The Austin Winery (Hill Country)

Welcome to Texas Undervine, an exploratory podcast to scout out the best Texas wine country has to offer. I'm your wine guide, scott, and I'm here to lead you on an auditory expedition to the vineyards and wineries across the great Lone Star State. Each episode will cover a different vineyard, winery or wine-related business operating in Texas. You'll hear interviews, descriptions and details about each location that will excite you to visit and experience them for yourself. Ready to plan a wine tour, use these episodes to choose the most interesting spots for you and your friends to check out. Most of all, enjoy hearing about the rapidly growing wine industry in the state and what makes our wines and wineries the best. Howdy, fellow vine tripper. Welcome to episode 40 for Texas Undervine, and for this episode, I'm actually staying close to home here in Austin and I'm going to visit the Austin Winery in South Austin. Now. This winery is owned by Ross McLaughlin, cooper Anderson and Matthew Smith. They actually opened their doors all the way back in 2013 in Austin. At that time, the location was actually in a different place than they are now, but they are thriving in an area called the Yard. It's a kind of warehouse shopping district area, I guess you could call it in South Austin and got a great facility there. It's really fun to visit. Whenever they set up their winery scenario, they wanted it to feel more like a really casual brew pub style experience, more so than a fancy white tablecloth style experience, because they just felt like that would really kind of push people away from wine and they're really focused on trying to get more especially urban people into tasty wine and it's a more non-threatening way to check out great wine in Austin. And, like I said a few minutes ago, it's located in an area called the yard. It's a really cool little area there because they're surrounded by other little businesses that you can go to. There's a sake production facility, a coffee shop, distillery, all kinds of really cool, fun little places. Matter of fact, you could probably make a whole day just moving around from place to place, but always start with the Austin Winery when you go.

Now, when it comes to their wines, they are 100% Texas. They do source a little bit of fruit from the high plains, but they really try to get most of their fruit from the Texas Hill Country and the Central Texas area. So that's where their main focus is. You know, based on weather, based on different things every year with great production. Sometimes they may have to go a little bit out of that region, but they really want the majority of their fruit to be very local here in Central Texas and in that Hill Country, ava, and they're doing some really kind of experimental and fun things with their wines.

When you go in they actually have some clay amphoras where they're making their white wines and they're doing them old world style with the skin contact to make them orange wines. At least this year that's how they produce their white wines, so you get to try some new things. It gives a different take on white wines. If you've never tried an orange wine gives it a little bit because the skins are there. You get a little bit of that tannin from the skins and so it gives it almost like a tea characteristic. Some people have compared orange wines even to tasting like bourbon or whiskey or things like that. So it gives a different flavor to their white wines. It's very popular right now and so they decided this year that all of their white wines would be done in that orange style. So if you've never tried that, what a great opportunity to go check it out here at the Austin Winery.

They also host some pretty cool events there at their location. They recently just had a very collaboratory experience that they host called Bigger in Texas, where they invite wineries from all over the state to come in and set up shop there in their location so that people can come in for this event and taste wine from different places all over the state. Where you might have to drive I think Ross said is something like 1500 miles round trip if you were going to try to visit all these places in Texas because we're such a huge state but you can get samples of them all at that one event and that's called the Bigger in Texas event. So that's a fun one to look out for. They also recently celebrated their 10th birthday anniversary and had a big party for that. So they love to put on events. You can rent out the place all kinds of really fun stuff they do at the Austin Winery.

Now when you go to visit and you want to do a tasting in the interview you'll hear Ross has says that their tastings they try to make them confusingly easy. I love that phrasing because they want it to be as relaxed and as casual as possible so it's not intimidating to the average person coming in who maybe doesn't know very much about wine or wants to explore some new things, like maybe those orange wines that I talked about a moment ago, and so it's a very simple and easy tasting process. Ross will cover a little bit more of that in the interview and, by the way, while I'm here, I did get to sit down with Ross for a little while and talk to him. So we're going to go to that interview so you can hear some of his stories about how the winery was started, some of his background and how that philosophy really led into what they're doing today in this kind of casual brewpub style environment, and I look forward for you to hearing his story. So, without further ado, let's go hear from Ross.

