Reed’s surprise, his backyard plantings flourished, and produced fruit a few years later.
Reed befriended Texas Tech chemistry professor Clinton “Doc” McPherson and McPherson, along with his wife Clara, began taking the grapes home where they would make and jar jelly from them so they wouldnt go to waste. Reed and McPherson joked that they should open a roadside jelly stand during the summers to subsidize their paltry income as professors.
By the 1960s, the chemist in McPherson couldn't resist trying his hand at a little experimental wine. They self-reported their tiny production to the ATF, as the law required at the time, and the ATF promptly turned the pair in to the state TABC who fined them for not obtaining the $10 license to make homemade wine, and neglecting to pay the 17 cent per gallon tax on their production.
McPherson obtained the proper permit from the TABC and soon expanded his efforts to the classroom. Finding his students yawning at textbooks and formula memorization, he grabbed the students’ attention by teaching them how to produce wine in 5 gallon jugs.
In the early 1968, with plans to soon elevate Texas Tech from college to a university, the administration wanted to expand the nascent university's research efforts. The university president told all professors that they needed a research project. So Reed and McPherson put together a proposal for a small research winery in the basement of the new chemistry building. It was approved, along with $1,500 in funding, and after navigating red tape from the EPA, FDA, IRS, and TABC, Lubbock had itself a winery. The first in Texas since Prohibition.
Now a winery needs grapes, so the pair soon purchased (out of their own pockets) 15 acres of land in Lubbock’s southeast quadrant. They sourced hundreds of different grape varietals from around the country - most just 5-10 vines at a time - and carefully inspected them to see which ones would grow in their West Texas plot, which they named Sagmor Vineyard due to the conspicuous sagging of their trellis supports under the weight of the many grapes.
Not to be left out, Texas A&M wanted to make their foray into grapes as well and in 1968 partnered with the Abernathy Chamber of Commerce, to develop a research vineyard North of Lubbock. The chamber was interested in diversifying their economic base from just cotton.
The endeavor suffered from theft and vandalism, as well as fierce opposition from the local church community, reportedly threatening one farmer with excommunication if he continued to assist with the effort. In 1974, the Abernathy Chamber pulled funding from the project.
But both of these efforts would make the same discovery, that Texas High Plains grapes didn't suffer from the same maladies as crops attempted elsewhere in the state. They didn't find root rot, Pierce’s disease, phyloxxera, or nematodes. The climate was also very favorable, mimicking the great grape growing regions in Spain and France. Warm days, cool nights, and low humidity. This meant that it was possible in the Lubbock area to grow the famous European varietals that failed elsewhere in the state. Names that people knew.
In 1973, seeing the commercial potential of their research, Reed and McPherson planned a “field day” for area farmers and anyone else interested in learning about their experiment and it's potential to transform agriculture on the South Plains.
They had a great turnout for the event, but few of the cotton farmers showed much interest. By far the most excitement was shown by the professionals in attendance - doctors, lawyers, and bankers - who had much more exposure to the exploding wine culture emanating from California at that time.
But there were a few visionary farmers in the group - 27 to be exact - hailing from exotic locales like Morton, Whiteface, Sundown, Levelland, and Littlefield. These pioneers planted the first commercial grapes on the South Plains, and soon formed a trade association for grape growers. An industry was born. No one had the funds on their own to build a commercial winery though, so the plan was to form a co-op. A concept very familiar to these farmers who were used to co-op cotton gins and even electric providers.
Reed helped the farmers grow the new crop, suggesting which grapes to grow and teaching them the techniques to do it.
He suggested French-American hybrids that they knew were resistant to most common diseases. Though their preliminary research showed the vitis vinifera would grow in West Texas, they weren’t confident enough to stake the entire industry on it. They needed to succeed and if one of the plagues did suddenly appear and wipe out a crop, it could kill the industry before it even got going. So Reed told the farmers they should plant Baco Noir (bah-koh), Seyval Blanc (say-val), and Verdelet (ver-deh-lay) grapes.
Meanwhile back on campus, the little winery chugged along, an afterthought among the many research projects at Texas Tech, until in 1975 Lady Bird Johnson visited Lubbock.
The former first lady toured the winery and experimental vineyards and told the Avalanche-Journal that she “took special notice of the landscape and agriculture of West Texas, especially the sunflowers and vineyards.”
Her endorsement and attention to the program would make waves around the state, catching the attention of legislators. And Amarillo State Senator Max Sherman would push through a new line item in the budget to encourage the development of the Texas grape industry. A $25,000 yearly grant, split between Texas Tech and the University of Texas starting in 1976.
