‘Lone Star’ Native’s Winning Wine Ways

You know what they say: “You can take the winemaker out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the winemaker.”

Actually, I don’t know if anyone says that, but it fits Don Brady, a California winemaker with roots deep in the heart of Texas.

He was a Texas winemaker for 20 years before he was lured to California in 1998. Today, he has his own winery, Brady Vineyard, in the Estrella district of Paso Robles along the central California coast.

Brady hasn’t cut his ties to Texas, however, visiting family there a couple of times a year.

He also continues to support the Texas wine trade by entering wines in state wine competitions. Which gets to this point: The Brady Vineyard 2022 Paso Robles Cabernet Franc ($26) just was crowned Grand Champion of “Vine-2-Wine,” the inaugural international wine competition of the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo.

From an opening field of nearly 700 entries, Brady’s Cabernet Franc gradually climbed to the top through three days of blind evaluation by a revolving series of panels involving 38 judges. On the Cabernet Franc spectrum, the Brady is more at the cherry/berry reaches than the herbal/brambly. It is one expressive Cabernet Franc, deeply purple, fragrant, lean yet mouth-filling, and with solid but yielding tannins, revitalizing acidity, and carefully modulated oak. You got chicken-fried steak, barbacoa or brisket on the menu, no need to reach for a Cabernet Sauvignon when you have a Cabernet Franc as authoritative as this one.

What’s more, the Cabernet Franc was not Brady’s lone star to emerge from the competition. Two other Brady wines were anointed class champions, the deeply colored and deeply fruity Brady Vineyard 2022 Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon ($22) and the Brady Vineyard 2022 Paso Robles Zinfandel ($24).

Overall, entries ran mostly to Texas and California, each with around 40 percent of the field, with wines from three other states and 10 other countries making up the balance. The average retail price per bottle was nearly $40. The top winners get a cowboy-boot trophy, other high finishers a belt buckle.

Vine-2-Wine set itself aside from other wine competitions in two novel ways. For one, on opening day each judge was handed an electronic tablet on which to score wines and jot notes, thereby cutting down on the reams of paper customarily used during a competition. For another, the competition refined some classes to better group wines of similar pedigree. Chardonnays, for one, were divided according to “no oak,” “neutral oak” and “new oak.” Pinot Noirs were apportioned by “cool/moderate climate” and “warm/hot climate.” By and large, judges were receptive to the experiments, though concurring that some refinement and elaboration would be helpful in the future.

Other high award winners included:

Reserve Grand Champion: Hilmy Cellars 2022 Texas High Plains Canted County Vineyards Marsanne ($28), a citric, smoky, and readily accessible take on a wine commonly used as a blender in the region with which it is most associated, France’s northern Rhone Valley. Marsanne can be subtle, elusive even, but here it has just enough fruit and acid to accompany assorted preparations of shellfish.

Best Sparkling Wine: Champagne Palmer & Co. Blanc de Blancs ($64-$74), an exceptionally profound sparkling wine made entirely with Chardonnay from the region Montage de Reims in Champagne. A fair amount of work goes into this Champagne, including aging on the lees for around four years, yielding a sparkler rich yet fresh, its fruit bright and its mulchy yeastiness pronounced. On top of that, there is a complexity and persistence that beckons the taster to come back for another sip, and another.

Best White Wine: Buena Vista Winery Chateau Buena Vista 2022 Carneros Chardonnay ($35): Classic old-school California Chardonnay, rich with ripe fruit, shored up with enough oak for a 16^th-century galleon on the high Atlantic. Another entry out of the Buena Vista stable was more to my liking, the Buena Vista Winery 2022 Sonoma County “The Sheriff” Red Blend ($55), a sweetly cantering mix of Petite Sirah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Grenache, Merlot, and Tempranillo. While inky in color, it was not at all intimidating, coming off fresh and youthful, even Beaujolais-like in its bright red fruit, layered with grace notes of earth and spice, and pleasantly enduring in the finish.

Best Value Wine: Sand Point 2023 California Sauvignon Blanc ($12). I did not taste the Sauvignon Blanc, but our panel did award a silver medal to another wine from the same brand, the Sand Point 2021 California Pinot Noir ($12), a steal for its traditional savory Pinot Noir flavors, pungent aroma, fresh fruit, and animated delivery. Sand Point is a brand of Lodi’s LangeTwins Winery. For purposes of Vine-2-Wine, incidentally, “value” was defined as a wine priced $15 or less.

Best Texas Wine: Becker Vineyards 2022 Texas High Plains Six Harts Vineyard Reserve Viognier ($29): This is a carefully crafted Viognier, capturing cleanly if delicately the grape’s telltale honeysuckle, apricot and peach attributes. Viognier is plump in body and texture, but even after this take was aged for 16 months in French oak barrels the result is more svelte and pointed than bulky, making it fitting for all sorts of poultry, pasta, and seafood dishes with citric-accented finishings. The Becker emerged from a field of 17 Viogniers, all but two of them from Texas, an indication of the potential that the state’s winemakers see in the variety.

But they apparently do not see as much hope for the green grape and the white wine that I most identify with Texas – Blanc du Bois. Only four were entered, but I ranked the one that got as far as the sweepstakes among my top three in a field of 40 candidates. It was the Threshold Vineyards 2023 Austin County Vineyards Semi-Sweet Blanc du Bois ($26). Yes, it is sweet, but not sticky, its steely acidity lifting the wine so its floral fragrance and citric fruit continually revitalize the palate. It is not a wine to accompany a cowboy ribeye, but Gulf Coast shrimp? Bring it on. (Threshold Vineyards is just south of Navasota, about 70 miles northwest of Houston. It is in none of the eight federally defined American Viticultural Areas in Texas, but Blanc du Bois looks to be doing superbly there.)

