Robert Clay Vineyards (Hill Country)

[00:00:00] Howdy Vine Trippers!

[00:00:07] I wanted to take just a moment to talk to you about the Texas Wine Lover website and

[00:00:12] their phone app for both iPhones as well as Google devices.

[00:00:16] You can actually download this app, put it on your phone, or just go to the website if

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[00:00:25] that we've been talking about in the podcast,

[00:00:27] this will give you a great information

[00:00:29] about the place before you go.

[00:00:30] And you'll be able to find other wineries in the area.

[00:00:33] So if you wanna make a day of it,

[00:00:35] go see several other places as well.

[00:00:37] You can search by region, you can sort the listings,

[00:00:40] find ones that are kid-friendly, family-friendly,

[00:00:42] even ones that host RVs,

[00:00:44] all kinds of different sortable listings you can find there in that app and on the website. listings, find ones that are kid friendly, family friendly, even ones that host RVs,

[00:00:45] all kinds of different sortable listings you can find there in that app and on the website.

[00:00:49] You can find other things as well in the area like restaurants, accommodations, maybe events

[00:00:54] that are going on at the different wineries. So it's your one-stop resource that goes hand

[00:00:59] in hand with this podcast to be able to find those great places to go visit. So check out the Texas Wine Lover website.

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[00:01:14] Enjoy your trips among the vines and use that app.

[00:01:46] Welcome to Texas Underline, an exploratory podcast to scout out the best Texas wine country has to offer.

[00:01:47] I'm your wine guide, Scott, and I'm here to lead you on an auditory expedition to the

[00:01:52] vineyards and wineries across the great Lone Star State.

[00:01:56] Each episode will cover a different vineyard, winery, or wine-related business operating

[00:02:00] in Texas.

[00:02:01] You'll hear interviews, descriptions, and details about each location

[00:02:05] that will excite you to visit and experience them for yourself. Ready to plan a wine tour?

[00:02:11] Use these episodes to choose the most interesting spots for you and your friends to check out.

[00:02:16] Most of all, enjoy hearing about the rapidly growing wine industry in the state and what

[00:02:20] makes our wines and wineries the best.

[00:02:39] Howdy fellow vine tripper! Welcome to episode 34 for Texas Under Vine. I'm excited today that I get to head out to an area, actually just north of the typical Wine Road 290 area

[00:02:46] in the Hill Country.

[00:02:47] So today I'm staying in the Hill Country AVA,

[00:02:51] but go just a little bit further north

[00:02:53] to an area called Mason, Texas,

[00:02:55] and I'm gonna visit Robert Clay Vineyards there.

[00:02:57] Now I actually first met Dan and Jeannie McLaughlin

[00:03:02] a while back at an event called Texas versus the World.

[00:03:05] And we were sampling all kinds of different Texas Merlot's to see how they

[00:03:10] compared against other ones from the world. And once I met Dan and Jeannie and

[00:03:15] I tried their great wine, I knew that I had to get them on the docket to get out

[00:03:19] there and see what they're doing there at Robert Clay and get an interview set up.

[00:03:23] So you're lucky because I was actually able to make that happen and get out to Mason. Okay, now a little background about

[00:03:29] Robert Clay Vineyard. Stan and Jeannie have not owned it from the start. It was actually started

[00:03:34] way back in 1996 by Paul and Nancy Buist and they really just wanted for the most part to

[00:03:42] plant grapes and to plant this vineyard and sell

[00:03:45] those grapes to wineries. They worked that vineyard for many years. Matter of fact, as

[00:03:50] far as we can tell, they were the first to actually introduce Turiga Nacional to Texas,

[00:03:55] which is one of the most common grapes used in port wines, but it can also stand alone.

[00:04:00] And about 16 years after they had gotten started, Paul began to have a lot of health issues.

[00:04:06] And so he was looking for somebody to help take over the vineyard as he just didn't

[00:04:10] have the ability anymore to work it.

[00:04:12] The vineyard itself was actually named after Paul and Nancy's two children, Robert and

[00:04:16] Clay, who funnily enough in the town of Mason were always known as Bobby and Crash.

[00:04:21] You'll hear a little bit more about that in the interview.

[00:04:23] But in comes Dan and Jeannie McLaughlin. Dan was working in an IT career. He was a little burned

[00:04:29] out and really wanted to get back to the land and check out farming. So he decided to go into this

[00:04:35] brand new venture and they took over Robert Clay Vineyards and began planting and working the

[00:04:41] vineyard there with his original goal of just kind of like the Buist did for a little while just working the land, but a few years into it decided

[00:04:49] to start making some wine and selling the wine as well. Lucky for us. Now it took a

[00:04:54] lot of work that they had to do to get that vineyard back into shape and ready to go.

[00:04:59] Several years actually to get everything replanted. He had to cut down a lot of the vines and

[00:05:04] really replant some stuff and get things ready

[00:05:06] to go.

[00:05:07] But Dan considers himself a vigneron, which is a French term for grower winemaker.

[00:05:13] So he does the whole thing.

[00:05:15] Dan is the one out there on the tractor and working the vines and getting everything ready

[00:05:19] to go, harvesting them.

[00:05:20] He brings in and he is the winemaker.

[00:05:22] It's truly a family based operation.

[00:05:25] His son Blake has now come out and is helping him with a lot of that as well.

[00:05:29] So truly a family based operation in this vineyard style grower winemaker winery.

[00:05:34] Now everything they do there is all estate.

[00:05:37] They don't need to bring in grapes from anywhere else.

[00:05:40] They plant all of their varietals there on their estate vineyards and those are the wines

[00:05:44] they make directly from the grapes that they grow.

[00:05:48] They want to stay a small family-based boutique style winery.

[00:05:51] They really don't have any desire to grow into a really large big winery because they

[00:05:56] just don't have the ability to work that much.

[00:05:58] So they're very happy with where they are right now.

[00:06:00] Now, like I said, they started making their wines in 2015, but Dan is a strong believer

[00:06:07] in extended barrel aging and you'll hear more about that in the interview, but he a lot of times

[00:06:12] will age his wines in barrel for five to six years or more. And this is kind of a typical grand

[00:06:19] reserva style that you see in Spain where wines are required. They have laws about that there where wines are required to age at least five

[00:06:28] years with two of that, usually in barrel, uh, some more that could be in,

[00:06:32] in bottle. It kind of varies a little bit,

[00:06:34] but at least five years of aging and that's what Dan does,

[00:06:37] but most of his are in the barrel.

[00:06:40] So they didn't actually have wines to produce until around 2017,

[00:06:44] 2018. And they didn't open their tasting room until

[00:06:47] 2021.

[00:06:49] On their vineyard, they have about 15 acres on the vineyard itself with 11 different varietals

[00:06:56] that they have planted in the vineyard itself.

[00:06:58] They really love working that land and producing those typically single varietal wines that

[00:07:03] they're going to provide for you in their tasting room.

[00:07:05] Now you will do a little bit of blending here and there, but mostly they're going to be

[00:07:09] single varietal and they're going to typically be dry reds is what they focus on, but they

[00:07:13] do have some whites as well.

[00:07:15] But another couple of really cool points about Dan that you might not know beyond the winery

[00:07:22] is that he was responsible for helping put together a

[00:07:25] curriculum that is now taught in high school classes in a couple of different

[00:07:29] places. We know for sure in Mason, Texas at Mason High School and now I think at

[00:07:33] Fredericksburg High School as well, it's a viticulture curriculum that he put

[00:07:37] together with Justin Shriner at Texas A&M to teach high school students about

[00:07:42] vineyards and viticulture and how to be able to prepare these students

[00:07:47] to be in the working world when they come right out

[00:07:50] of high school to help with the wine industry here in Texas.

[00:07:53] As a matter of fact, his son Blake,

[00:07:54] who you'll hear on the interview,

[00:07:55] was in the inaugural class that they did in Mason

[00:07:59] with that viticulture class.

[00:08:00] So he really helped form and shape that class

[00:08:02] and help plant the experimental vineyard they use at Mason for it.

[00:08:07] Another cool thing about Dan is that he is behind and responsible for a brand new AVA

[00:08:13] that is coming out called the Hickory Sands AVA.

[00:08:16] Dan has spent much time researching the area, looking at the type of soil they have there,

[00:08:22] marking out the boundaries, everything that's needed to create

[00:08:25] a new American vitological area inside the hill country AVA. And it's going to be called Hickory

[00:08:32] Sands. And it's going to be coming up soon along with another one called the Yano Uplift, which is

[00:08:37] just south or right by the Hickory Sands as well. They kind of share border. And those should be

[00:08:42] coming up for public comment here in the spring. So you should see those becoming established very soon.

[00:08:47] And Dan had a huge hand in helping to develop

[00:08:50] that Hickory Sands AVA,

[00:08:51] which just goes to help further the Texas wine industry.

[00:08:54] So we really owe Dan a lot of thanks for that.

[00:08:56] Now, when I went to go visit,

[00:08:58] I was able to sit down with both Dan and Blake

[00:09:01] for the interview.

[00:09:02] So Dan, of course, the winemaker and farmer extraordinaire doing all that work.

[00:09:07] So you're gonna get to hear from the source here

[00:09:09] as we talk to them about their history

[00:09:11] and about what wines they provide.

[00:09:13] So without further ado, let's get to that interview

[00:09:16] and hear directly from them.

[00:09:17] So I'm here at Robert Clay Vineyards

[00:09:29] with Dan and Blake McLaughlin. So tell me a little about yourself. What got you into the wine industry? To start with either one of you.

[00:09:32] You know, I was in tech, you know, back in Austin, back in the dot com, boom and bust,

[00:09:40] went through all of that. Always worked for startups, spent a lot of hours

[00:09:45] sitting behind a computer.

[00:09:47] One day I had been sitting behind a computer probably 19 hours straight and thought I was

[00:09:53] having deep vein thrombosis or something.

[00:09:57] I looked at my wife and I said, I'm done with this.

[00:10:00] It's like I can't sit in front of the computer anymore.

[00:10:04] I told her, I said, I'm gonna go be a farmer.

[00:10:07] And she said, you're crazy.

[00:10:09] We're not gonna be farmers.

[00:10:14] I pushed pretty hard on her

[00:10:16] because I really didn't wanna do the computer stuff,

[00:10:18] at least not to the extent I was,

[00:10:20] because I grew up literally sitting in the office

[00:10:23] all the time doing those long trips

[00:10:25] into Austin and not getting to see my kids grow up as much. And growing up, I'd always

[00:10:34] seen those farmers on the tractor and that always interested me. So it wasn't necessarily

[00:10:41] grapes or a vineyard or wine or anything like that. It was the farming aspect of it

[00:10:46] that really drew me into this.

[00:10:50] And I kind of gave up at that moment

[00:10:52] when she had really pushed back

[00:10:53] and said, we're not gonna be farmers.

[00:10:55] And to my surprise, about two weeks later,

[00:10:57] she found this property out here

[00:10:59] and she had sent me a link.

[00:11:01] So we came out, looked at the property, talked to the original owner,

[00:11:07] which is Paul and Nancy Buis. And I took him to the side and I said, look, I don't have the

[00:11:14] money to buy this place, but I want to learn. I worked with Bill Blackman and Camber Garland

[00:11:20] a lot. David Culkin was a lot of help in the very beginning, but I couldn't get anybody to

[00:11:27] offer to have me come out to the vineyard and help. I mean, it was a couple times,

[00:11:32] and now I understand now that I'm in the business, why? Because now I realize how much hard work it

[00:11:39] is and to ask people to come help you, especially just to volunteer is, it's actually hard to do.