So surely with this influx of funding and positive attention brought to Texas Tech, Reed and McPherson were the kings of campus, right? Well…no.
Texas Tech gladly accepted the funding, but they placed Dr. Roy Mitchell and not Doc McPherson in charge of the wine research lab. Why? Well Reed and McPherson had a pretty major conflict of interest. Not only were they running their own private grape farm off campus, not only where they mentoring commercial farmers and advising the Texas Grape Growers Association, but they were now actively working to permit a private commercial winery.
I mentioned that it takes 2-3 years from planting before grapevines will produce fruit. So it was going to be a tricky proposition for the farmers, who had to invest in fields for multiple years with no crops to harvest to also fund a winery that needed to be built and ready when those grapes did finally appear.
Reed and McPherson had wowed the local professional class in their field day, and from that group they found investors, mainly lawyers, willing to gamble $180,000 on a full scale winery. So the paperwork was filed, and after permitting delays with the state (it seemed no one with the TABC knew how to permit a winery), they finally got approval in 1976 and the Llano Estacado Winery was born. The first in the state since Prohibition. Named after an entry in Spanish Explorer Coronado's diary calling the area the Llano Estacado.
The original building was nothing like the ornate wineries of today. They started small - it was just a 3,500 sq. foot cinder block building with a 12,000 gallon capacity. With no full time employees, Reed, McPherson, and their investors worked the equipment themselves, crushing and bottling on nights and weekends. Once their process was perfected, they could bottle up to 225 cases per day.
But finally with everything they needed to build a commercial wine operation, they still faced a major hurdle. Due to state law they weren't allowed to sell wine on site, and distributors weren't jumping at the opportunity to partner with a new winery with tiny production. So who were they going to sell the wine to?
Luckily, they had West Texas Liquor baron Pinkie Roden in their court (he's featured in two of our previous episodes), and after some lobbying work at the state level, the legislature passed a new law allowing wineries to sell their product on site direct to consumers, as well as allowing free tastings. These new laws would be a big boost for the industry, and slowly more wineries started popping up around the state…there were 5 by 1980.
Llano eventually hired Walter Haimann (hi-men), former president of Seagram’s, who had a much better understanding of the global industry than a bunch of West Texas professors and lawyers. Doc McPherson’s son, Kim, who had been in California learning the wine business, took over as the head winemaker.
In 1980, producing 30,000 cases per year, Llano landed a distribution deal, another first for the state.
Now that Reed, McPherson, and Texas Tech had proven it could be done, and with the grant money from the legislature that had fallen into their lap, the University of Texas wanted in on the action too.
You see, they were sitting on 2 million acres of West Texas land, a gift from the state’s early leaders to help fund the university. Early on, this land wasn’t valuable for much of anything except grazing, and the majority of the revenue generated was from cattle grazing leases. That would all change in the 1920s when oil was discovered on University Lands, generating billions in mineral rights payments that continue to this day.
But in the 1970s, UT wanted to see if they could squeeze any more money out of West Texas, and charged their surface interests manager with finding new revenue streams. He investigated several options like apple and nut orchards or even a vineyard.
One morning in 1974, Doctor Reed arrived at their Sagmor vineyard in Lubbock to find an uninvited guest. Quote “We went out to our vineyard one morning, and here was this University of Texas truck parked in our vineyard and this guy walking up and down the grape rows. He said he was from the University of Texas, and they were studying the feasibility of growing grapes down there, and wanted to see how we doing up here. And that was our association with the University of Texas.”
UT decided in 1975 to plant a 12 acre experimental grape vineyard on University Lands near Van Horn.
In 1980, UT regents would tour the operation and sample wines from the operation. They were good. So regents approved a new 1,000 acre vineyard be developed near Ft Stockton. They partnered with Richardson Gill, a UT grad and businessman, and Domaine Cordier (Doh-mane-uh) (cord-ee-er), a French winery, to oversee the planting of the vines and construction of the massive, state-of-the art Ste. Genevieve Winery (saint jen-uh-veev).
In true UT fashion, no expense was spared. Even the floor tiles were imported from France. By the time it was finished, UT had invested $7 million in the project.
Vintners were relocated from the Bordeaux region of France to Fort Stockton to operate the facility, and UT took a step back operationally. The private interests would run the winery, and UT would sit back and collect a royalty from every bottle sold.