Without further ado, let's go hear from Ross, all right? Well, I'm here with Ross McLaughlin at Austin Winery, and he is the CEO and founder of this winery, so we're going to learn a little bit about this place and I'm going to ask Ross a couple of questions here. So, ross, first tell me, how did you get into the wine industry?

Pretty fortunately, I wasn't born into the wine industry. Neither actually nobody in our business here at the Elson Warner was sort of legacy winemaker or anything like that. Truthfully, I wanted to work for Anthony Bourdain and unfortunately he didn't get my memos in time. Rest in power. I studied at University of Texas. I was a European Studies major, which is a very broad language, politics, economics, sort of thing, and then I also had degrees in radio, television, film and nutrition, thinking along those lines of getting into entertainment in that regard, again like winemaking, though I didn't have any experience or connection there and I met one of my business partners, cooper Anderson, playing soccer in my last semester at University of Texas.

I had just come back from studying abroad in Barcelona where I stodged a little for a cover production there. But I think when you're 21 and studying abroad you're going to love everything you're going to do. You know and drinking and speaking, you know some Spanish and Catalan. But as a result I come back and I have one more semester and Cooper had just moved down from Virginia. He was working in some hill country wineries, didn't have any friends and, you know, needed some buddies. So I got him a soccer team and some friends. He got me a job out there and before you knew it we were on the first steps of our career together. So that was the start there.

All right, and then how did that lead to the founding of the Austin Winery?

So after I ultimately graduated, I went to work for a wine broker called the Mark Wine Group, and that was really a intermediary that you know, we're all familiar with the three-tiered system, and what he did was he actually just represented family-owned wineries, but two national accounts, and so I was a liaison of bringing national buyers out to these smaller wineries in California and Oregon and we represented, say, 12 wineries in that region. And at a very young age I got to kind of be a fly on the wall and I got this exposure point to all these different styles of running a winery, styles of making wine. And also, ultimately, I realized you know, previously I didn't realize that most people weren't making wine with all estate grown fruit, and then many people didn't even own vineyards, and so the sort of light clicked on that I was like, oh my God, this isn't a. You know, you need $5 million to start a winery, right? That's what you always assume, right?

I'm like okay really, I think we could get some winemaking equipment, secure some sourcing.

This is, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars, is you know, much more in reach.

So Cooper and I started, um, negociant, uh, sort of blending other people's finished wines just to sort of see where we were at in our competency.

Um, we saw a big gap in the market in Austin, if you, if you think 10 years back from now, how many Texas wines you saw present in off-premise grocers, liquor stores or on-premise and wineless by the glass in particular, it was really hard to find. But conversely, we had a really high food IQ here in Austin, and so I felt that people would engage with wine if it was more in like the brew pub model, right, I think that there's this communal casualness, energy and culture that Austin has, and I felt like if we show the blue collar side of production, the green thumb side of it, and sort of remove the white tablecloth, and people will engage with it and meet with it without this sort of structure of intimidation or foreignness. Uh, or that wine was going to make them feel dumb, uh, about themselves, because nobody wants to do that in their free time. So that was sort of the, the impetus and how we you know the inception of the idea.

Okay, yeah, and then when did you get started? We?

opened our doors in May of 2023. I'm sorry, may of 2013. So we're just coming at our 10-year mark right now, and it took us a long time, though, to really kind of climb the ladder on the contract list of being important, relevant, reliable. I mean, if I can't blame most farmers if, 24 year old me and Cooper and Matt came up to them and saying that we wanted to source fruit and we had an urban winery in Austin, texas, I probably wouldn't have them at the bottom of the list too. But in time in time, we, we grew.

We've, you know, been very active in working in the vineyards as well. We're super tied to a vineyard management company here in the Hill country called Precision Viticulture and, you know, shortly and slowly, we started to produce wines of good quality, uh, and from good provenance. And, you know, a big thing for us is transparency and education. So all of our bottles will have a vineyard designate, the, the varietal blend, if any, if we added any SO2 and the case production numbers, and I think, in terms of increasing the IQ and the exposure of of local drinkers, it's really important to know the AVAs and then the vineyards and the varietals. So, um, I think that's helped us or endeared us to to some so yeah, Well, and you mentioned Matt.

how does he figure it in this?

journey. Matt, uh, handles all. He's our chief of operations, so he was the third member of the triumvirate that before we opened we were like, okay, we really need, um, somebody at the switch point so he handles all accounting administration. We're in an extremely rigid sort of paperwork business with a lot of government oversight, so all that reporting and we also we do export to Canada, hong Kong, distribute in multiple states, so there's a whole operation that from a sales and winemaking perspective, you really need somebody in the middle there keeping it all together. So he handles all that for us.