[00:11:46] But I felt like getting out there

[00:11:48] and getting my hands in the dirt

[00:11:50] and doing it myself on a place

[00:11:52] was the best way for me to learn.

[00:11:55] That's how I learned.

[00:11:56] I don't learn from books, I learn from doing.

[00:12:00] And I pulled Paul aside that day and I said,

[00:12:04] you're willing to let me come out here,

[00:12:06] I'll take over the place and help you.

[00:12:08] He had esophageal cancer at the time

[00:12:11] and the vineyard hadn't been taken care of

[00:12:13] for multiple years besides, you know, them watering it

[00:12:16] and just trying to keep things alive.

[00:12:21] And he wanted, he asked me the question, you know are you going to pay for the lease?

[00:12:28] And I said, well, nothing.

[00:12:29] I'd be spending my money to come out here and run this myself.

[00:12:36] And he said, well, who would get all the money from the grapes?

[00:12:39] And I said, well, I would to try and recruit some of the cost and not such kind and not so many words.

[00:12:48] He basically told me to get the heck off his property.

[00:12:52] And it was about two weeks after that, I got a call from Paul and he said, are you serious?

[00:12:57] I said, yeah, he is.

[00:12:59] Let's do it.

[00:13:00] This was, let's see, this was the beginning, end of 2011, so leading into 2012.

[00:13:11] I ended up coming out here, the buds were already pushing and everything, moved out

[00:13:16] here with a trailer.

[00:13:17] My family came out and helped in the very beginning and we just started clearing out

[00:13:22] dead wood because the vines hadn't been pruned in probably

[00:13:25] about five years. And that was the first year. The first year was me basically out there in

[00:13:32] the vines trying to understand everything. Drew Tallent out here was a huge help for me. Parr was out here, he helped me a lot. Paul Bue has helped somebody, he was still sick.

[00:13:48] And it was really, it was a pretty tough year. I mean, I don't know if you remember that 2012,

[00:13:55] this was in the middle of the drought, you know, when Texas had huge drought. And there were days,

[00:14:00] I remember sitting in that travel trailer with 100 something degrees. I

[00:14:05] remember the news saying it's been 100 degrees for 100 days. It was tough and it was just me.

[00:14:12] The family stuck around for the first couple weeks. Then after that-

[00:14:16] The hunting period was over.

[00:14:17] Okay.

[00:14:18] It was me trying to run this huge vineyard all by myself and we got three tons of fruit off that whole vineyard that

[00:14:27] first year. So that gives you an idea of just how bad the vines were at that point. And I have to

[00:14:37] give it to Bill Blackman because if it weren't for him, I honestly probably wouldn't still be here today because he came out that

[00:14:45] day that I had first gotten out there and he and I were sitting at the bottom

[00:14:50] of the Tempranillo and I looked at him and I said, so what's next? And he looks

[00:14:55] over at me, he goes, I've done this before, he goes, it can't be done. He goes, bulldoze it,

[00:15:01] start over. And I was like, well, I'm not doing that. I just got here and he goes, bulldoze it, start over. And I was like, well, I'm not doing that.

[00:15:06] I just got here.

[00:15:07] And he goes, okay.

[00:15:09] He goes, well, do me a favor.

[00:15:11] He said, go open to your barn after I leave,

[00:15:14] grab a chainsaw, pick two rows of vines.

[00:15:17] Don't look at them, just cut them right above

[00:15:20] the graft union and see what happens.

[00:15:22] And after he left that day, I did that.

[00:15:25] Two rows of tympaniel, cut him to right above

[00:15:27] the graft union.

[00:15:29] By the end of that season, I had them all trained

[00:15:31] back up on the wires and were ready to go into

[00:15:33] production the next year.

[00:15:35] So, yeah, this was prior to me knowing I was only

[00:15:39] gonna get three tons off the whole property that season.

[00:15:43] It was a tough decision.

[00:15:44] We had to make a tough call

[00:15:45] at the end. It was just like, this is a lot of work and we got three tons of fruit. We

[00:15:50] either need to walk from this or we need to go all in. We decided to go all in. Sold our

[00:15:56] house in Georgetown, moved out here. The next season we took chainsaws to the entire vineyard.

[00:16:02] Everything on the whole vineyard got cut back. Wow. So 2013

[00:16:06] we went with no fruit. It was again another really hot year, very humid that year. And

[00:16:12] there were times Jeannie and I were out there hours and hours trying to retrain that whole

[00:16:18] vineyard because you can imagine vines that are that old getting cut back, they came up with 20, 30 shoots. And

[00:16:25] we were told, leave them, you want all that competition. Looking back now, I never would

[00:16:32] have tried to train all those vines that season. I would have cut them, put boxes around them

[00:16:37] and just walked away that season. I would have been a lot better off and the vines would have gone right up the box and next

[00:16:46] season we could have trained them.

[00:16:50] But we got the next season 2014, we got 24 tons off of it.

[00:16:54] Wow.

[00:16:55] So it was eight times as much.

[00:16:57] Yes, it was a huge improvement.

[00:16:59] And it was just getting all that damage out and getting new wood in place.

[00:17:06] If you look back through Google Earth at some of the photos during the years when the Buis

[00:17:13] were struggling, there were times when in the middle of the summer you'd look at some

[00:17:18] of the Google Earth photos and it didn't look like the vineyard had hardly been watered. And those vines struggled a lot,

[00:17:26] which I think is part of the reason they're doing so well now is just they've got deep roots in here.

[00:17:34] But yeah, it's been quite the journey getting to this point. I always wanted to have a small

[00:17:41] boutique style winery, the one that was family run.

[00:17:49] If you're farming, that's what it's all about.

[00:17:50] The family out there together and working on the farm,

[00:17:55] working in the winery, that was my vision.

[00:17:59] And I had been to a number of the bigger wineries

[00:18:03] and listened to the struggles they've had

[00:18:05] with everything from the growth and the number of employees and the growing pains dealing

[00:18:13] with all of that.

[00:18:14] I decided that's not what I want.

[00:18:17] If I ended up growing a huge winery again, I'd be sitting right back in front of a computer

[00:18:24] and that was not the goal. So

[00:18:27] that's what kind of what we built here. It's a been your own type model which is a European

[00:18:35] term for grower winemaker. Me and my son, my son is now involved, Blake, and he's doing the helping

[00:18:44] me with the growing. He and I are out there

[00:18:46] doing the pruning, everything and then when the fruit comes in, he and I do all the winemaking.

[00:18:52] And I told him, you know, he and I were sitting in the winery earlier this year and I said,

[00:18:57] this was the dream. You know, we got the family together, we're in here working and doing

[00:19:02] stuff together and it's two o'clock in the morning and you're in here punching down or pressing off fruit.

[00:19:10] Not too many families get to do that.

[00:19:12] A lot of families are dads off working, not with the kids.

[00:19:17] They don't get to spend a lot of time together.

[00:19:20] Blake lives out on the vineyard.

[00:19:21] Him and his wife will sun with us

[00:19:23] and it's like the dream's coming true.

[00:19:26] And that's how I would like to keep it,

[00:19:29] that small family run business where wine's made

[00:19:34] in the vineyard.

[00:19:35] And I think it really helps to understand,

[00:19:41] when he and I are pruning,

[00:19:43] we're about to start here in a couple weeks. We're making decisions

[00:19:46] about the fruit quality for the next vintage. He and I personally. I think that goes a long way

[00:19:56] when you talk about the quality of the wine. That's something that Drew Tallet told me a long

[00:20:01] time ago. He said, you don't need a winemaker, you just need to have really high quality fruit. And if the fruit comes in with good chemistry,

[00:20:10] high quality, the wines make themselves. And I found that to be very true. I mean,

[00:20:16] I understand the chemistry of it. I'm not trained. People ask me that all the time. It's like,

[00:20:24] you can find out everything you need on Google.

[00:20:25] You know, the Internet's got so much information.

[00:20:29] You just got to spend the time to go out there and research it.

[00:20:38] Howdy, Vine Troopers.

[00:20:39] Did you know that I now have a merchandise store for Texas Undervine?

[00:20:43] I only have a handful of limited items, but you can go check those out and wear your Texas

[00:20:48] Undervine swag if you'd like to tell all your friends about the great wine locations we

[00:20:52] have here in Texas and maybe get them interested in the podcast as well.

[00:20:56] So there are things like t-shirts, there's a hoodie, there's a beanie, a ball cap, things

[00:21:01] like that.

[00:21:02] But one of the most exciting things I have right now is my limited time offer t-shirt.

[00:21:06] That's my season one t-shirt.

[00:21:08] So this is your Tasting Through Texas,

[00:21:10] Texas Under Vines season one t-shirt.

[00:21:12] It's only gonna be available

[00:21:13] for a little short amount of time.

[00:21:15] On the back it has all the different locations

[00:21:17] like a band tour t-shirt.

[00:21:19] So this is a limited time item

[00:21:21] and you can go out and get it now.

[00:21:22] And one of the great things about that t-shirt

[00:21:24] is a portion of every sale goes to support

[00:21:27] the Texas Hill Country Winery Scholarship Fund.

[00:21:30] So you know that by buying that T-shirt,

[00:21:33] you're also investing in the growing and flourishing

[00:21:36] of an amazing wine industry here in Texas

[00:21:38] and all of those people that are gonna come

[00:21:40] and make it even better.

[00:21:41] Check out that merchandise store.

[00:21:43] It's on my website at texasundervine.com.

[00:21:45] Just go up to the top.

[00:21:46] You'll see the link for the merchandise store.

[00:21:52] Yeah, and the connections that you've made

[00:21:53] with other people who are doing the same thing.

[00:21:56] Yeah, and I wanted us to be unique in the sense that

[00:21:58] because there aren't very many

[00:22:00] Vinyaron style grower winemaker wineries

[00:22:04] in the United States, let alone in Texas.

[00:22:07] And I thought that was one way we would stick out for those people that were really like

[00:22:13] the wine connoisseurs tended to search out those types of places.

[00:22:19] You come here, it's going to be me or my wife or my son or his wife in here. You're not gonna be speaking to

[00:22:28] employees, you're gonna be speaking to the owners and I think that goes a long way. I know with our

[00:22:33] customers it seems to go a long way because they really enjoy the fact that they can come in here

[00:22:39] talk to the guy that actually was out there growing the fruit. Flipping the vine. Yeah and

[00:22:42] guy that actually was out there growing the fruit. Flipping the vine.

[00:22:43] Yeah.

[00:22:44] And who made the wine.

[00:22:46] And I can talk to them about every aspect of it.

[00:22:49] The struggles, most of what we do is single barrel release.

[00:22:54] Almost every bottle of wine that we sell

[00:22:57] comes from a 24K slot.

[00:23:01] I even do that with specific lots.

[00:23:03] It'll be like our Chardonnays, for example,

[00:23:05] we have lot one, two, and three for each vintage,

[00:23:08] and they come out of different barrels.

[00:23:12] So I think that is one thing that probably separates us

[00:23:16] from most of the wineries that you'll see in Texas,

[00:23:20] is that you're gonna be meeting the grower

[00:23:22] and the winemaker.

[00:23:24] And here we are 12 years into it.

[00:23:26] And did you, you said it's become what you wanted it to be?

[00:23:29] Yeah, I mean, it took a long time for us to get

[00:23:31] to the point where we were selling wine,

[00:23:33] because one of the things I wanted to do was,

[00:23:36] I wanted to come out in day one with aged wines

[00:23:38] that were a state bottled wines.

[00:23:41] Cause I felt like that with the competition growing

[00:23:44] like it was, that was

[00:23:45] one thing that was going to make us stick out. If we had a state bottled aged wines

[00:23:49] day one, then I could stay on that path. And that's been, you know, we opened the taste

[00:23:55] room in 2021. And we spent from, we started making wine in 2015. So we spent that whole

[00:24:02] time aging all of our reds before we came out.

