Wine in Time

Sometimes celebrating a holiday after the actual day affords you the opportunity to Take Another Route. Valentine’s Day is the perfect chance to detour, avoid crowded loud restaurants, overpriced roses, and chocolate. Don’t get me wrong, I am a diehard romantic, but I do like to break the rule.

So, to celebrate we took to the road for a #shorthaul and replaced flowers and chocolates with wine. Since dating my Swiss boyfriend, I found his knowledge and fancy of good wine has given me a whole new vice. Together we enjoy exploring the diversity of wines and wine tasting.

Since the goal was wine exploration and Valentine’s Day, he gets credit for the research, Texas wine, and wineries. Who knew Texas has a great region in what is known as the High Plains with ideal conditions and soil for vineyards? Much of the grapes grown in the High Plains defined as the northern and western side of Texas from the Panhandle to the Pecos River are brought to Fredericksburg area for processing, barreling, blending or bottling, AND YES TASTING!

Our early morning drive from Houston to Fredericksburg was beautiful following highway 290W we even caught the first signs of spring with the famous Texas Bluebonnets beginning to appear.

Destination, Calais Wines. Yes, Calais as in the city in northwest France. Calais is a simple young winery but complex in its wine process as reflected in the wine’s taste. As we cruise down highway US 290 West in Hye, TX we best be looking for the French Flag marking the entrance of the gravel road to Calais.

On this little dirt drive entrance, we discover the absence of any fancy groomed landscaped with some large modern structure, instead, we experienced an earthy rustic and clean land. Approaching on the right is what looks to be a somewhat a military-like bunker carved into a dirt mound. At first, we thought we were in the wrong place but NO this is an intentional underground Wine Cave built to store the barrels and the location serves as this tranquil inviting tasting room.

Urs chose to make reservations at the Winemakers Table, an intimate setting appointed in a reserved area to the rear of the tasting room. Seated around a rustic heavy wooden farm table we were joined by Benjamin Calais aka Ben, the genius winemaker owner himself. Our time was not rushed as we tasted Curvee du Manoir 2016 a Tempranillo and Gravitas 2015 from their blend and a few other wines all while being entertained and educated on the growing patters, soil compositions and climate changes of the High Plaines of Terry County West Texas. I loved Ben’s quote “Best wines are made in vineyard’s, not winery’s”. His scientific-analytical education blended with his generations of potato farming from Calais, France brings a whole different approach to the wines produced at Calais. Oh, did I forget to mention the homemade bread that accompanied our tasting made from Ben’s family recipe and his very own hands was delicious?

Calais is a small winery by winery standards but we were most impressed with the wines here. Their premier wines are from 100% Texas grapes. Because we were visiting a few wineries in the area we set out with a budget of 1 bottle from each tasting. Our choice to take home was the 2016 Cuvee du Ruisseau Merlot excellent choice.

We blew it, we should have made an exception to the budget here.

Our experience at Calais was 5 of 5 bottles terrific.

For more on Calais, visit their website at https://www.calaiswinery.com/, 8115 US 290 West, Hye, TX, 78635