And how did your background in working with the three-tiered system and working with a merchant, or was a broker the broker. How did that help you with?

now your distribution.

You do a lot of distribution of your wine direct to consumer or through the tasting room, which had been the case.

And then when COVID restrictions hit, you know there's no tasting room traffic, right. So that model really had to flip. So we were really at a point where we were at about 75% direct to consumer, 25% wholesale, which was about exposure, about people seeing and learning about our wines. It was more of a marketing cost, almost right. Then that really flipped and during the COVID period we were at almost 75, 25 the other way right. So now we're in this really healthy split where we're increasing in our production of wine. We have healthy traffic coming in the winery, but it also is helping being driven by exposure of people having our wines. If we're in the central market, you know, if we're in Central Market in Dallas, if we're in Los Angeles in a hip spot, or New York, people end up coming to Austin for all kinds of reasons, usually not just for us, but hopefully we can take, you know, an hour of their time and convince your significant other to taste some wine with you to start the day, and that seemed to work pretty well.

And how did you find this place so?

initially we were in a really crummy warehouse slip and I recommend anybody if you're starting your business and you don't have endless money, you should start with really low operational costs. So we were actually. The street was called Tuscany Way, but it's actually the street that you go to if they like lose your mail, like where the UPS fleet is right. So the funniest thing is people who are, you know, little office, warehouse, commercial strip people would come out and they'd call us and they'd be like we must be lost. I don't think we're here. We're like no, no, no, you're here. You're here, you know, come on in. And that was where we started. We didn't actually have running water in the cellar so we had an IBC tote that we would fill, that we'd run through a hot water heater to sanitize that we're using for cleaning. But when you start with poor equipment, poor infrastructure and you can make good product therein, then you've earned the right kind of to go forward.

So where we are today is a region called the Yard. We're just South Congress and St Elmo, so about seven minutes from downtown, which is really terrific. But we're also in this wonderful community of next door. We share a wall with a coffee roaster who has beer taps, there's a sake production, there's a distillery and there's two other breweries. So there's quite a kind of you know. Not everybody runs the whole block but you know there's a lot of overlap and cross-reference and customers visiting, you know, like-minded businesses. So it's great because these are all industrial producing businesses with a customer facing aspect still in the, you know, center hub of Austin.

You can almost do your little pub crawl just right along the way.

That's why we like to be the first to open.

Yeah, there you go. Well, this may be kind of a silly question, but what led you to the name? What? What led you to think we're going to call it the Austin winery?

Well, it's as I always actually joke about this often, that it's kind of it's as I always actually joke about this often, that it's kind of it's pretty embarrassing how long it took us to come up with that name. Uh, like, we were trying to, you know, think of all these. You know clever, subtle, nuanced names, and you know what we realized is look, we're first to market. Um, we're the only people and still to this day are the only people making wine within the city limits. Um, you know, there's a lot of of structure and oversight that goes into making one in the first place federally, then state level is usually just kind of a copy of that. But within the city, when we went to do our permits, they're like, well, we don't have any wineries, like we're not really sure where you guys file they. You know it was completely we don't know how to handle it Literally like the fire, the fire review guy.

He's like all right, now, when you're brewing this stuff, I'm like no, no, no, no, no brewing, we're not cooking anything up here, you know. Uh, very low fire risk, um, and so you know it took us a while to come to that, but I thought that it was one um sounds bigger than we are right. There's also the ease of all you have to know is what are you drinking and where are we right? And I think that part of us trying to be very transparent, clear and transparent, you know, understated in a way too that I thought that this sort of helped carry that mission and it was very, um, yeah, very even keeled, yeah.

Okay, cool. So being an urban winery, uh, you don't have a vineyard out front or anything like that, or out back, I presume. Um, where do you source most of your fruit?