Ste. Genevieve would grow to become the largest winery in Texas, at it’s peak producing over 1.3 million gallons per year - more than half of Texas’ total production. And even with 1,000 acres of grapes, its production would far exceed its local growing ability, eventually turning to imported juice from Australia and France.
Much of that volume wasn't sold under the Ste. Genevieve label. The winery produced wines under a number of names. The largest Texas grocery and package store chains had their own exclusive label and the winery even produced white label house wines for restaurants around the country.
But even with all that volume, the winery would struggle. A foreclosure in 1985 would almost do them in, but following a restructuring they were allowed to continue operating. The winery was sold to Mesa Vineyards in 2005, but a late 2014 freeze would wipe out their entire grape harvest that year. Then, COVID happened. While alcohol sales boomed during the lockdown, Ste. Genevieve lost so much sales due to restaurant closures that they weren't able to recover. The winery went under in 2022. The equipment was auctioned off and the massive vineyard now sits untended, to slowly be reclaimed by the desert sands.
Back at Llano Estacado Winery though, business was booming. A shift away from the US-French hybrid grapes and into popular European vitis vinifera varietals like chardonnay, merlot, and cabernet sauvignon had helped to boost sales. The hybrid grape wines were high quality, but the average retail consumer had never heard of Baco Noir and distributors wanted wines with recognizable names on the bottle.
The farmers had to be dragged kicking and screaming. They had, of course, committed substantial investments in the hybrid varietals that Dr. Reed had recommended. Lawsuits were filed, and some even threatened winery operators with physical violence. Eventually a compromise was reached. Llano would still buy the hybrid grapes, at the $100-$200 a ton price they had always paid. But if you brought them European grapes like cabernet sauvingnon, they would pay $500-$600 a ton. The free market eventually won the day.
Llano would begin racking up awards, including a rare double gold medal at San Francisco for their 1984 chardonnay, beating out 2,000 other wines from Sonoma and Napa Valley.
Today they are the largest winery in Texas, producing a staggering 160,000 cases per year.
Kim McPherson would move on to founding his own winery, McPherson Cellars, in a former Coca-Cola bottling plant in downtown Lubbock. He is a now two time James Beard award semifinalist.
Chapter 5: Into the Present
In 1981, there were 7 wineries in the state. By 1996, there were 37. It was an industry on the rise.
But the government still impeded progress. Interstate wine sales were still basically nonexistent due to protectionist state laws banning imports from out of state. It would take until 2005 before the US Supreme Court would rule 5-4 that these restrictions violated the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.
The final hurdle for Texas wineries would be cleared in 2007 when the state legislature passed a law allowing wineries in dry counties to freely sell their product on site, as long as the wine was bottled in Texas, and contained 75% Texas grapes. On site tasting rooms were also allowed. You gotta let people try before they buy, right? This would pave the way for the explosion in Texas wine that we see today.
As we speak today, Texas has 8 federally designated American Viticulture Areas-AVAs.
An AVA is a geographically-limited grape growing area with distinctive soil or climate differentiating it from the surrounding region. A wine must contain 85% grapes grown within that AVA to legally display the AVA name on the bottle.
With thousands of wines boasting exotic-sounding names, the AVA label helps the consumer to easily identify exactly what is in the bottle they are purchasing. Similar designations exist in other countries around the world, enforced internationally by treaties and trade agreements.
The 8 Texas AVAs are:
Texas Hill Country
Bell Mountain (a tiny 5 sq mi AVA North of Fredericksburg)
Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country (another microclimate region within, but separate from, the larger Hill Country AVA)
Texoma, an AVA running along the Red River.
The other 4 of the 8 AVAs are all within West Texas.
Mesilla Valley, North and west of El Paso.
Texas Davis Mountains
Escondido Valley, located in Pecos County near Ft Stockton
And finally, the Texas High Plains AVA.
At 8 million acres, It is the 3rd largest AVA in the entire country, encompassing all or part of 24 counties from the Caprock escarpment to the New Mexico border. The Texas High Plains AVA produces 80% of Texas grapes.
So while the Hill Country, located closer to the state’s population centers, has many more wineries and has built a thriving hub of wine tourism, their grapes are sourced from, that's right...West Texas.
Today, more and more Texas High Plains Farmers are looking to grapes as a workable crop. It makes great sense from a sustainability standpoint, as Texas High Plains farmers are dependent on the shrinking Ogallala aquifer, grapes can take less than half the water needed for cotton, and the same money can be made from a much smaller footprint.
But as many cotton farmers make the switch to grapes, some are finding that their former crop is now becoming the enemy of their new one.
