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« BACK Although the grapes thrived, the winery did not. It was repossessed by Bank of America, which ran the winery from 1986 to 1987. Then, in a complicated lease-back agreement arranged to circumvent TABC regulations, a group that includes the French winery Cordier took over St. Genevieve and has run it ever since. Wine has always been a hard sell in Texas. The hellish summer temperatures make it expensive and difficult to store and transport wine. And while the sales have increased in the last 20 years, the state is still better known as one of the nation's largest per capita consumers of beer. Many of those who do drink wine have unsophisticated tastes. The varietals McKinney planted were way ahead of their time. Barbera did wonderfully, he recalls, but nobody had ever heard of it in Texas. Muscat canelli, a grape that makes fragrant aperitif wines in Europe, wasn't popular then either. Today it is widely considered one of the few varietals that really thrives in Texas, although the wine still isn't popular with the state's consumers. Most of the experimental varieties have since been torn out to make way for cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay, the only two varietals that seem to sell in the Lone Star State. Cotton farmers across the Plains started imitating the successful agricultural experiment by planting cabernet and chardonnay grapes of their own. Several wineries were built near Lubbock, but they were handicapped by their remote location and their inability to sell wine to visitors, since Lubbock County is dry. Texas wine got a huge shot in the arm when Southwest cuisine took off in the early 1990s, making Lone Star wines a popular fad. More wineries began to spring up, but for the most part they were outside the Plains region. "People who want to invest in a winery want a certain kind of lifestyle," McKinney observed. They don't want to live in Lubbock, and, quite sensibly, they want to build near the major drinking markets. As a result, Texas wineries and Texas vineyards grew up in different parts of the state. This dislocation has always been a problem. Many of the former cotton farmers who grow grapes near Lubbock are Baptist teetotalers. It is common practice in viticulture to prune away as much as half of the grapes to increase the intensity of the flavor in those that remain. But when viticulturists advise Lubbock farmers to follow this practice, they are often ignored. Grapes sell by the ton, and the farmers have no incentive to sacrifice their yield for the sake of good wine. They don't drink the stuff. Wineries located hundreds of miles from the vineyards also have an image problem. "People like to see grapevines when they visit a winery," McKinney said. In Grapevine, Delaney Winery and Vineyards tries to split the difference. The company, with 100 acres of vines in the Lubbock area and 10 in Grapevine, uses North Texas as a sales outpost. Indeed, the North Texas wine industry is made up largely of tasting rooms and wine merchants, such as Lone Star Wines in Fort Worth's Stockyards. By that definition, Grapevine has six wineries. Inspired by their city's name, officials have made sure Grapevine has "very wine-friendly municipal laws," said Camille McBee, the first woman president of the Texas Wine and Grape Growers Association and general manager of La Buena Vida vineyards and winery. Then there are places like La Bodega. The owners can't show visitors any vines outside the back door of the tasting room, but they can claim to be the only winery located on the grounds of an airport -- D/FW Airport. In places like Bodega, tchotchkes like napkins, corkscrews, and t-shirts often generate more income than wine sales. NEXT »
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