Um, well, we, right now we're at about a 50% split between the Hill Country and the High Plains. Okay, as you know, most of the Hill Country wineries were sourcing. Usually up to about 75% of their fruit was coming from the High Plains. Thankfully, we've had good new plantings and regenerative and restorative work in the vineyards, a lot of which has been done by people like Precision Viticulture and, I think, also plantings that occurred, maybe you know, five to 10 years ago. Those wines are finally coming to producing time and so that's been a really great thing for us because we also want to be active in the vineyard.

Cooper and Adrian were just out pruning in Wimberley last week and you know the, the more intimacy we have with the vines and the better connection we have with the grower is going to help us, project um, have better foresight and better awareness of what's going to be. You know the the conditions of the grapes as we harvest them Right, and we all know that winemaking does start in the vineyard. So you know, if you're just setting bricks marks for where you want your grapes to be harvested, there's a lot that can be lost within that before they're you know on your crush In that equation, right yeah, so we really prefer doing hill country work.

Also, it's our nearest AVA but the High Plains is, you know, wonderful for reduction in disease pressure. That higher altitude, I mean. It is a totally different AVA and last year was one of those not all too rare but rare occasions where there was really wonderful production in both regions. I always think it's good to have a diverse portfolio of where you're sourcing from, because acts of God and nature, you know, are all too common. But yeah, those are really the two regions that we're most active with.

I gotcha. So 100% Texas, 100% Texas fruit. And do you have like a crush pad here, or do they crush them there and then you bring here?

Typically everything arrives here on stem, whole cluster, whole cluster. So we run it through our own crusher to stemmer. We have a pretty uh, but mighty press right there. Um, but yeah, typically everything sometimes in the high plans we'll have, if it's a large vineyard, we'll take it and consolidate it and just crush into stem, but then having must here, but everything otherwise is still grape to glass right here okay, well, and that kind of leads to the follow part of the question.

So you do all the production here in this location where the tasting room is?

Yeah, no, satellite location or anybody doing custom crush for us like that. I mean, it's one of the things we'd really take a ton of pride in. Is that we we every aspect of our winemaking we're we're solidly in control of.

So you get to sit here and taste your wines right around where the magic is done all around you, that's right, and it's all native yeast fermentation.

So this facility has its own ambient yeast, now that we've been operating in here for almost seven years, and I think that often the similarity is the way Jester King has sort of a signature. You know, they're sour, right. Our yeast that is cultivated in here tends to have something that I think is very unique to us, without overpowering just the character of the terroir.

Yeah, yeah. Well, what are the type of wines that you like to produce here?

We do a really large range, to be honest, but one of the things that I thought was really fun this year is all of our white wines, quote, unquote. We did a certain amount of skin contact to all of them, so they're all orange wine, ok. So there is this sort of fetishization or this sort of obsession with, in vogue, the hot thing right now.

Yeah, orange wine, and what we wanted to do is show the breadth of that category. So we have a couple of wines that are skin contact in that and I say that with maybe less than four days of skin contact, so just a little kiss of texture to them. A couple of wines that are more in that caricature of orange wine right, you can tell just from looking at it very high acid but still pithy and good skin contact. And then we have a couple of wines that we do in these Amphora over here which are more in that amber wine. Like you know, georgia or Albania, and those tend to be a really old world, really old world right.

A little slightly more oxidized potentially, but usually have like this wonderful balance of acid and like a tea note in the tannin, and we've had really good success, just sort of, you know, expanding people's horizons with that. And, um, you know, I'm always, I think, by and large like with Texas wine. In general, I'm fine with people having a being skeptical, right, healthy skepticism. Um, just, you know, taste with us and let us, let us show you, you know, a bit of, uh, a bit of what's out there. And is it mostly dry or do you do any sweet? We do. We haven't done any sweet wine because of native yeast fermentation. Everything needs to go all the way dry. With the exception of that, we do make a vermouth which has a little bit of residual sugar. It's all locally forged botanicals too. So that's really lovely over ice cream or just on its own with a little soda water too.

Cool. So and I know this is a hard question for many winemakers but what are your favorite wines to make? What do you just really like? I'm really like oh, we got a batch of this. I love making that.

We had a lot of success. We really loved a really soft maceration of a Cerasuolo style which is like a Sicilian style of a chillable red being in Texas your red wine, you know big, robust red wine. Drinking season is typically quite limited and for me I want something that you know is a red wine that I can pair with seafood, with light grilled meats, with pasta, but that I can drink without breaking a sweat. So slightly lower alcohol, nice skin contact, good like lip, smacky stem tannins, whole cluster like this Mvedra is really terrific for that, with a long finish. You know I hate when you have a wine. It's like just cold and wet and it's gone. You know Drinking's fun but you know I'm good at it, so it's nice to have something that I can, you know, expand and stretch over time.