[00:24:06] Even to this day, I have 18 and up are still in barrel. The only things that have been bottled

[00:24:12] is through 17. We're going to be bottling 18, 19 this year. That, to me, also separates us in

[00:24:23] the fact that if you look at our wine list,

[00:24:26] every single wine except for one red is a Grand Reserve.

[00:24:30] Meaning it meets the Spanish rules for a Grand Reserve.

[00:24:35] Five years minimum aging, two years minimum barrel.

[00:24:39] We do a lot of stuff that are more the style of like big Italian,

[00:24:46] like I've got a San Juvece that was in barrel for 65 months.

[00:24:49] Wow.

[00:24:50] You don't see that much.

[00:24:51] No, we've got one that I would consider to be,

[00:24:55] if we were a Chateau, it would be our Chateau wine.

[00:24:58] You know, it's a blend of the old vine,

[00:25:02] red vines, Ruby Cab, Cabernet Merlot and Turiga National off the vineyard

[00:25:08] that were planted 25 years ago.

[00:25:10] And that was in barrel for seven years.

[00:25:14] And if you look at probably most of our reds,

[00:25:17] I think we've got 36 months, 26 months, 40 months,

[00:25:22] 52 months, all of our 17s were in barrel for 52 months.

[00:25:26] We still have eight barrels of 2015 MTR.

[00:25:29] Wow.

[00:25:29] So a lot of people ask me why I do that.

[00:25:32] They said, you're crazy,

[00:25:33] this you can't leave them in barrel that long.

[00:25:36] And when people tell me I can't do things,

[00:25:39] I tend to go against them.

[00:25:41] I'm gonna show you.

[00:25:43] So I actually read an article years ago

[00:25:48] and the winemakers said,

[00:25:51] most winemakers don't have the patience,

[00:25:53] but something magical happens in the barrel at six years.

[00:25:56] And when I read that,

[00:25:57] I had to find out what magic happened

[00:26:00] to the barrel at six years.

[00:26:02] The first wine I decided to do that with

[00:26:04] was a San Giovanni. It's the only wine I decided to do that with was a San Juvacian.

[00:26:06] It's the only wine I've ever made that's not a state.

[00:26:09] They came out of a trade with Chris Van Rhett.

[00:26:11] Okay.

[00:26:12] He'll deny this story.

[00:26:14] But it was 2015, I had decided to take all the fruit for myself because that was going

[00:26:20] to be the first vintage that I was going to do commercially.

[00:26:24] And I had asked Chris if I could please come down and try out a different barrels.

[00:26:28] I was going to buy my first barrels and didn't know really understand American versus Hungarian

[00:26:34] versus French and what were the different characteristics.

[00:26:38] Chris was like, yeah, sure, come on down.

[00:26:42] He had been buying fruit from us for years.

[00:26:46] So I got down there, we went through a ton of barrels by probably the night barrel.

[00:26:53] I was getting a little toasty.

[00:26:57] He walks up to a barrel of San Giovanni and he goes, you like San Giovanni?

[00:27:00] I said, my wife loves San Giovanni.

[00:27:04] As soon as I said that,

[00:27:05] I saw him look like Chris's face,

[00:27:06] like that's what I was looking for.

[00:27:08] And the next question out of his mouth was,

[00:27:12] how about we trade, I'll trade you one ton of

[00:27:14] Turiga for one ton of San Giovanni.

[00:27:16] So we did that year.

[00:27:18] And I decided that that was the,

[00:27:20] that was the fruit I was gonna use

[00:27:23] to try and test a six year.

[00:27:24] Okay.

[00:27:26] And Chris came up at three years,

[00:27:28] tasted it and was like, you need to bottle this,

[00:27:30] you know, get your taste in the blue

[00:27:31] and put it on a credit card.

[00:27:32] And I was like, I'm not ready yet.

[00:27:34] You know, I don't even have any whites ready.

[00:27:36] I haven't even made a white yet.

[00:27:37] And, you know, when it hit six years,

[00:27:42] and he looked at me and he was like, six years?

[00:27:44] What are you talking about?

[00:27:46] Then at three years he tasted it,

[00:27:49] then he came back up at 65 months, just short of six years.

[00:27:53] And I said, hey, I still got that Sanjivadeshi,

[00:27:56] you wanna try it?

[00:27:57] And we went in that barrel room and we tried it.

[00:28:00] He was like, oh, that's good.

[00:28:02] And I bottled it that night.

[00:28:04] And ever since I've

[00:28:06] been doing extended barrel aging, and I've found it over and over again that just like,

[00:28:12] I've had so many wines that I tasted even at 18, 24 months, and I was just not impressed

[00:28:18] with them. And then something magical does happen in the barrel, because I've had so

[00:28:23] many wines where I would have told you,

[00:28:25] if you'd asked me at 18, 24 months,

[00:28:27] what I was gonna do with it,

[00:28:28] I would have told you it was gonna get distilled

[00:28:30] or poured out.

[00:28:31] And then they turned the corner at some point

[00:28:34] and became amazing wines.

[00:28:37] It's funny, the new world, and especially America,

[00:28:39] we're so impatient and we want to drink it now,

[00:28:42] we want it now, now, now.

[00:28:43] And so so many wineries have begun making their wines to be drunk young, that that's

[00:28:47] definitely an old world concept of let me make it now and I will enjoy it six years

[00:28:52] to go.

[00:28:53] Well, you know, I tell you, one of the things I tell our customers is, you know, if you

[00:28:57] buy a wine here, you're never going to hear me say, open it in four years.

[00:29:01] You know, I've done the aging.

[00:29:03] Yeah. The wines are ready to go when they come out of here.

[00:29:09] And I think that goes a long way with some of the customers

[00:29:14] because they don't like,

[00:29:16] I've had numerous customers sell,

[00:29:17] so I hate it when I buy a wine,

[00:29:19] and then right after I buy it,

[00:29:20] they tell it, well, lay this down for five years.

[00:29:23] And so I think people enjoy the fact that

[00:29:28] most of these wines are ready to go right out the bat.

[00:29:31] They don't have to wait years to be able to taste them

[00:29:34] or enjoy them.

[00:29:37] Yeah, I heard a famous Texas winemaker one time talk

[00:29:40] about how winemaking and viticulture is one

[00:29:42] of the few industries where you're making

[00:29:45] this investment that you won't see any return

[00:29:47] on that investment for at least five to six years

[00:29:49] down the road, you know, because a lot of agricultural

[00:29:52] crops you plant and then that next season you're harvesting

[00:29:56] and you get the immediately return,

[00:29:57] but you harvest the grapes and now you start

[00:29:59] the winemaking process and there's the aging

[00:30:01] and there's so much time to wait on more of that.

[00:30:04] Well, you know, we don't have investors, if I don't have the money, I don't do it.

[00:30:08] Yeah.

[00:30:08] That's why we've got a small taster room. We've got our little facility here.

[00:30:13] You know, we don't live in some big fancy house or we're farmers that may happen to make wine.

[00:30:18] My plans in the beginning were 10 years of farming, 10 years of wine making,

[00:30:23] 10 years of consulting. Well, turned out year three,

[00:30:26] I decided this is too much work

[00:30:29] to just keep selling the fruit,

[00:30:31] especially for what it costs to grow it.

[00:30:34] I mean, it's much more expensive

[00:30:36] than most fruits sold for in Texas.

[00:30:39] And a lot of people don't realize that

[00:30:41] when they get into it.

[00:30:43] But when I started seeing our stuff for what I was selling

[00:30:47] it going to bottles of wine that were selling for,

[00:30:50] 80, $90 a bottle.

[00:30:53] And I was like, I think I can do that.

[00:30:55] And so I jumped ahead for,

[00:30:58] I didn't make it 10 years of growing before I started

[00:31:01] playing around with wine making.

[00:31:05] But I think that aspect of,

[00:31:10] had I not done what I did taking over an old vineyard,

[00:31:13] I probably wouldn't have learned much to be honest.

[00:31:15] I mean, yes, it was harder,

[00:31:19] definitely probably more difficult,

[00:31:20] but I learned a lot about what not to do in the vineyard,

[00:31:24] like the mistakes

[00:31:25] the previous owners had made. And I haven't been to any other wine growing region, like I've never

[00:31:32] been to Napa. But I do that, I've done that to date kind of on purpose because I really feel the

[00:31:37] grower can be just, you know, people talk about terroir. I think the grower is a bigger influence on than anything on the grape and what

[00:31:48] the line ends up like. So I see the grower as part of the terroir, a big portion of the terroir.

[00:31:55] And the decisions I make, they weren't based on things I saw in Napa or things I saw all over in

[00:32:02] Europe or anything like that. It was based on my own experiences

[00:32:06] and solutions I came up with.

[00:32:08] And how those then influenced the wine over the longterm

[00:32:14] is I think interesting.

[00:32:17] And I don't think you get that in a lot of places.

[00:32:20] Yeah, I was just at Inwood with Dan Gatlin

[00:32:23] and he would argue very similar things to that,

[00:32:25] and that terroir doesn't matter.

[00:32:26] It's about the way you handle the vines

[00:32:29] and the way you do everything,

[00:32:30] the winemaker and the farmer,

[00:32:31] and the way everything's done there.

[00:32:33] I mean, I agree a little bit.

[00:32:34] I think terroir does matter in the sense,

[00:32:37] like the soil and stuff like that

[00:32:40] definitely impact the way the vines grow.

[00:32:43] Sure. So like how vigorous they may be

[00:32:46] and like a really vigorous ruby Cabernet

[00:32:50] or a very really vigorous Cabernet Sauvignon,

[00:32:55] you can end up with a lot of methoxy pyrazine.

[00:32:59] Vigor, if you got a soil that is,

[00:33:03] you got a lot of nutrients or say it was a use for cows before it became a vineyard,

[00:33:09] you're gonna have a lot of nitrogen.

[00:33:12] So I think that definitely influences it.

[00:33:16] I would tell you, I bud break two to three weeks

[00:33:19] before par and talent, we're in the same county.

[00:33:24] My elevation's way different. That definitely

[00:33:28] influences the wines because I will sometimes harvest like a month before them. So that can

[00:33:35] have a lot of impact on the chemistry. So to say terroir really doesn't exist. I think it definitely does from that perspective,

[00:33:48] but I think the grower and the decision I make in the field

[00:33:52] can have even bigger impacts.

[00:33:54] How I decided to prune it.

[00:33:56] We do cane prune, do we leaf pull, do we not leaf pull?

[00:34:01] All those things will drastically affect the way. Yeah, I mean, you look at like Ruby Cabernet or Cabernet Sauvignon, if you, Ruby Cab is

[00:34:10] a perfect example.

[00:34:11] When I first started, I would grow it three tons to the acre, right?

[00:34:16] Those are the numbers you always hear, right?

[00:34:18] You got three tons to the acre for a quality crop.

[00:34:21] You can't do that with Ruby Cab.

[00:34:23] Ruby Cab, the canopy gets too massive if you under crop it.

[00:34:27] RubyCab is Carin Yellen and Cabernet Sullivan Yellen, which is a hybrid grape created back in 1935

[00:34:32] at UC Davis. And their goal was to create a hot weather climate cab. But it's extremely vigorous

[00:34:38] and it can handle one heck of a crop load. I mean, 10 tons plus an acre is what they'll do in California,

[00:34:47] but it's not really used to make many wines.

[00:34:50] It's blended, yeah.