Picture this: vast fields of cotton stretching as far as the eye can see, right next to meticulously-tended vineyards. Sounds picturesque right? Well not quite. This close proximity has sparked a fierce debate that’s dividing rural communities across the state.
At the heard of the issue are two herbicides: Dicamba and 2,4-D. Cotton farmers rely on these to control weeds, especially with the development of genetically-engineered herbicide-resistant cotton varieties.
The problem? Grape vines are incredibly sensitive to these chemicals. Even a small amount of herbicide drift can wreak havoc on a vineyard, in some cases causing entire crops to fail.
Grape growers argue that their livelihoods are at risk, while cotton farmers contend that these herbicides are crucial for their crop management and economic viability - still a much larger economic impact on the state than grapes. Meanwhile, the chemical companies maintain that their products are safe, and any “drift” is due to application of the herbicides that is inconsistent with the manufacturer’s instructions. In other words, they blame the cotton farmers.
Regulatory bodies like the Texas Department of Agriculture are caught in the crossfire. While there are rules governing herbicide application, enforcement is near impossible. Proving exposure - and who is responsible - after the fact can be even more difficult.
So rather than go after the cotton farmers themselves, a large group of Texas grape growers is going after the chemical companies that make these herbicides.
In 2021, 57 Texas High Plains grape growers representing 3,000 acres of vines, along with 4 grape processors, filed a $570 million suit against Bayer Crop Science, Monsanto, and BASF, alleging negligence in design, development, and manufacturing of their dicamba resistant cotton cropping systems.
One of the plaintiffs, a Terry County grower, alleged that his annual grape production had decreased from 800 tons to under 100 tons after his neighbors implemented the Dicamba resistant seed.
That lawsuit is still working its way through the court system.
As the debate rages on, the EPA and Texas Department of Agriculture will have challenging task of navigating a path that protects grape vineyards from being poisoned by their neighbors, while also protecting the state’s massive cotton industry. It is a big lift, but a necessary one if Texas plans to cement itself as one of the great wine producers of the world.
Conclusion
Today, wineries dot the West Texas landscape. There are at least a dozen wineries within 30 minutes of Lubbock - including award winners English Newsom, Adelphos Cellars, Reddy Vineyards, La Diosa Cellars, Prairie Chick Winery, and of course McPherson Cellars and Llano Estacado. A thriving tourism scene is developing and continues to grow.
Wine industry leaders will tell you that West Texas is now growing better quality vitis vinifera than can be produced in these grapes’ native ancestral homes in France, Italy, and Spain.
Blind taste tests have backed this up as well, with a growing slate of awards earned by wines made from West Texas grapes. In 1986, Bobby Cox of Pheasant Ridge Winery in Idalou was mocked when he entered his ‘83 Cab in the prestigious San Francisco Fair International Wine Competition. They weren’t laughing when he would earn a gold medal. His gold medal, along with Llano Estacado’s double gold that same year would mark the first Texas medals in a California wine competition, and the accolades have continued to pile up since.
Texas Tech’s educational and research efforts in the industry have only grown since Dr. Mitchell and the experimental wine lab began offering the state’s first winemaking course back in 1976. Today, Texas Tech offers an undergraduate degree in viticulture and winemaking, as well as professional certificate programs in viticulture, winemaking, and wine business. The university maintains wine labs and teaching vineyards in both Lubbock and Fredericksburg.
What began as a professor’s casual planting of shade vines has evolved into today’s thriving Texas wine industry, generating $20 billion dollars and sustaining over 140,000 full-time jobs. 2 million tourists have visited one of at least 400+ Texas wineries.
With more acres planted every year, and more awards earned at prestigious competitions, Texas in general and West Texas in particular are poised to solidify its place as a significant player on the global wine stage. The pioneering spirit that has long defined this region is now writing a new chapter in Texas agriculture. One vine at a time.
You’ve been listening to the West Texas Podcast. I’m Jody Slaughter. You can find this and all episodes on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Visit our website at wtxpodcast.com for companion articles, show notes, and photos for each episode. To get ahold of me with questions, comments, or show ideas you can email me at lubbockist@gmail.com or on Twitter @Lubbockist. L-U-B-B-O-C-K-I-S-T.
This episode was written, produced, engineered, and edited by me, Jody Slaughter.
Music in this episode was created by Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos. If you haven’t figured it out yet, that’s my AI band. You can find our theme song “It’s all West Texas” by Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos on their new album West Texas Werewolves, wherever you stream music.
Thanks for listening, and until next time...so long...From West Texas.
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