Yeah, exactly. Well, in kind of from the other half of the coin. So what are some of your most popular wines with customers? What do you find that people say, oh, you got to go, you got to taste this when you go to Austin Winery? Well, I, always.

I kind of think about it like you're building out an album. Right, if you're a musician which I am certainly not, but you know you kind of want something that's really approachable. First thing is you want something that's really approachable, something you know, a ballad with something with a good chorus. So for us, we usually go for a smooth, medium bodied red wine like this Workhorse. It's a hundred percent Merlot from Robert Clay Vineyard in Mason, which is one of the best vineyards in the state.

Just interviewed him a couple episodes ago. Oh yeah, dan, and we have the same last name too.

Yeah, that that one, I think is just something you could drink all day all year, and we we almost call that like mother-in-law wine, right, like you could give that to anybody and they're going to like it. Yeah, I think on the flip side of that it's you always need a nice sparkling wine. So we do a Petnat. It's a rosé of a Tempranillo here has a really nice sort of like strawberries and cream, a little bit of salinity to it, then having a nice skin contact wine and then having something that is really like dad wine, right. So like this Toriga Nacional, really really rich, deep, dark.

It was 2021 vintage, so it's got some maturity to it, and I think, having been at this now for 10 years, one of the nicest things is being able to age some wine now, because we used to have people oh you know, all your wines are good, but they all need a little age. You're like, well, I can't afford to age them right now. So now we're finally at that point where we are able to lay down a quarter to a third of our production for proper maturity, and that's a wonderful thing too. So it's something to be celebrated.

All right. Well, so here in the Tasty Room, the winery itself. So do you do any kind of events or parties or things like that. What type of stuff do you do here?

Yeah, we try and have uh something fun and exciting for people to do uh, every week, every month. Uh, I was just telling Off Air that one of the events that we do that we really love is called Bigger in Texas, where we invite all these other wineries who you know are were scattered all across the state. We have great, big, wonderful state but it's really hard if you were to like go tick off the boxes and hit all these wineries you want to hit your. Your vacation time is pretty filled up. You got to have a motor home to do that.

Yeah, and a chauffeur probably.

So that was an event that we did. We do this once or twice a year, depending on availability, where we bring in all these other wineries. Once or twice a year, depending on availability, where we bring in all these other wineries, host them here in sort of a fair style where it's a 65 bucks and you get to taste up to 60 wines. Essentially there's no competition or anything like that, just pure enjoyment, and that's a great one. We'll be having our 10th birthday on May 4th, so we'll have, you know, food, music, all that fun stuff, lots of kind of library wines, but we're always trying to make sure that there's an extra reason for you to be here. We do offer cheese and charcuterie boards, but a lot of times on the weekends we'll have a pop-up of you know some different type of cuisine of a visiting chef. That that's always fun too.

Yeah, yeah. Well, let's talk about what it looks like if a customer said I'm interested, I want to go check this place out. What does it look like for a first-time visitor for a tasting? So if someone comes in to do a tasting, what are the fees involved? Is there a set flight of wines? Do they pick their wine? Do they need reservations? What does that look like?

So we keep it really casual, almost confusingly easy. So there's no reservations unless there's a private event or if you've got a large group, call and give us a heads up. But we ran a reservation system during COVID and things like that and we like to keep those barriers to entry very small, right. So there's no reservations. Our capacity in here is about 180. So we've got lots of room and we're not doing the souffles or anything like that, so we can turn tables pretty quickly.

Uh, tastings are a la carte, so there's no, like you know, entry fee or something like that. You have all the wines are available by the glass and by the bottle. But a tasting we do three wines for $20. It's a half a glass pour, so by the end of it, like you had a glass and a half a wine, we rotate that what's available on the tasting menu every two weeks. So we have lots of new wines coming out all the time, with us making about 16 wines a year. You know that's where we're changing more than more than once a month. So that's a good thing. And we have a reserve flight as well of some of our, you know, like the Tariga and the Merlot are both on there and oftentimes we'll pull out a library wine too, of something cool A little special.