[00:34:51] Well, it's blended and it's used to make

[00:34:52] a wine making product called Mega Purple,

[00:34:55] which they'll harvest it for the skins

[00:34:58] and dehydrate the skins and grind them into a powder

[00:35:01] and sell it to winemakers to add color to wine.

[00:35:05] We have the benefit of growing it.

[00:35:07] So we not only use it for red,

[00:35:08] but I can use the skins for things like that.

[00:35:11] If I really would like more color,

[00:35:14] or deeper color on something,

[00:35:16] it doesn't take but a couple scoops of skins from RubyCab

[00:35:18] to really make a difference in the color of a wine.

[00:35:22] I mean, that's a perfect example.

[00:35:24] The San Juvace that I aged for six years when I got the fruit,

[00:35:26] the fruit was beautiful. You know, it was grown by Bill Blackman out at Mendola.

[00:35:31] It came in perfect, but it didn't have a whole lot of color to it.

[00:35:36] And I knew I was going to try to age it for six years.

[00:35:38] So I ended up throwing skins from the Ruby Cab after the Ruby Cab for rent,

[00:35:42] in the fermentation. And that's where a lot of the color came from.

[00:35:48] But yeah, it's, I think from a planting and growing perspective, we're going to stay kind

[00:35:55] of the size we're at.

[00:35:56] We're at about 15 acres.

[00:35:59] We've put in 11 different varietals, which is a lot.

[00:36:02] I would never recommend that to a grower.

[00:36:05] If you're just gonna grow, pick one thing, two things,

[00:36:09] and do it very well.

[00:36:10] Like, be the best.

[00:36:12] If you're gonna make wine,

[00:36:14] you need some diversity in the vineyard.

[00:36:16] You know, like, all of my lots,

[00:36:19] even my small half acre lots

[00:36:22] are three different cloves of each.

[00:36:24] So like, in my Syan, my Grenache,

[00:36:26] the Cabernet Sauvignon, we've put multiple clones in there. And we do that because it adds more

[00:36:35] complexity to the wines. You know, you'll have some of the cab will have smaller clusters and

[00:36:42] more color, another clone won't be like that.

[00:36:45] So it gives you more flexibility

[00:36:47] from a winemaking perspective to have that in the vineyard.

[00:36:52] It makes it difficult to come harvest time.

[00:36:55] Very difficult because we'll have all these varieties

[00:37:00] starting to come be ready to harvest

[00:37:04] like one after the next after the next. So Blake and I

[00:37:08] get no sleep that time of the year. And we'll often close the dacian room and stuff when it's

[00:37:14] harvest time we usually, which is trying to focus on harvest and the wine making and then we'll open

[00:37:21] up again. So usually around harvest time probably not the best time to come visit us.

[00:37:27] Because we'll typically close the taster during that period.

[00:37:32] Well, let's hear a little bit from Blake for a second.

[00:37:33] So we're blessed to have Blake here to join us.

[00:37:35] So tell me a little bit about your background

[00:37:37] and your introduction to the wine industry.

[00:37:40] I was forced into it a little bit at the very beginning,

[00:37:42] but he didn't push it on me a lot.

[00:37:45] Didn't really do it at all when I was forced into it a little bit at the very beginning, but he didn't push it on me a lot. Didn't really do it at all when I was young because whenever we first moved here, I was 12 years old.

[00:37:50] Okay.

[00:37:51] You got to think I'm tiny.

[00:37:53] Yeah.

[00:37:54] Didn't really want it to work. Wanted to play Xbox.

[00:37:56] Exactly.

[00:37:57] And towards the end of my senior year, I realized, I was like, all right, I got to

[00:38:03] choose something I want to do now. So what did I really want to do? I started, I was like, all right, I gotta choose something I wanna do now.

[00:38:05] So what did I really wanna do?

[00:38:06] I started, I fell in love with chemistry,

[00:38:08] and I love chess, right?

[00:38:11] And I look at the vineyard as a huge chess,

[00:38:14] just a chess board.

[00:38:15] Every single move you make is gonna do something

[00:38:17] that's gonna, you gotta think way in the future, right?

[00:38:21] So one move, you got 10 other moves

[00:38:24] that are gonna be forced to make after that.

[00:38:26] Like ripples.

[00:38:27] Yeah, yeah.

[00:38:28] And so I went to tech for viticulture and ology

[00:38:34] and then COVID hit and all my wine classes were online.

[00:38:39] And I was like, I'm not wearing anything.

[00:38:41] I moved back here.

[00:38:42] I was helping him out for a second.

[00:38:44] And then he told me, he's like,

[00:38:46] you don't need to go back, just stay here.

[00:38:48] And so I learned almost everything I needed to from him.

[00:38:51] And most of the stuff I were teaching at Tech

[00:38:53] is more for the corporate, big wineries.

[00:38:59] And that's not what we're doing here.

[00:39:02] But I fell in love with it. Yeah.

[00:39:05] Every single year I just feel more blessed

[00:39:08] I'm able to do this.

[00:39:09] And he puts in all the hours at IT,

[00:39:12] so it's like he's my investor.

[00:39:14] There you go.

[00:39:15] And so, it's, I am very, very lucky

[00:39:18] that I am able to do what I am able to do.

[00:39:21] Well, one of the things I wanted to hit on for a second

[00:39:23] is you, before we started, you were telling me about this class

[00:39:26] that you guys had put together.

[00:39:27] You helped with Justin Schreiner

[00:39:29] for high school's curriculum.

[00:39:30] And you were able to, I think,

[00:39:32] be in the inaugural class of that year at Mason?

[00:39:35] So I was in the very first class.

[00:39:36] We were the ones that had to dig up all the sandstone

[00:39:38] in the ag little square that they had

[00:39:44] for all the plants and stuff.

[00:39:46] And it was a lot of work,

[00:39:47] because a lot of people didn't want to do anything.

[00:39:50] But we finally got the trellis and everything in,

[00:39:53] and then some people got interested in actually,

[00:39:56] one of the girls that's in the class,

[00:39:59] that was in the class with me

[00:40:00] is now working at Peter's Prairie.

[00:40:01] Okay.

[00:40:02] And so she's also in the business too, so.

[00:40:04] So how did this curriculum come about?

[00:40:06] Well, we, we, it came out of a growers meeting that we had.

[00:40:12] It was Chris Brinmoret, me, Doug Lewis, I think Lewis Dixon was there.

[00:40:23] All the big names were probably there that you've heard of.

[00:40:28] Was it Alphonse?

[00:40:30] Alphonse may have been there, but I basically, it came up the topic of, hey, we shouldn't

[00:40:37] talk about doing this. Maybe something with the high schools. And I know John Rivenberg

[00:40:43] and them had made an attempt at one point, but it was a hard topic to bring up to high schools. And I know John Rivenberg and them had made an attempt

[00:40:45] at one point, but it was a hard topic to bring up

[00:40:49] to high schools because wine was involved, right?

[00:40:52] And at the end of that meeting, they were like,

[00:40:55] well, Dan, if you think you can do it, go for it.

[00:40:57] And so I came up here and I had the discussion

[00:41:00] with the high school and I had to meet with the board

[00:41:04] and really tried

[00:41:05] to focus on, let's just look at this purely from an agricultural perspective.

[00:41:11] Talk about wine, talk about jelly and grape juice and all the other things you can make

[00:41:19] from vines, but we really need to get students learning about it before they show up to college and they've

[00:41:25] already decided what they want to do.

[00:41:29] So that's kind of where it all started and Mason ISD agreed to kind of go for it and

[00:41:36] we taught the first class.

[00:41:39] It was kind of a struggle.

[00:41:40] There was no books or anything.

[00:41:42] And Justin Scheiner offered to come down and help put stuff

[00:41:47] together. And he gave the teacher a whole Google Drive just full of all of his teaching material.

[00:41:55] And that's really what the teacher used the first two years was stuff that Justin Scheiner had given

[00:42:00] him the other he uses in his classes at the university. Um, and then I would come, you know, the students would come out the vineyard and

[00:42:08] we teach them to prune and we'd go in and help them.

[00:42:11] This was before they even had a vineyard at the high school.

[00:42:14] Um, but when, when we finally decided to put in a vineyard at high school, I

[00:42:19] donated all the materials and the plants and stuff that we showed the students

[00:42:23] how to plant and, uh, Blake and I will go up there in the spring each year and we'll help the

[00:42:28] students, you know, here's how to prune and here's the different concepts of

[00:42:33] cane pruning and cordon pruning.

[00:42:35] And now they're teaching, I think, in Fredericksburg and I've heard maybe one

[00:42:41] other school, but they have a full book now, three years into it.

[00:42:46] Justin Scheider put together an amazing book.

[00:42:49] They've got a teacher's book,

[00:42:50] they've got online materials, a whole nine yards.

[00:42:53] Any high school in the state can teach it.

[00:42:56] I love that because as a high school teacher

[00:42:58] here in Texas myself,

[00:42:59] I know that there's been a lot of focus recently

[00:43:02] on not every kid's gonna go to college

[00:43:05] and we need to be giving them skills

[00:43:07] and things, tools that they can leave high school

[00:43:10] and start a career and do things.

[00:43:11] And so there's been focus on trades

[00:43:14] and a lot of other things.

[00:43:15] So I love things like this where we can give kids

[00:43:17] that are going into high school

[00:43:18] that may not necessarily wanna go to college,

[00:43:21] tools and something they can immediately,

[00:43:24] soon as they graduate, jump in and start working and doing things without having to have that secondary training.

[00:43:30] A lot of people probably don't realize is some of the jobs in the vineyard are actually pretty

[00:43:36] good paying jobs. I mean, not probably if you're employed there, but from a contract work, if you know how to prune, for example,

[00:43:48] and not just pruned a couple of times, but you really know pruning, that's actually worth

[00:43:55] quite a bit.

[00:43:57] Cane pruning, for example, is extremely difficult to get right.

[00:44:00] That's why a lot of vineyards don't do it, because you can damage the vines if you're

[00:44:04] not pruning them right.

[00:44:07] And there's not a lot of people that know cane pruning.

[00:44:11] We've converted our whole vineyard last year and this year we're still working

[00:44:14] on, it's going to take us about three years,

[00:44:16] but we're converting almost the whole vineyard over to cane prune.

[00:44:20] And you can't just let anybody touch your vines.

[00:44:25] And like that's something a lot of people don't realize that that need is And you can't just let anybody touch your vines.

[00:44:28] And that's something a lot of people don't realize that that need is there.

[00:44:32] I'm talking to some Atlas about just yesterday

[00:44:36] about, hey, do you got anybody that knows cane pruning?

[00:44:40] Because it's gonna be just he and I out there,

[00:44:42] we got 15 acres to go through

[00:44:45] and the vines still haven't dropped their leaves yet.

[00:44:48] We can't start pruning until they've gone dormant.

[00:44:51] And so we're probably going to be a little bit

[00:44:54] behind this season unless we can find some people

[00:44:57] that really understand cane pruning.

[00:44:59] And I'm not willing to let people touch my vines anymore

[00:45:03] and that don't understand it.

[00:45:04] It's incredibly difficult to learn how to prune.

[00:45:07] Whenever I was first learning to prune from him,

[00:45:10] me and him, I'll be on one side of the row

[00:45:12] and he would be on the other.

[00:45:13] And we would just be walking down a row

[00:45:16] and just slowly working through it.

[00:45:17] I mean, 400, 500 plants, I'm still, don't get it.

[00:45:21] I'm like, it's because every single spur position

[00:45:25] is a completely different situation

[00:45:27] that you're gonna run into.

[00:45:28] Different flow, different cuts, different growth.

[00:45:31] So like to be able to get somebody that actually knows

[00:45:34] and has run into every situation,

[00:45:36] it's not based on knowledge, it's based on experience.

