Your “DOWN THE ROW” Rant hit it right on the nail! I am so glad I read your article because even for people like me that pride themselves in exploring new flavors, we need to understand what our expectation are when tasting wines at small wineries. Not that we should lower our standards for good wine, but that we should understand that there is a difference between cookie cutter mass produced wines, and small production “artisan” wines.

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At the beginning of the world God created wine for man's health, since it is more precious than any other drink and more natural to him.
- Francesc Eiximenis, 1384

What is this?

This feature is nothing more or less than the possibly demented ramblings of the owner/winemaker/resident hacker, Michael Oubre. This will be a semi-regular column that could, some day, evolve into a blog, but for now is just the general musings of someone who has spent too much time in the hot Texas sun and may be suffering from the effects of too much barrel sampling.

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Come join us and the rest of the Way Out Wineries as we celebrate St. Paddy's! There'll be food, great specials, Irish music and even a little green wine Saturday and Sunday, March 13 & 14. This is a free event, so no ticket is needed - just come and join the fun!

Our St. Patrick's weekend will also be a Release Party for our three newest wines: the 2007 Rustler's Red, the 2008 Chardonnay and our first Chenin Blanc! We're very proud of this trio and want you to come out and taste them for yourself, so each visitor will get to draw a coin from our bag of "leprechaun gold" to apply to any purchase!

Down the Row

Isn't it funny about hindsight? Who would have thought that we in the grape business would be looking back on last year as a good year? Mama Nature has not been kind to most of the industry in Texas for a couple of seasons now, and this year is making the last one seem to have been better by comparison.

Last year, we only had one spring freeze and a teensy bit of hail, and the amount of fruit we got was significantly more than what we're likely to wind up with this year. Nothing like two late freezes and a hailstorm packing stones the size of citrus fruit to make you wish for the "good old days".

If you've followed my ramblings for any time at all, you probably have heard me thinking out loud about how little I understood about farmers growing up. I used to not have an appreciation for the typical farmer's persistent pessimism, but I'm certainly coming to have a personal understanding. I'm quite certain that I'm going to have a very hard time forgetting the last few years, and I suspect that I'll have a more "tempered optimism" from now on.

There's always a silver lining, however, in spite of the fact that our vineyard is struggling to overcome the vagaries of our climate and the challenge of growing grapes in hay country (like many Texas vineyards we've been severely affected by the use of 2,4-D to control weeds in pastures around us). The much reduced crop load is however, producing some very tasty fruit. The small crop of Chardonnay that we crushed this year has wonderful aroma and flavor and perfect chemistry for winemaking, so we're really excited to have it in the fermenter. Our Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon are certainly drawing the critters from far and wide, so we know they must be delicious, too.

I can't help but leave you with a great story that I heard in a recording of one of Ronald Reagan's speeches from his presidential years. Then President Reagan and his Secretary of Agriculture were visiting some midwestern farmers during a run of terrible drought, and one old timer was really letting the Secretary know how bad the conditions were and how much help they needed. An aide handed the Secretary a note and when he finished reading it, he turned back to the old farmer and said "Sir, I see here that according to the weather reports, your area has actually had twenty-seven inches of rain so far this year!"

Without missing a beat, the farmer replied "Yes, sir, and I remember the night it happened!"