Yeah, but yeah, we keep it really really straightforward and open for groups. There's, you know, also, we're dog friendly, which is really terrific you can bring your. We're family friendly too, so you know, well-behaved children and dogs and adults. So it's not just we're not, you know, we don't want you to have to go get a babysitter to come try some wine. I love that.

What? What are your operating hours?

We're open Tuesday to Friday or Tuesday, thursday, from two to 9 PM. Friday, saturday, sunday noon to 9 PM.

Okay, perfect, and then you talked and then you mentioned it a second ago. I want to delve in just a little bit more Food type of options. You talked about having charcuterie options.

Yeah, we have cheese and charcuterie boards that we do here, sourcing everything from Antonelli. So it's domestic and international Great stuff. I've been wise to keep off it.

I'm getting married. I've been.

I've been wise to keep off. Him get married in a couple of weeks, so congratulations, thank you. And then we have a terrific food shop, Jerusalem street food, called Reem's Falafel. So great vegetarian options, wonderful falafel, good spicy shawarma, all that, but all fresh and clean and yeah it's, it's a good setup Nice.

Do you have any maximum group sizes?

Like if a bus rolled up into the parking lot and things like that. No, no, no, we are non-discriminating like that. We're good. If you want to have a private event here, you can do, seated up to like 120 for like a seated, proper dinner, and then if you want to have like a big party, we can do 200 people in here.

We've had like Uber's holiday party here, mix and mingle kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, big networking stuff. So, yeah, it's really terrific. So what are your? What would you say as an urban winery? I don't know if it's different, but what would you say? Are your busy and kind of slow seasons? What's the best time to come visit? Everything together? Uh, the week is always wonderful, or Sundays?

Saturdays can be very busy. You know we've not done this as much lately, but we used to have so many bachelorettes, uh, and bachelor parties, which is totally fine. But you know, there's this that that comes with its own, uh, bag of accessories, uh, but uh, yeah, I think I don't discourage anyone from coming at any time, even if you're coming on a Saturday. It'd be very lively and fun. But I promise you we'll have, we'll have a glass in your or one in your glass in, uh, you know, just a few minutes. So I always say that like if, if people are stressed out our staff. I'm like guys remember, you're just a flick of the wrist from solving the problem. So, um, yeah, come anytime. I would say summer months are quieter because it's just so hot, but this is a really terrific time to visit. I think wine tastes great in this weather and it's good for, you know stocking up before a nice air conditioned place right in the middle of the city.

So people are having to drive out in 110 degrees out into the country somewhere. They can just come right here, right around the corner, if they live in this area quickly, but it's a lot of also like I live down here. I'm a first time home buyer.

It's a lot of young families, but there's also a lot of young professionals with all these apartment complexes popping up, and so it's really nice to see people like in a walkable community um in Texas, which you know is is hard to do. We're all spread out. So, um, yeah, we, we get. We get really nice, healthy traffic, a blend of tourists, locals and wine enthusiasts.

So yeah, well, do you offer any kind of a wine club that people?

can sign up for for distribution.

How's that work?

We have a wine club. It's really terrific. We have two levels, reds only or whites only, and you're either getting wine quarterly or semi-annually. So it's three bottles in each shipment. So you're only signed up for as little as uh, uh, half a case of wine. So if you can't drink six bottles of wine a year, if you're probably not my friend anyway uh who are those people?

Yeah Right, they're like oh wow, we still got that.

I'm like are you hoarding? Uh, but one of the great things is you get a free glass of wine every time you visit um, which is really terrific, because then you know, for our local wine club members like they, they, they become a huge ambassadors, because it's like where do they want to get, want to meet for a drink? Well, where they get a free glass of wine, 15% off on all of your wine, including your shipments, and you know some exclusive pre-releases, some things that are wine club only, and you know there's a great sort of intimacy and exchange with with those customers and um, they're they're, you know, is the lifeblood of your business. They're very important. So, yeah, we're thankful for them.

Well, if somebody can't come in to visit um but they want to taste your wines, we talked to, we touched on distribution a little bit. So tell me about where can people maybe taste your wines or find your wines if they can't come in?