[00:45:39] Yeah, years of experience.

[00:45:41] There's thousands of different situations you can run in when you're pruning a vine and how you

[00:45:46] deal with that. It's important to the life of the vine. If you want vines that are going to be

[00:45:53] around for 25, 30, 40 years, that pruning is the most important aspect of it. And that's really

[00:46:03] what ends up driving a higher quality wines. As the wine gets older,

[00:46:07] it does struggle, the fruit struggles more, the you end up with smaller clusters, the canopies

[00:46:12] aren't as big and vigorous, and so they carry less fruit on them. But that's what ends up

[00:46:18] creating some of these higher quality wines. And if you want them to be around 100 years,

[00:46:25] you're going to need some people that know how to print it.

[00:46:27] I think that's why these high school classes, you know,

[00:46:30] getting those going and getting kids to understand, you know,

[00:46:33] pruning vines at an early age,

[00:46:36] it's going to just help the industry.

[00:46:37] If we can get some of those kids out there helping, you know,

[00:46:41] because right now most of our help honestly is coming from

[00:46:44] California.

[00:46:46] The last couple of years, we've had several companies

[00:46:49] now come in from California,

[00:46:51] and that's where a lot of the labor's coming from.

[00:46:56] Well, so we've talked a lot about your backgrounds

[00:46:59] and your histories and all that kind of stuff.

[00:47:01] I'm gonna turn my attention now more towards

[00:47:02] the actual location here.

[00:47:04] We already know you've talked about

[00:47:05] that you kind of came in around 2011, 2012 to it,

[00:47:09] but it has a little bit of a history before that.

[00:47:10] How was this place started?

[00:47:12] Do you know much about the history

[00:47:13] or the name and all that stuff?

[00:47:14] So Robert Clay, a lot of people ask,

[00:47:16] who's Robert Clay?

[00:47:17] Well, there is no Robert Clay.

[00:47:19] Robert Clay is Robert and Clay,

[00:47:23] which are the children of Paul and Nancy Bueus, who

[00:47:27] originally started the vineyard.

[00:47:29] They moved here in 1996, started getting trellis and everything prepped, put in 15 acres of

[00:47:37] Merlot.

[00:47:40] Tarriga National was the first planting of Tarriga National in the state.

[00:47:44] They put in Chardonnay, and then they put in a little bit of Vionnier, and then they

[00:47:49] had what they called their experimental vineyard, which was just a block of ruby cab, barbara,

[00:47:56] syrah, had some orange muskat, kitchen sink.

[00:48:02] It had just about everything. And when I got there, that experimental vineyard,

[00:48:07] most of those hadn't even been trained up the wire. Like the ruby cab was literally

[00:48:12] growing on the ground. So those, I think were planted around the time when Paul got sick.

[00:48:18] And so they just kind of never got trained or anything. So I think the first two seasons, I was harvesting that Ruby Cab off the ground.

[00:48:27] So Paul's really thing was farming too.

[00:48:33] He wanted to farm.

[00:48:34] He enjoyed using his hands and being out there and digging in the dirt and all that kind

[00:48:38] of stuff.

[00:48:39] And that really was his drive for it.

[00:48:42] They never made wine.

[00:48:43] They sold all of their fruit to Sandstone Sellers.

[00:48:47] Louis Dixon from La Cruz de Camille

[00:48:49] actually made the first Merlot off the,

[00:48:52] his first Merlot off the property.

[00:48:56] And that was back in 2021.

[00:49:00] No, 2001.

[00:49:02] Yeah, excuse me, 2001.

[00:49:01] No, 2001. Yeah, excuse me, 2001.

[00:49:05] And, hey, hey talks to me about it to this day.

[00:49:10] I mean, I had a bottle of it.

[00:49:11] The Buist had one bottle of that wine.

[00:49:13] Yeah.

[00:49:14] And we opened it, it was still holding together.

[00:49:16] It was amazing.

[00:49:17] And Lewis Dixon's now giving me a,

[00:49:19] he still has a couple on his wine cellar.

[00:49:22] Oh cool.

[00:49:23] So it's really cool to be able to go back

[00:49:24] and taste a Rolo from that old.

[00:49:26] From when I was one.

[00:49:29] Yeah.

[00:49:31] But yeah,

[00:49:35] he and his wife and his kids really, I think,

[00:49:38] did most of the work on that vineyard back in the day.

[00:49:41] I mean, there wasn't a huge labor force back then,

[00:49:44] especially not here in the day. I mean, there wasn't a huge labor force back then, especially not here

[00:49:45] in the Hill Country. And I think they got it all planted and after getting it planted,

[00:49:54] it was probably overwhelming. I can imagine it being overwhelming. That many new vines

[00:50:00] planted all around the same time because it was like after they got the trellis in, it was 20, 21, they started putting everything in.

[00:50:07] I think most everything was in the ground by 2021.

[00:50:10] Or 2001, excuse me.

[00:50:13] And so it was surely what probably,

[00:50:19] I think it was about eight years after that,

[00:50:20] he got sick and then, you know,

[00:50:23] the vines just didn't get, man, they shouldn't And the kids were worked to death at the vineyard.

[00:50:26] Sure.

[00:50:27] So they didn't want anything to do with it.

[00:50:29] Yeah.

[00:50:30] I mean, Robert and Clay went as Bobby and Crash,

[00:50:34] and that's how everybody knew him in town.

[00:50:38] And that, we've got a bottle of it here in the vineyard,

[00:50:42] the taste of them that we show people,

[00:50:45] because I think it was important to keep the name

[00:50:49] because it had a history to it.

[00:50:51] It's kind of like, I was telling people,

[00:50:52] it was like, you name a boat,

[00:50:53] you don't chose along that boat.

[00:50:56] And the vineyard had history with several wineries,

[00:51:00] producing some really good wines,

[00:51:02] Sandstone had multiple wines that had won awards

[00:51:06] off the Turega Nationale.

[00:51:09] And I felt, yeah, just to,

[00:51:14] I wanted to have the vineyard continue to exist

[00:51:18] that the Buist had put in and that it worked so hard on.

[00:51:22] And I felt the name also clicked.

[00:51:25] Yeah.

[00:51:26] I always liked the name,

[00:51:27] I had a really classy feel to it.

[00:51:30] Which more so than Bobby Crash.

[00:51:32] The Mclaughlin, I didn't think so.

[00:51:34] Yeah.

[00:51:35] As well as, because it didn't trip off the tongue as much.

[00:51:38] Yeah, snap.

[00:51:42] After we took over it,

[00:51:44] it was mostly about the farming,

[00:51:45] and then it was, okay, the brand,

[00:51:48] what are we gonna make the brand?

[00:51:49] And I really struggled with that part

[00:51:52] as far as I wanted it to be unique.

[00:51:55] I wanted whatever the logo or the branding was,

[00:51:58] I wanted it to be something

[00:51:59] where if you saw it across the table, you'd know it.

[00:52:03] And it took me probably about six years to come up.

[00:52:05] I mean, you've seen the label on our wines, that is a, it's an RC and a V with one stroke of the

[00:52:13] pen. And I actually came up with that at like two o'clock in the morning after I had finished

[00:52:18] spraying the vineyard. And I was, I had just got one of those new Samsung phones and I sat there and probably did a thousand ringing editions.

[00:52:25] That, to try and get it right.

[00:52:28] I woke my wife up about 5.30 in the morning and I said, I got the logo.

[00:52:36] She didn't like the fact that I was waking her up at 5.30 in the morning.

[00:52:39] I'd tell her that. I'm not sure of that, but our labels are also,

[00:52:47] I wouldn't say I'm the artistic type to come up with

[00:52:49] different names for everything.

[00:52:52] And so being that I've got the IT background,

[00:52:55] I use a lot of acronyms and all that stuff.

[00:52:57] So every one of our wines is actually named like B,

[00:53:02] it starts off with a B from B, E S for steel, E for stainless.

[00:53:09] And then it will have a two digits, which is going to be the year

[00:53:12] that the vintage that it is. And that's got another two digits. That's a lot number.

[00:53:16] Okay.

[00:53:17] So if you see a zero, zero, that's a single barrel, excuse me, zero, zero is typically

[00:53:22] like one or more barrels.

[00:53:27] It's usually no more than two to three.

[00:53:31] But then it's got a zero one, a zero two, zero three, that would be single barrel lots. And then it'll of course have RCV as the vineyard.

[00:53:36] And then it'll have a three characters for whatever wines in there.

[00:53:42] And I'll just use, I tend to put them in the order of,

[00:53:45] so like if it was a Ruby Cab, Merlot, Torega,

[00:53:49] then most of it was Ruby Cab,

[00:53:51] then I would start it with an R.

[00:53:52] So percentage is basically.

[00:53:53] Yeah.

[00:53:54] So you'll see we have like the RTM or the MTR

[00:53:59] or the MER for Merlot or CHA for Chardonnay.

[00:54:05] And then we explain all that, all that's broken down on the back the MER for Merlot or CHA for Chardonnay.

[00:54:09] And then we explained all that's broken down on the back as well as a picture of the vineyard

[00:54:12] and the block that it came out of.

[00:54:14] So we highlight block where that fruit

[00:54:17] is located in the vineyard.

[00:54:19] Yeah, inventory is a pain when you're looking at MTR,

[00:54:22] MER and then RTN, it's like... Starts to blend together a little bit.

[00:54:26] It's very old.

[00:54:28] I also do, so we've also experimented with organic in the vineyard.

[00:54:35] Okay.

[00:54:35] And it's experimenting a lot with no sulfites in the wines. One of the benefits of being this

[00:54:42] small is that I can play around and I'm not playing around

[00:54:45] with tens of thousands of gallons of wine.

[00:54:47] So my risks are a lot lower.

[00:54:50] You know, if I can't afford to lose a barrel,

[00:54:52] I shouldn't be doing this.

[00:54:54] So, you know, we've got, if it has a green logo

[00:55:00] on the front, that would mean that would have been

[00:55:02] one of the vintages that I did 100% organic

[00:55:06] that season and I had no salt fights and it was native yeast fermented. That's the only

[00:55:13] time I'll put a green label on it is if I was able to accomplish all three things that

[00:55:18] season. I think we've got three wines that meet that requirement. I'm not organic certified, I just do organic as much as possible

[00:55:27] because I don't care to be around all the chemicals myself, no other reason than that.

[00:55:34] And if I want my family drinking the wines, I don't want a bunch of chemicals in them.

[00:55:40] Well, we've talked a little bit about the fruit and your vineyards here.

[00:55:45] So do you source any fruit outside of your own estate?

[00:55:48] No, everything we do.

[00:55:49] Everything is a state grown.

[00:55:52] The only wines that I have that aren't would be like the one where I did the

[00:55:56] San Giovanni, basically where I did an exchange with Chris Banderat.

[00:55:59] Um, and then we have some wines that are, we call them the Compass Rose Collection.

[00:56:06] One of the things, this building that we're in

[00:56:09] used to be part of Compass Rose Sellers.

[00:56:11] And so Compass Rose started, Mark Watson started here.

[00:56:15] And I was making my first wines with Rob Nida,

[00:56:19] was kind of where I learned the basics of winemaking

[00:56:22] was from Rob Nida.

[00:56:23] I think you've interviewed Rob. You've interviewed Pebble Rock?

[00:56:26] Because Rob Nida was the winemaker at the time

[00:56:29] for Compass Rose and I had offered to come up and help.

[00:56:33] And so that's really where my first season was 2014

[00:56:40] in here with Rob Nida.

[00:56:42] And this was Compass Rose facility.

