Scott Banks of Tony’s in Houston with Duchman Family Winery 2010 Vermentino (photo courtesy Tony’s)

By now it should be fairly apparent that the warm climate grapes of Spain, Southern France and even the warmer parts of Italy are taking a shine to Texas soils. One such Italian success story is the Vermentino grape, which is originally a shining star for the little island of Sardinia that sits west of Italy in the Mediterranean sea. It’s a grape Stan and Lisa Duchman took a chance on in 2004 when they first began Duchman Family Winery, devoting their entire wine production to Italian varietals. And in its few years on the Texas market, it’s been an investment that has paid off.

Sure, it may not be one of the more well known white wines we’re used to grabbing from the grocery shelf. Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and even Pinot Grigio have dominated that column for some time now. But if you’ve any interest in deepening your breadth of white wine knowledge, especially when it comes to white wines from Texas, Vermentino should be at the top of your list.

Especially if it’s a Vermentino grown by Bingham Family Vineyards from Duchman Family Winery. The 2008 vintage nabbed the Texas Wine of the Month in May 2010 and this month the 2010 Duchman Family Winery Vermentino takes the same honor as Texas Wine of the Month for August. It should come as no surprise considering its gold medal status from the Dallas Morning News/TexSom International Wine Competition and a silver at the world-renowned San Francisco International Wine Competition.

This month’s selection comes at the suggestion of Scott Banks, wine director for the iconic Tony’s restaurant in Houston. Since 1965, Tony’s has long been regarded as one of the best dining experiences in Houston, if not all of Texas. Growing up it’s a place I remember my Houston-native grandparents sharing their stories of entertaining clients and friends for special dinners.

It wasn’t until recently that I enjoyed my first Tony’s experience and I have to say that whatever owner Tony Vallone did to attract sophisticated glitz and glamour in 1965, he’s still pulling it off today. Tony’s is special indeed, with every five-star dining frill you would expect from mussels steamed in tomatoes and white wine, to a meticulous table-side break down of a whole salted branzino served warm and aromatic with fresh herbs. A night at Tony’s is truly special, especially if you get a chance to sit down with the man himself over a glass of 2008 Galatrona Petrolo, a single vineyard Italian Merlot. That’s when the real stories come out.

The more than 1,100-bottle wine list features wines from the world’s greatest regions: from Barolo and Barbaresco (Piedmont) to Brunello di Montalcino (Tuscany) as well as an unmatched collection of first-growth Bordeaux and Grand Cru Burgundy. With a number of rare and collectible bottles—stretching back to 1844—the wine cellar at Tony’s is almost more of an homage to the grand history of global wine as it is a holding room for top beverage selections. And this year, Banks added Duchman’s Vermentino to the list. (To date, the only Texas wine to hit Tony’s hallowed list.)

“Planting Vermentino was such a shrewd decision,” says Banks of Duchman Family Winery for staking their claim with this grape. “It’s a hearty grape with an almost irrepressible acidity that can handle a Texas summer. The acid balances out the almost exotic fruit nature of this wine giving you a beverage that is crisp and clean without being ‘one note.’”

With bright acidity and citrus characters of fresh lemon zest, Meyer lemon, a squeeze of grapefruit and even the tiniest hint of fresh cut grass, the Duchman Vermentino is available on shelves in most HEBs, Whole Foods Markets and Central Markets throughout the state for about $15. Considering we’re still in for a couple more months of Texas heat, it’s a very reasonably priced wine to stock up on and enjoy with grilled fish, seared scallops or even as a back porch sipper on its own.

“At Tony’s, we’re featuring a salad that involves finely shaved heart of palm, finished with Ricotta di Bufala, Fredericksburg peach and crispy prosciutto,” says Banks who loves to pair the Duchman Vermentino with this dish. “The peach jibes with the slight tropical notes of the wine, while the wine’s bright acidity cuts right in to the natural, delicate fat of the Ricotta and the prosciutto.”