We have a very big portfolio of wines, but I would say the wines that should be consistently available and you should be able to find at Whole Foods or Central Market, which I always think are kind of our most accessible retailers generally. This Petnat, this will sell out before the end of the summer, for sure. That's kind of a seasonal one. This Mavedra is really terrific from Limestone Terrace, I believe that's in both. Violet Crown, which I don't have, is really terrific from limestone terrace uh, I believe that's in both. Uh, violet crown, which I don't have on the table with me right now, but it's a purple dog with a crown on his head on the label it's a temperneo.

That's probably our most recognizable one. Um, I'd say that that'd be the one that you're most likely to find in off-premise. But keep your eye peeled. Uh. Once you, once you see, uh, or or have awareness of our wine, it seems to start to like appear for you. Yeah, but we don't do any marketing or spend any outside dollars on that. We focus it all on the wine. So, you know, we kind of say our target audience is like an NPR listener, right, it kind of transcends socioeconomic status, but it's more about just being, you know, a little more attentive, a little more clued in and, uh, discerning in that.

So uh, yeah Well, and you mentioned a magnificent opportunity coming up. Your wines will soon be found in, possibly in Japan, that's right.

Yeah, we're. We're just finishing a deal distribution there, so William Chris is already there. We're not the first Texas wine there but, uh, we do have a goal sort of to to be, um, one of the first Texas wine there, but we do have a goal sort of to be one of the first Texas wines that's exposed or tasted critically by the world at large. So that doesn't mean we want to produce 60,000 cases, we want it to be, you know, healthy scarcity. But we really have enjoyed being an ambassador and a representative for our city, for our state, for our winery and for our wine region.

Do you have any plans for future growth?

Yeah, we do. We're growing naturally, organically. We haven't had—one of the great things is that we are really employee-owned. That can be a tough thing too, but we grow really based on—our growth is really so tied to nature. So last year we were able to produce a really healthy amount of wine. That's affording us the ability or requiring us, however you want to look at it to expand our distribution, which is terrific. But you can't have any of these things happen without good work in the vineyard, without a little bit of luck from nature. Um, and so you know, it's it's. It's a lot of hard work on both ends, but yeah, we hope to grow Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah Well, what, in your opinion, is the number one thing that really sets the Austin winery apart?

that would make somebody say I got to come check that place out. Well, I think there's a wonderful thing is that people can get a glass of wine anywhere now, but what I think is really the real benefit of coming here is the education aspect that you have, where it's really transparent, where I really do believe like we want to empower people to know more about wine so that when they select a wine, they get the most value out of it in terms of satisfaction, enhancing their experience. Another thing that I think is really really important to me is that when you have a glass of wine here, you're not just supporting this business, this staff here, but you're supporting Texas agriculture, you're supporting a really low carbon footprint, because this wine hasn't traveled far. I'm happy to distribute in Japan and those places. I'd love to sell all my wine right here because that has a much lower impact on the environment. I believe in walkable communities. I think politics, I think culture, I think everything starts local, and if we're not engaged in that at a local level, then you know what's the point of sort of like looking beyond that, um, so uh, I love that aspect of it and the story and helping people understand how tied this is to nature and that each, each wine in itself is a snapshot of the, the climate and the characters of the year before, whenever that vintage came from. And so I think that that, really kind of you know, puts a light bulb on in your head of something that I like, something that I really appreciate what went into this and that you're doing something that's helping sustain a good community.

I would just say a lot of people will ask sometimes what what natural wine is, or what qualifies, or what do you guys do? Um, a couple things on. There are no organically certified vineyards in texas. Okay, um, that does not mean that there's not really healthy and good, positive farming practices. Uh, the path to getting organic certified is expensive, it's lengthy, uh, and it also can be, uh, run off course by things that are beyond the farmer's control a neighbor's spring, things like that. So, uh, go for the transparency of vineyard practices rather than a sacramental symbol, right? Um?

Secondarily from that, uh, what that means for us from a winemaking side is that all of our we don't inoculate or introduce any yeast in our winemaking practice. Everything is native. So, like we were saying that ambient yeast from the vineyard, from in here, that fermentation starts and ends on its own. Uh. We don't filter any of our wines. So if you see any cloudiness or uh texture like that, years ago we were taught that that was a flaw in wine, but that's really an advent of modern wine making.