[00:56:46] And then Compass Rose 2015, two weeks before harvest,

[00:56:51] that I was supposed to bring in all my first fruit

[00:56:55] into this facility to use Compass Rose,

[00:57:00] as my crush and everything,

[00:57:02] decided, Mark decided he wanted to move to high.

[00:57:05] Two weeks before harvest.

[00:57:07] And I had already told Will and Chris and everybody,

[00:57:11] I'm taking all the fruit this year.

[00:57:13] So I was kind of in a huge panic at that point.

[00:57:17] And that's actually how it came to be.

[00:57:19] So this facility now is, we call it,

[00:57:23] if the front of it says Mason Wine Growers.

[00:57:26] And the concept was two growers making,

[00:57:30] that grow and make their own wines.

[00:57:32] So that's Par Vineyards and Robert Clay Vineyards.

[00:57:36] We both now own this building.

[00:57:40] We both make all of our wines here.

[00:57:43] Par has got his station right on the square

[00:57:45] and I've got mine here.

[00:57:48] And that 2015 vintage,

[00:57:53] we ended up pulling it off here

[00:57:55] because I was able to convince Mark to let

[00:57:58] Rob Par come in and,

[00:58:00] because we had no air conditioning,

[00:58:02] we had no equipment,

[00:58:04] literally everything got ripped out of here and taken to high.

[00:58:08] So Parr and I split a lot of the costs on the equipment

[00:58:12] and getting everything going here.

[00:58:15] So that's how things started at this, where we're at right now.

[00:58:20] This used to be the actual Mason feed store.

[00:58:23] Oh, wow.

[00:58:23] Yep.

[00:58:24] And so you process everything here. Mm-hmm

[00:58:26] Okay. Yeah, everything's here. Everything's a state grown. We bring everything here crush it on the crush pad here ferment everything here

[00:58:34] barrel age everything here

[00:58:37] Bottle everything by hand one stop not label everything by hand. The only thing that we don't do is still

[00:58:44] What distill.

[00:58:45] Yeah.

[00:58:46] Yeah.

[00:58:47] Good for key.

[00:58:47] Yeah.

[00:58:48] I mean, we can, we just, you know, we...

[00:58:50] Permit for that.

[00:58:51] Permit, a little more cost.

[00:58:53] Yeah.

[00:58:54] But, you know, I...

[00:58:57] I think this facility is cool and unique

[00:59:00] in the sense that it's an old,

[00:59:03] has the history of, you know, the Mason being around, it was the Mason feed store back in the sense that it's an old, has the history of the Mason being around.

[00:59:05] It was the Mason feed store back in the day.

[00:59:09] I talked to people here in town still

[00:59:11] that used to work back here.

[00:59:12] You know, work here, you look up at the top of rafters

[00:59:16] and you'll see some tuffs of hair that's mohair.

[00:59:19] They used to shave mohair in here.

[00:59:21] Wow.

[00:59:22] Actually on the side of the building,

[00:59:23] there's class of 69 and 68 and they talk about how

[00:59:27] they used to come back here and just get drunk and throw balls against the wall.

[00:59:30] And so whenever we were doing all the plumbing, because me and him built almost this whole

[00:59:33] entire tasting room ourselves and we were digging everything, we just started finding

[00:59:38] broken glass everywhere.

[00:59:39] Yeah.

[00:59:40] What is going on?

[00:59:42] Well, what are some of your favorite wines to make?

[00:59:46] What are you most proud of?

[00:59:48] So that really, you know,

[00:59:52] that goes back to when I first started drinking wine,

[00:59:55] I was a beer drinker.

[00:59:56] Yeah.

[00:59:57] So when I started this, if you had asked me the different,

[01:00:00] if you had sat a Chardonnay and a Rolo in front of me

[01:00:04] and asked me which

[01:00:05] was which, I would not have been able to tell you. That's how little I knew about wine.

[01:00:09] Can you tell by the hops?

[01:00:10] Yeah, exactly. For me, it was more about the farming aspect of it. My experiences with

[01:00:19] wine were basically whatever my wife drank. My wife liked big, bold breads.

[01:00:26] Big, chewy.

[01:00:28] Bigger, chewy, oak, those were the wines she liked.

[01:00:33] The more tannin drying.

[01:00:36] And so that's probably what drove me

[01:00:39] to make more of the style of wines that I do today.

[01:00:43] Not that I don't make, I have several that are unoaked,

[01:00:48] but Black Armor Low is one of our biggest sellers.

[01:00:54] If you were asking me or Bill Blackman

[01:00:56] what was the grape of Texas,

[01:00:57] Bill was telling you Merlot.

[01:00:58] I mean, Merlot grows excellent here

[01:01:01] and produces incredible wines.

[01:01:03] It's consistent, Chemistry is always consistent.

[01:01:06] I harvest almost exactly the same time every year.

[01:01:11] But yeah, Merlot and then some of our,

[01:01:15] a lot of people like a lot of our big old age,

[01:01:19] like our, the San Giovanni, he's a big one, huge fan.

[01:01:23] Can you forget about the Chardonnay.

[01:01:27] Chardonnay is one of the ones that really I think surprises a lot of people.

[01:01:33] Because everyone says you can't grow Chardonnay in Texas. I would tend to disagree. You can if

[01:01:40] you pick the right location. Chardonnay does very well for us.

[01:01:50] I'm not one to go enter in a bunch of competitions,

[01:01:54] but I did this year just for the Chardonnay because I was really curious.

[01:01:56] How does it line up with the rest?

[01:01:58] And I didn't even realize until I got into it

[01:02:01] that especially like the San Francisco Chronicle, you're looking

[01:02:06] at I think there was 10 different categories for Chardonnay by price.

[01:02:12] So they break it down by price and I was like, you know, if I'm going to do this, I want

[01:02:15] to see if I can compete.

[01:02:17] So I took every vintage that we had made and put them in the highest price category for

[01:02:22] Chardonnay and we walked away.

[01:02:24] They handed out 40 medals this year

[01:02:27] and we took 10% of the medals.

[01:02:29] Wow.

[01:02:30] And I put every vintage we had made in that competition.

[01:02:33] That's awesome.

[01:02:34] So we got silver across the board.

[01:02:36] I didn't expect to get going up against

[01:02:39] big buttery Chardonnays and I don't make big.

[01:02:42] Where they specialize that in California.

[01:02:44] And I don't do big buttery Chardonnay. But I don't make big- Where they specialize that in California. And I don't do big buttery Chardonnay. I do unfiltered and filtered Chardonnay's. I always

[01:02:52] do that every year. I use the same three barrels. Two of them are unfiltered. One is sterile

[01:02:57] filtered. And I do that for no other reason than to show the consumer the impact that

[01:03:02] sterile filtering has on the wine. A lot of people like the fact that

[01:03:06] they can actually taste one vintage, same exact fruit, same estate, same grower, same winemaker.

[01:03:14] Only difference is barrel that they were in and the fact that one's filtered and one is not king.

[01:03:23] You'll get to taste that here when we do the tasting, but it is pretty dramatic.

[01:03:28] The color is totally different. The taste is different. The nose on them is different.

[01:03:37] I don't filter anything except for that one barrel of Chardonnay or ear.

[01:03:43] Well, you've already mentioned the Merlot,

[01:03:45] but coming at it from more of a customer's perspective,

[01:03:47] well, what's the hottest seller?

[01:03:49] What's the stuff that if someone said,

[01:03:50] well, I'm gonna go visit Robert Clay, I have to try this.

[01:03:53] Merlot, Chardonnay, and the Turigas,

[01:03:57] the Turigas are very well received.

[01:04:01] And to be honest, the MDR Blend, the one that was, the one that I've barrel aged for seven years has been

[01:04:09] a huge success.

[01:04:10] I mean, the cost on it has to be pretty expensive because heck, the stuff sat in a new French

[01:04:17] barrel for seven years.

[01:04:21] But people I think are very surprised by that one.

[01:04:25] We get a lot of connoisseur types.

[01:04:29] I would say that's probably a big chunk of our consumer base.

[01:04:33] Our people that like, they'll come in and,

[01:04:39] I like being European Reds or I like,

[01:04:44] Chardonnays from France, they tend to like our shardin a cuz i'm not the big buttery style.

[01:04:51] A lot of people come in and say they like big cabs right there really tend to enjoy i was tell people if you like a big california cab you need to try a big texas from below.

[01:05:03] Because you know where will got such a bad name for so long after that movie

[01:05:09] sideways. I think they pulled up hundreds of thousands of acres of it because of that movie

[01:05:18] alone. I think a lot of the Merlot that people experience today is more of your boxed wine,

[01:05:26] I think a lot of the Merlot that people experience today is more of your boxed wine, you know, quick, get it on the shelf, and they don't get to taste Merlots that were aged for a

[01:05:33] while and I would say handled properly.

[01:05:39] And that's, you know, like I said, I've only bottled up to 17.

[01:05:42] The rest of my Merl's are still sitting in barrel.

[01:05:46] And so I think Merlot, the Chardonnays are probably two of our biggest sellers.

[01:05:53] I don't do many blends.

[01:05:56] I tend to do a blend when I didn't have enough to fill a barrel, for example, and then I'll

[01:06:01] end up with a blend. But I don't do blends specifically for,

[01:06:06] oh, this and this would taste good together,

[01:06:10] other than probably the MTR from 2015.

[01:06:15] That was the first intentional blend that I did.

[01:06:18] And that came out of a discussion.

[01:06:21] Bill Blackman came over and he had tasted my Ruby Cab

[01:06:24] and he goes, wow, that's really green. And I said, well, what do I do about that? And he goes,

[01:06:29] well, you could leave it a barrel for 15 years. And I was like, well,

[01:06:32] I'm not going to do that. And the Rolod tasted excellent. And the,

[01:06:38] uh, Torega National, I felt like was lacking a little bit.

[01:06:42] And so I took equal parts and blended them together.

[01:06:46] And then I went to what we used to call a black hands dinner

[01:06:50] down in, it was a dinner that Chris Bundertte

[01:06:53] used to put on every year to celebrate end of harvest.

[01:06:56] They call it black hands,

[01:06:57] because we had our hands turned black

[01:06:59] from getting and pressing down the fruit.

[01:07:02] Oh, okay.

[01:07:03] What's the name from the dirt?

[01:07:03] Yeah, no, it's just from your hands start to get dyed

[01:07:07] dark purple and that night I took that bottle down

[01:07:14] and it was one of the first bottles gone that night.

[01:07:17] I came back and I blended all three that night.

[01:07:20] And so that's how the MTR came to be.

[01:07:22] Okay.

[01:07:23] Talk about how our wines, how we like ferment

[01:07:26] all our wines completely through.

[01:07:27] So there's no residual sugars left over.

[01:07:29] So if you want some sweet wines,

[01:07:30] you're going to be going to the wrong place.

[01:07:32] We have a dessert wine from the Compass Rose Collection,

[01:07:35] which is definitely sweet.

[01:07:38] I mean, it's also been barrel aged for,

[01:07:42] it's still, all those barrels that you see

[01:07:44] when you come in,

[01:07:45] those black barrels, those still have,

[01:07:48] they're full of Madeira from 2014.

[01:07:51] So, and we do have another dessert wine

[01:07:54] that's not ready yet, but it's been in barrel for two years.

[01:07:57] It's 100% estate, pork style wine.

[01:08:03] So it's made from Turiga National. It was late harvested in November,

[01:08:09] so very late. And it was actually most ports or mideers are, you know, a lot of the winers

[01:08:20] will buy brandy. So in 2017, I actually on purpose did a late harvest vignette for the

[01:08:28] purpose of making an estate brandy. And we aged it, we aged the brandy for three years

[01:08:35] in an old Madeira barrel and then used that to make that port style wine. So that will

[01:08:40] be probably, as soon as I can find the port bottles that I want,

[01:08:45] because I'm trying to find the old style port, like dark, nice models,

[01:08:51] which you would think would be easy to find, but they're almost impossible to find.