For the record, Blanc du Bois is a hybrid grape developed at the University of Florida for its versatility in the cellar and for its resistance to ailments afflicting vines in humid areas, such as powdery mildew and Pierce’s Disease. Though Texas winemakers generally shy from talking up the prospects of Blanc du Bois, it is the state’s most extensively cultivated green grape, stretching across 270 acres, most of them in Southeast Texas, along the Gulf Coast, and in North Texas, the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

The single largest category of wine at Fort Worth was Cabernet Sauvignon, either as varietal wine or as leading element in a blend, with 94 entries. This is not surprising, given Cabernet Sauvignon’s enduring popularity, especially in Texas, where “a cab and a slab” is as invoked as “hook ‘em horns.” California was strongly represented, especially Napa Valley, but about a third were from Texas, though none won any of the competition’s top honors. (The best red wine, however, was a Cabernet Sauvignon, the Fairwinds Estate Winery Yellowstone 2019 Napa Valley “1883 Bison Reserve” Cabernet Sauvignon ($95), which lived up to its complicated name with its tightly woven drama (“Yellowstone”) and its muscular and hardy build (“Bison”).

Much has been made in recent years about the prospects of Tempranillo in Texas, and the varietal looks to be carving out a secure niche for itself in the state. It is the second most cultivated wine grape in Texas, spread across 460 acres, compared with the state’s leading variety, Cabernet Sauvignon, which covers 724 acres.

At Fort Worth, 40 Tempranillos were entered, all Texan. Two did especially well. The Cresson Bluff Winery 2019 Cresson Bluff Vineyard Cross Timbers Tempranillo ($40) was declared the best wine of the North Texas Region, while the McPherson Cellars 2022 Texas High Plains La Herencia Tempranillo ($24) was named the best wine out of the Texas High Plains American Viticultural Area.

Aside from wines to win high honors, I came away with notes on several personal favorites, regardless of any medal they may have received:

Amici 2022 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir ($40): My favorite wine in the final sweepstakes round, when it was up against 39 other contenders. It is a gathered and intense Pinot Noir from one of the more cherished regions in the country for the variety. In its forthright fruit, balance and endurance it is a Pinot Noir of both drive and grace.

Whitehaven 2023 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc ($23): A Sauvignon Blanc that punches above its weight, being unusually agile and jolting, delivering onslaught after onslaught of citric snap, herbal uppercuts, and stinging jalapeño chile pepper. In a field of 30 white-wine finalists, of which there were five Sauvignon Blancs, this was the liveliest and most persistent of the entire group.

Olema 2022 California Chardonnay ($15): Our opening-day panel weighed in on 11 Chardonnays in a class specifying that they featured “new oak.” This is the only one that we gave a double-gold medal, meaning that all five judges concurred that it deserved gold. Why? It must have been the sharpness of its fruit, the bite of its acid, the leanness of its structure, and most of all its evocation of Honey Crisp apples. The new oak may have been in there, but it was off to the side, not at all interfering with the wine’s sunlit fruit and abiding zest. Chardonnays of this much character and verve just don’t come along every day at this price.

Back to Don Brady. A native Texan, he first studied horticulture at Texas Tech University of Lubbock, a pursuit that triggered his interest in viticulture and enology, which he followed up with studies in microbiology, chemistry and plant and soil sciences. This was well before Texas Tech established a formal program in viticulture and enology in 2009. Brady compensated by joining research at an experimental vineyard overseen by the University of Texas at Midland.

Afterwards, he spent 20 years making wine in Texas at such wineries as Pheasant Ridge and Llano Estacado. He was so helpful in firming up the state’s nascent wine trade that in 1991 the Texas Wine & Grape Growers Association bestowed on him its Louis F. Qualia Award, given yearly in tribute to the “pioneering spirit” of one of the state’s farmers or vintners.

The allure of California’s booming wine industry, however, drew him west in 1998. He put in a stint initially with Delicato Winery of Manteca, then joined Robert Hall Winery of Paso Robles as winemaker, where he continues to consult.

As to his Grand Champion Cabernet Franc, its $26 price tag is unusually low for a wine of its caliber. Why is that? “I want to grow,” says Brady. “That’s a price point where you can grow.” He also benefits from his affiliation with the California distributor Bronco Wine Co., which provides him with the kind of economics of scale to help sell his wines at relatively conservative prices. He made 1600 cases of the Cabernet Franc.

Paso Robles is recognized more for Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Syrah than it is for Cabernet Franc. Why is Cabernet Franc showing so well in Paso Robles, at least in this instance? “Cabernet Franc is a parent of Cabernet Sauvignon, making this just a little flick back from Cabernet Sauvignon,” says Brady. “And Cabernet Franc needs a long growing season, and we have a long growing season.”

In addition to his winery, Brady tends 90 acres of wine grapes. Is he ever tempted to return to Texas to resume winemaking there? “Those guys really work hard. That’s a challenging place to make wines of consistent quality,” he says by way of saying he is staying put in Paso Robles. “I like these cool mornings. We’re kind of dug in here,” he adds.

The next Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, which includes a tractor parade, milking contest, cowboy poetry, fiddling contest and numerous other attractions besides all kinds of livestock and rodeos, commences Jan. 17 and continues through Feb. 8. Wine also will be a draw, with such events as Wine Camp on Wednesdays and Bubbles & Bites on Jan. 25. More information: https://www.fwssr.com/