And lastly, if we add any sulfur dioxide, we'll say so on the bottle, and I think most people now the sort of general diaspora has said okay, it's okay to be adding sulfur at bottling, because that's all about protecting the longevity of the wine. It's not going to give you a headache. These are very, very low thresholds and these are about making sure you're not drinking vinegar and protecting the wine from oxidation. So, yeah, that's what I'll say about that. But I value anyone's time who's listening to this. I value your time. If you're coming to visit and taste with us, please do. Yeah, we're open six days a week and we'd love to have you.

All right, and that was Ross McLaughlin, the CEO and president of the Austin Winery. And by going to the Austin Winery and when you enjoy their wines, you know that you are helping to contribute to their efforts to sustainability and helping the environment and it becomes a community as well, and beyond that, it's just a really fun place to drink wine because you're surrounded by all the winemaking equipment, the barrels all around, even those cool clay amphoras there where they're making those wines. That's all active going on right around you while you're drinking those wines, making those wines that's all active going on right around you while you're drinking those wines. And the area where they're located the yard that he talked about is actually a really hot and upcoming spot here in Austin. I've already heard of several other developments very similar to the yard springing up in that very same area. So in addition to all of the great things you can do there in the yard, like the sake and the distillery, the coffee place, there's some food in the area. Don't forget the food truck out front of the Austin Winery, but there are other places like that popping up as well. It should be a really hot spot for people to come and really enjoy a day out, and don't forget, you got to customize your trip there by bookending it Start at the Austin Winery and then go see some of these other fun little places and then close it out at the Austin Winery. It will be a trip that you will remember. Now, as always, before you go, make sure you check out their website. It's wwwtheaustinwinerycom. And, of course, on their website you'll be able to read a little bit more about some of the philosophy that they put into to creating this location some of the things that ross talked about in the interview and that's, of course, detailed a little bit more on their website. You can also shop online for some of their wine if you want to have some of it shipped to you. See their full menu. You can find out information about renting the place out if you want to host an event there at the austinery and even more. So check that out and don't forget, when you go to see them, make sure you tell them. You heard about them on this podcast, texas Under Vine.

Now, after we wrapped up the interview and all the equipment was put away, ross actually took me over to the bar and pulled out some of those great wines for me to try and I've got to say they did not disappoint. Being a red wine drinker personally myself, those are more of my favorites. I loved several of the varietals that they had there. That Toriga that he talked about in the interview was really, really good and enjoyed really what they've done with those red varietals and their take on those wines. But I have to say the wine that surprised me the most were those white wines that he's made into an orange style. So my favorite, I think, of the whole tasting experience was their Albarino and I've always had Albarino as this really bright, white, clear, crisp white wine. But he did it in an orange style. So I got to try their.

Albarino that is an orange style wine had some really unique character. Albarino that is an orange style wine had some really unique character, flavors to it, some nuttiness to it, very different from a typical albarino, and so whatever you know about white wines or about even things like albarino, you got to put that out when you come to taste it because you're going to get a really cool, different type of tasting experience with those wines. And again, those orange wines are made kind of like a red wine. You just leave them on the skin and get some more skin contact. So they get that kind of orange or amber-ish color from the skin. They develop a little bit of tannins to them that you don't normally see in white wines. So it's just a fun, interesting take on some wines that you don't typically get in a lot of places. So that was my library bottle for this episode. I had to go home with some of that, all right.

Well, my time here has come to a close and it's time for me to move along to some other great wine destinations. But before I go, if you are getting any great information from this podcast, if you're enjoying it, if you're able to go try some of these amazing destinations that I'm sharing with you, would you please consider leaving me a rating and review wherever you get this podcast. If you're watching it on YouTube, you can just click the like and subscribe button and maybe leave a comment. If you've actually been to the Austin Winery, tell me about your experience there and what some of your favorite things were. But those ratings and reviews really help the podcast get seen by even more people and we can share this great state of Texas wine with more people who are not only natives to our state, but people who are coming in to travel to the state and want to learn about our wine experience here in Texas.

And with that my time is up, so don't forget, subscribe to my socials to be notified anytime the next episode is released. And until then, happy trails and bottoms up y'all our socials at TexasUnderVine to stay up on all the upcoming episodes. Please email us with any suggestions or feedback. Also, contact us if you're interested in donating, sponsoring or advertising on the podcast just to help us cover our expenses and bring even more great info to you in future. No-transcript. No-transcript.