[01:08:55] I'll be bottling that, and I've got two barrels of that.

[01:08:59] So do you, you've talked about how this kind of a small family-based winery,

[01:09:02] and sometimes you can close your doors so you can get out and work in the vineyard and all that. Do you do any kind of types of

[01:09:06] events or things like that here, dinners or any kinds of things to...

[01:09:10] We don't. We don't tend to do that kind of stuff just because we're in the vineyard a lot and we

[01:09:18] were only open here at the taste room on Fridays and Saturdays.

[01:09:26] We're open seven days a week for private tastings.

[01:09:29] You can go to our website anytime

[01:09:30] and book a private tasting.

[01:09:32] So that's open.

[01:09:34] So as far as us being open seven days a week,

[01:09:36] yes, we're open seven days a week.

[01:09:37] As long as you wanna go to the website and book,

[01:09:40] or you can call, my cell phone number is on the website.

[01:09:44] You can call, it'll ring to me or my wife and we'll pick up

[01:09:48] You can always do a private tasting, but we're open to the general public

[01:09:52] Fridays and Saturdays well

[01:09:54] What can we talk about tastings in what can a listener expect when they come to visit to do a tasting whether that's during your open

[01:10:00] Hours or by reservation so what type of wines are they gonna taste? Do they pick the wines?

[01:10:05] Do you pick the wines?

[01:10:06] What's the cost involved?

[01:10:07] So it's $25 a tasting.

[01:10:09] If you do a walk-in or a general tasting,

[01:10:12] that's a tasting where you're okay with other people

[01:10:15] being in here and enjoying tasting others,

[01:10:19] that's $25.

[01:10:20] You can sign up on our,

[01:10:21] if you sign up on our website, it's $20.

[01:10:24] But if you wanna do a private website, it's $20 But if you want to do a private station is 50 bucks. Okay

[01:10:28] You can do bigger parties

[01:10:30] The cost is a little bit cheaper and all that's on the website

[01:10:34] We try not to do parties bigger than six. Okay

[01:10:39] But I'm not picky about that kind of stuff

[01:10:41] I mean, I would prefer as long as you give me enough advanced notes

[01:10:45] to let me know what's happening

[01:10:46] and who you wanna bring down,

[01:10:48] we'll set you up around the table.

[01:10:50] We've had parties as big as 15 to 20 before.

[01:10:54] So it'll just, if you do that,

[01:10:56] it's gonna be me, my wife, and my son here,

[01:10:59] and we'll be the ones doing everything.

[01:11:02] Or to talk.

[01:11:03] We don't have, there's not employees in the tasting room.

[01:11:06] Right.

[01:11:07] It's the family.

[01:11:09] The growers.

[01:11:10] We're gonna be talking to the people that touched it.

[01:11:11] Yeah.

[01:11:13] And then your operating hours on Fridays and Saturdays

[01:11:15] are typically?

[01:11:16] So on Fridays it's four to six

[01:11:20] and then one to six on Saturdays.

[01:11:23] Gotcha.

[01:11:24] And then family friendly, if somebody has kids,

[01:11:26] can they still come in?

[01:11:28] Totally.

[01:11:28] Yeah, pets.

[01:11:30] People bring their dogs.

[01:11:32] We've got people that always ask us that.

[01:11:34] We're good.

[01:11:35] We're very laid back.

[01:11:36] We're far worse.

[01:11:36] We're used to the dogs and all that kind of stuff.

[01:11:38] I think if people bring their own food in,

[01:11:40] if they wanted to bring their own food,

[01:11:42] things like that.

[01:11:43] Okay.

[01:11:44] What are your kind of busier and slower seasons?

[01:11:46] You talked about harvest sometimes gets closed down

[01:11:48] a little bit.

[01:11:49] When's the best time to come visit?

[01:11:52] During the spring, it's beautiful out here.

[01:11:54] You know, October through even this time of the year

[01:11:59] is beautiful.

[01:11:59] You know, today it's gonna be what, 70s?

[01:12:02] I mean, it's, but during the spring,

[01:12:06] probably, you know, after March, April

[01:12:10] is probably the best time to come out.

[01:12:13] During January and February, he and I,

[01:12:16] you know, Blake and I are just,

[01:12:18] we're in the vineyard trying to

[01:12:19] desperately finish up pruning.

[01:12:21] Right.

[01:12:22] So sometimes we'll, you we'll close the tasting room

[01:12:25] even during that period.

[01:12:27] It really just depends on what's going on

[01:12:29] and how far behind we are.

[01:12:31] Do you get like a notice on your website or something?

[01:12:33] Yeah, we'll put it out on social media

[01:12:36] and we'll put it out on the website.

[01:12:38] Okay, we'll go ahead and do it.

[01:12:39] But I would always check that first

[01:12:41] just to make sure that we're open.

[01:12:43] Do you all offer any kind of a wine club

[01:12:44] or anything like that? We don't, I mean we have, that we're open. Okay. Do y'all offer any kind of a wine club or anything like that?

[01:12:45] We don't I mean we have what we're putting together is gonna be like a wide allocation list because we make so little wine

[01:12:53] You know our average production was three to four hundred five hundred cases a year. Okay, so

[01:12:59] We the wine allocation list is something we're going to put together, but it's going to be very

[01:13:05] small. So it's going to probably start off with 25 individuals on it. We're going to be shipping

[01:13:14] and wine shippers that are pretty heavy duty, they're like gun cases that are designed to

[01:13:22] hold three bottles. Okay. And so the people that are on the allocation list,

[01:13:27] it'll just basically be wines

[01:13:29] that either haven't been released yet.

[01:13:31] We're not going to be pushing out wines

[01:13:35] of like what you can just get in the general case order.

[01:13:38] Then it would be, hey, this is a very special lot

[01:13:41] of only 15 cases produced, that kind of thing is what I envisioned doing

[01:13:46] with the white allocation list.

[01:13:50] So if you go to our website,

[01:13:52] you can get is sign up now on our website.

[01:13:55] Those are the people that we're gonna offer

[01:13:58] the first group that's gonna be offered

[01:14:00] to be on the allocation list.

[01:14:01] Okay.

[01:14:02] And then I presume as small as you are

[01:14:05] that you don't do any kind of distribution,

[01:14:06] but if somebody couldn't come to the Tasteroom

[01:14:08] for whatever reason, is there a way

[01:14:10] they can taste your wines?

[01:14:11] Do you sell them on your website

[01:14:12] or anything like that, do shipping?

[01:14:14] Yeah, so I mean, you can, right now we've got

[01:14:16] some more wines in Fredericksburg at Sage Restaurant

[01:14:24] and then we're looking at Hotel Emma, potentially in San Antonio,

[01:14:30] and a few others. You can all go to Georgia James in Steakhouse in Houston as our Torega

[01:14:40] National. So we're really, as far as restaurants concerned, because I've produced so

[01:14:46] little, I'm really focusing on like James Beard award-winning chefs, small restaurants where the

[01:14:54] chef is the owner and he's very involved in it. So I'm looking at potentially maybe Luminaire in Austin.

[01:15:10] And I haven't picked one in Dallas yet, but that's kind of,

[01:15:13] I don't, if I go into distribution, we're gonna be forced to produce a lot more wine.

[01:15:16] And that's not our goal.

[01:15:19] Could people buy on your website?

[01:15:20] Do you do any kind of shipping?

[01:15:22] No, not today.

[01:15:23] All right, so they come here to get it.

[01:15:27] Gotcha.

[01:15:28] And meet with the grower.

[01:15:30] There you go.

[01:15:31] So do you have any plans for future growth?

[01:15:32] You talked a little bit about that allocation list

[01:15:35] and things like that.

[01:15:36] Do you plan to plant more varietals or grow in any case,

[01:15:39] in any way, add on things,

[01:15:41] any kind of plans for future growth?

[01:15:43] We're gonna be doing some replants because of the, you know, the freeze.

[01:15:48] We ended up pulling up the V. Onyay and Barbera.

[01:15:52] We're going to probably replant those.

[01:15:54] Haven't decided exactly with what yet.

[01:15:58] I'm maybe thinking about Sanju Vasey, but I want to do a little bit more research on

[01:16:04] it. Um, and as far as growth here at the tasting room, I mean, the goal all along

[01:16:12] has been to be small and boutique and produce really, that's why we haven't

[01:16:18] gotten into, you know, people asking you got food and I, I want to focus on the

[01:16:23] wine and focus on the vineyard and I don't want to

[01:16:27] lose that focus.

[01:16:28] So I think from that perspective, you know, we'll continue to be a small boutique winery

[01:16:34] where you know you can come in and you can meet the owners.

[01:16:38] That's probably how it's going to continue for a while.

[01:16:40] All right.

[01:16:41] Well, my last question in.

[01:16:42] So what, in your opinion opinion sets apart Robert Clay Vineyard

[01:16:45] says, this is a place I really have to come check out.

[01:16:48] I think people that are looking for wines that they're not going to be told that they

[01:16:53] need to age them another four years after they buy a bottle of wine, I've done all that

[01:16:59] work for you.

[01:17:01] The wines are aged if you look at most of what we've produced all but I think

[01:17:08] one or two would be considered a grand reserve. So five years of aging, minimum of two years

[01:17:14] in barrel before we've released those wines. So I think if you're looking for the style

[01:17:21] of wines that you can come in, you can buy it and then take it home and enjoy it with a nice steak.

[01:17:28] That's what you're gonna find here.

[01:17:29] I think the Hickory Sands is gonna be a big deal out here.

[01:17:33] The Hickory Sands AVA is something that hopefully will be in place next starting next year.

[01:17:39] We'll have that and the Lano Uplift AVA are both going to be going out for a public comment next

[01:17:46] year.

[01:17:47] The Hickory Sands AVA is going to be a very small AVA that just encompasses all of the

[01:17:53] Hickory sand right above 1500 feet in elevation.

[01:17:59] The Hickory sand is very unique in the sense that it's the sand that was on the bottom of the ocean,

[01:18:06] the sea floor, and when the granite uplift occurred, all that sand got pushed to the

[01:18:14] sides.

[01:18:15] Mason County, this area is where a big chunk of that sand is, and it recharges the hickory

[01:18:23] aquifer very quick. So if you're right above what's called,

[01:18:26] it's called the Hickory Sandstone Members area.

[01:18:31] And it's a geological formation of Hickory Sand

[01:18:34] that's directly above the Hickory Sand Aquifer.

[01:18:39] And it's about 240 feet down,

[01:18:43] you can get access to 300 plus gallons a minute of water and

[01:18:48] it has some of the lowest toll dissolved solids in the whole state.

[01:18:55] That has to do with the fact that there's not a lot of limestone.

[01:18:58] When it rains, the rain goes right through all the sandstone and recharges the hickory.

[01:19:09] And I think having some of these AVAs out here is gonna make a huge difference.

[01:19:11] Yeah.

[01:19:13] It's really gonna start,

[01:19:14] I think that's what's needed is more AVAs,

[01:19:17] the Texas hill country is huge.

[01:19:23] You look at the soil, the web soil surveys, just across the Texas

[01:19:27] Hill Country, there's so many different soils.

[01:19:31] And the temperature difference between even here and say, Lano, and you look at not only

[01:19:38] temperature, but diurnal temperature swings at night, there's a big difference.

[01:19:42] There's also a lot more rain as you start heading that direction towards Lano. We get less rain here, that's

[01:19:49] important from a viticulture perspective because we deal with

[01:19:52] less pressure when it comes to things like disease, hailstorms.

[01:19:57] Hailstorms have hit us this year but if you look at they tend to sweep right

[01:20:02] below us every year.

[01:20:05] And I think that's another aspect that's important when you look at growing is like, are you

[01:20:11] in an area that gets a lot of rain?

[01:20:12] Do you get a ton of hail compared to other areas?

[01:20:16] Those are all healthy, you know, as far as a grower in that area.

[01:20:20] And I think that's one of the benefits we have here is we're kind of in this

[01:20:29] Area where we don't get hit by you know, high winds

[01:20:36] Temperatures that we can't deal with we intend to deal with cool temperatures and no wind which is something you can actually do something about

[01:20:42] and the access to water is huge when it comes to a

[01:20:45] Year like this year,

[01:20:50] when you have no, absolutely no rain at all. You don't have to water a whole lot,

[01:20:52] but you can at least, your vines aren't gonna die on you.

[01:20:55] Yeah.

[01:20:56] And I saw multiple vineyards,

[01:21:00] we're having to ship water in the last two years

[01:21:03] because they were running out of water.

[01:21:05] And you don't have that problem up here. So there's numerous benefits to the hickory

[01:21:13] sands from that perspective and from a grower perspective.

[01:21:18] All right. And that winds up the interview with Dan and with Blake.

[01:21:27] We could have talked for probably another couple of hours, but literally they had customers

[01:21:31] knocking on the door, ready to come in and taste those amazing wines there.

[01:21:35] So we had to call it a wrap, but I hope you heard a few things there.

[01:21:38] Like one of the things I really enjoyed hearing Dan say was that they focus on the wines.

[01:21:45] Their focus is on making those things speak as best as they can.

[01:21:49] That long extended barrel aging that they do, like Dan said, something magic happens

[01:21:54] at that five to six year mark in the barrel and the wine just tastes incredible.

[01:21:59] All of their wines have that extended barrel aging.

[01:22:01] Just like a lot of wine connoisseurs who want to go out and buy a bottle of wine

[01:22:06] and your first thought is, well, should I age this?

[01:22:08] Is it ready to drink?

[01:22:09] I've been to wineries and gotten wine bottles,

[01:22:11] like Dan said, where the winery said,

[01:22:13] you might want to age that a couple of years

[01:22:15] before you open it, it's not quite ready.

[01:22:17] Not so with Dan's wines.

[01:22:18] He's done all of that work ahead of you

[01:22:20] so that every wine bottle that you purchase

[01:22:23] from Robert Clay Vineyards is ready to pop and drink. It's already had that extended aging, round tannins,

[01:22:30] smooth velvety and silky textures in your mouth and the fruit just comes out and explodes

[01:22:34] on your palate. So he's done all that long waiting period for you so that when you get

[01:22:39] the bottle, it's ready to go.

[01:22:40] Alright, so I know you're anxious to get out to Mason now and check out Robert Clay

[01:22:45] Vineyards and I don't blame you, but before you go, make sure you go check out their website

[01:22:49] first.

[01:22:50] Always a good idea to do a little scouting, get a little more information before you head

[01:22:53] out that way.

[01:22:54] It's going to be RobertClayVineyards.com and that's going to get you to their website.

[01:23:00] There you're going to find things about their story, some of their history, some of the

[01:23:03] things we talked about in the interview, but you'll also see things about their story, history, and the philosophy of being a vineyard type

[01:23:10] winemaker. If you want to go out and do a tasting, I highly recommend making that reservation so

[01:23:21] that you can sit down with Dan, Blake, Jeannie and actually hear from the people that are actually doing the work there in the vineyard.

[01:23:28] It's a great experience and so you can make that reservation there on the website.

[01:23:32] And of course you'll also find information about the vineyard itself.

[01:23:35] You'll find things about the new proposed Hickory Sands AVA.

[01:23:38] So if you're curious about that, make sure you go to their website at RobertClayVinyards.com

[01:23:43] and check out the information on that Hickory Sands AVA that's coming.

[01:23:46] And lastly, don't forget, they actually have signups available for that wine allocation list that he talked about in the interview.

[01:23:53] Remember, it's limited. They're going to cap it off.

[01:23:56] And so you want to get in and get signed up as soon as you can.

[01:23:59] And you can do that right on their website.

[01:24:01] He showed me while I was there the really cool big plastic heavy duty

[01:24:05] cases they're going to ship the wine into all the people on that allocation list and these things

[01:24:09] are industrial and so you're not going to have to worry about damage or anything with your wines if

[01:24:14] you sign up on their list and get those allocations and they're going to be really extra special wines.

[01:24:19] So make sure you sign up for that allocation list right there on their website. And as always,

[01:24:24] when you go to visit them,

[01:24:25] make sure you tell them you heard about them

[01:24:27] on this podcast, Texas Undervine.

[01:24:30] All right, now onto my tasting.

[01:24:32] While I was there after the interview,

[01:24:33] I got to sit down and taste some of these amazing wines.

[01:24:36] Now, one of the ones that I was most surprised with,

[01:24:39] and it really impressed me on my palate,

[01:24:42] was the Ruby Cabernet.

[01:24:44] So this is their Grand the Ruby Cabernet.

[01:24:45] This is their Grand Reserve Ruby Cabernet.

[01:24:48] It was from 2017.

[01:24:50] One of the things I love about Robert Clay is all the information he puts on the bottle

[01:24:55] labels.

[01:24:56] I know on the video it's kind of hard to see here, but there's so much data and information

[01:25:01] on the back of these labels that decode how he names the wines, which he talked about in the interview a little bit. It's got a code.

[01:25:07] This one is B1700RCVRUB and all that data is back here on the back. B for

[01:25:14] barrel age, it shows 52 months in neutral oak. It's 17 for 2017 vintage. It has

[01:25:20] 00 for all barrels, 69 cases. It's RCV, meaning that it was Robert Clay Vineyard,

[01:25:26] a state grown, all estate,

[01:25:28] and then RUB for Ruby Cabernet.

[01:25:30] It even shows you the root stock that they use,

[01:25:32] the code SO4.

[01:25:33] So really cool, lots of great information,

[01:25:35] a picture of the vineyard actually on the back label as well.

[01:25:39] But this wine was exceptional.

[01:25:41] Like it says, aged for over four years

[01:25:44] before you even pour it into your glass. And it was smooth, it was exceptional. Like it says, aged for over four years before you even pour it into your glass.

[01:25:46] And it was smooth, it was flavorful. I think it's the first time I may have had a ruby cabernet

[01:25:53] as just a single varietal. You know, typically I've had ruby cabernet blended into other wines,

[01:25:58] but I was really impressed by the flavor of this wine, how silky and smooth it was on my palette.

[01:26:04] So I had to buy a bottle and

[01:26:06] this became my wine library bottle for this episode. So when you go, make sure you try that

[01:26:11] Ruby Cabernet. It's definitely worth it. All right, I'm going to wine things up here and get

[01:26:17] ready to move on to another fun wine destination. However, before I go, would you consider becoming

[01:26:23] a sponsor of the show?

[01:26:25] Maybe one of our Patreon subscribers?

[01:26:27] There are a lot of really great things for Patreon subscribers that it only costs you

[01:26:32] a few dollars a month and you get access to behind the scenes stuff like photos that I

[01:26:37] take at the winery while I'm there.

[01:26:39] I also do video walkthroughs, all kinds of extra things.

[01:26:43] And if you're at a certain subscriber level,

[01:26:45] you even get a sneak peek into the upcoming episodes

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[01:26:49] So it only takes a few dollars.

[01:26:50] I really appreciate all of my subscribers.

[01:26:53] It really does help me.

[01:26:54] This podcast is free, helps pay my expenses,

[01:26:57] and it can also lead to me getting to even more

[01:27:00] travel destinations all over the state

[01:27:02] as I really wanna branch out and head throughout

[01:27:04] more of the state to bring even more great wine interviews

[01:27:07] to you guys from places that maybe even in your own backyard.

[01:27:10] So if you're interested, just go to my website,

[01:27:12] texasundervine.com and at the very top of the page,

[01:27:16] you'll see something that says become a patron

[01:27:18] and you can click there.

[01:27:19] It'll take you to the Patreon page,

[01:27:21] which outlines all the different levels,

[01:27:23] the costs and all that stuff.

[01:27:24] And then you could subscribe there.

[01:27:26] So please consider that if you would.

[01:27:28] I wanna give a huge shout out to my latest

[01:27:30] Patreon subscriber right now, which is, dun-dun-dun,

[01:27:34] Dan and Jeannie McLaughlin of Robert Clay Vineyards

[01:27:36] that you just heard about on this episode.

[01:27:38] So thank you for being a loyal listener to the episode

[01:27:41] and now even a supporter of the episode.

[01:27:44] It truly means the world to me.

[01:27:46] I'm so excited to bring your vineyard

[01:27:48] and your winery to the world here,

[01:27:50] so thank you for helping me do that.

[01:27:52] And with that, my time is up.

[01:27:55] So don't forget, subscribe to the podcast

[01:27:57] to get every episode when they're released,

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[01:28:08] texasundervine.com.

[01:28:10] And until next time, happy trails and bottoms up, y'all.

[01:28:13] ["Takes a Break"]

[01:28:19] Thanks for listening to Texas Under Vine.

[01:28:21] We strive to provide you with the best information

[01:28:23] about wine businesses all over Texas. Be sure to check out our website at texasundervine. We strive to provide you with the best information about wine businesses

[01:28:25] all over Texas. Be sure to check out our website at texasundervine.com and follow us on our socials

[01:28:31] at Texas Undervine to stay up on all the upcoming episodes. Please email us with any suggestions or

[01:28:36] feedback. Also, contact us if you're interested in donating, sponsoring, or advertising on the

[01:28:42] podcast just to help us cover our expenses and bring even more great info to you in future episodes. Above all, travel safely and most

[01:28:50] especially drink responsibly.

[01:29:01] Vine Trippers, have I got a deal for you. So if you haven't checked out the Texas Wine Club yet,

[01:29:08] you have to go check it out.

[01:29:09] So you can get wine clubs at all of these different

[01:29:12] great wineries that I've talked about in the episodes.

[01:29:15] But if you can't get a chance to get to those places

[01:29:18] and you want to sample some of those various wines,

[01:29:20] this is the perfect fit for this podcast.

[01:29:22] So I partnered with Texas Wine Club. If you go to their website, they scour the whole state.

[01:29:28] They choose great wines from all over the Texas wineries

[01:29:31] and they put them together into packs

[01:29:33] that they ship out every quarter.

[01:29:34] You could pick out a package of three, six,

[01:29:37] or nine bottles and every quarter you can get a taste

[01:29:40] of different wineries throughout Texas

[01:29:41] without having to travel to them.

[01:29:43] So if you've wanted to taste some of the great wine I've talked about on this podcast, here's throughout Texas without having to travel to them. So if you've wanted to taste some of the great wine

[01:29:45] I've talked about on this podcast,

[01:29:47] here's your chance without having to travel.

[01:29:49] So what you're gonna wanna do is go to www.txwine.com

[01:29:55] and pick your package that you want to try.

[01:29:58] And when you put in my code, Texas under vine,

[01:30:00] that's all one word, T-E-X-A-S-U-N-D-E-R-V-I-N-E.

[01:30:05] As your coupon code, you'll get $20 off your purchase.

[01:30:08] So head on over there, you can also find the link

[01:30:11] in the show notes here for this podcast

[01:30:13] and go check out Texas Wine.

[01:30:15] They're a perfect fit with this podcast.

[01:30:17] So go drink some great wine.