And if you like the 2010 Vermentino, you’ll no doubt love the 2011 vintage that will likely be released later this year, if not in early 2013.

“I really think we’ve hit our stride with Texas Vermentino,” says Dave Reilly, head winemaker for Duchman Family Vineyards. “Cliff Bingham [who grows it for us in North Texas] is exceptional at consistently growing high quality grapes regardless of what the growing season throws at him. The 2011 has the same flavor and aroma profile as the 2010, only more intense with more citrus. I honestly think this wine gets better with every vintage.”

Winery: Duchman Family Winery

Price: ~$15

Availability: Most grocery stores or large-scale liquor stores in Texas including HEB, Whole Foods Market, Central Market

- Jessica Dupuy

Tagged: Bingham Family Vineyards, Cliff Bingham, Dave Reilly, Duchman Family Winery 2010 Vermentino, Jessica Dupuy, Scott Banks, Tony's Houston

If there’s one example to follow in starting a Texas vineyard, Perissos Vineyards and Winery would be the one. Not only because this boutique winery near Inks Lake makes some phenomenal estate wines but because each deliberate, carefully-planned step owners Seth and Laura Martin took in creating this idyllic winery was a building block to the next level of making beautiful Texas wines.

Having heard so much buzz about Perissos, I was eager to get out there and see it myself. According to the Martins, the winery got its name from a Greek word meaning “exceeding abundantly,” which is a personal mission of owners Seth and Laura Martin who have spent the better part of a decade creating craft wines that raise the bar for Texas wine. And if you taste just about any of their wines, you’ll find that they do. From the beautiful Hlll Country town of Marble Falls, you take a winding stretch of road past Longhorn Caverns. As it turns out, driving into the vineyards is like driving into a little piece of heaven and you soon find that what this family has been blessed with is indeed, exceedingly abundant.

I passed Seth on his 4-wheel ATV on the narrow granite road towards the large barn-style winery while he  was checking on a few vines. He told me to grab a glass of Viognier in the tasting room and he’d meet me in front. I followed his instruction and before I knew it I was walking through the Martin’s “Library Block,” a section of the vineyard with one row representing each of about a dozen different varietals the family grows on their 13-acre vineyard.

The Library Block is the key element in determining what grapes the Martins will grow. Before they decide to work with a different grape, they first plant one row of that grape with about 75 vines—enough to produce one barrel of wine. If they like how that barrel turns out, they’ll invest more acreage in their vineyard with that particular grape, but not before that grape has proved itself in the Library Block.

“We’ve had to boot strap this whole operation. We wanted to a high level of accuracy with our grapes from the very beginning and we had to have that test vineyard to make our mistakes on a manner of scale,” says Seth Martin. “That way we have an idea of what to expect before planting a whole vineyard of a particular varietal. If you have to tear out 75 vines because a certain varietal doesn’t work, that’s better than having to tear out 750 vines that you planted on a whim.”

The idea behind this family vineyard stemmed from a hobby the Martin’s began to foster more than 12 years ago when Seth was a custom homebuilder in Austin. After a couple of test plots and a few barrels of garage-made wines, the Martin’s were on the hunt for the perfect property to start a new life in the wine industry. In 2003, they settled on a plot in the Colorado River Basin with ample soils of decomposed granite and just enough clay to help keep vines well nourished. By the end of 2005, they had finished out much of their Library Block and were well on their way to producing a strong portfolio of wines.

Their primary grape selections? The kind you’d find in Europe, along the same latitude line of Central Texas. (Portugal, Spain, Southern France, Central Italy)

White: Viognier, Roussanne, Muscat

Red: Mourvedre, Grenache, Syrah, Petite Syrah, Tempranillo, Touriga Nacional, Aglianico, Dolcetto, Malbec

When you meet with Seth and Laura a few things become apparent:

Precision in Winemaking

Seth makes the wine. (Though Laura is an integral part of the process as well.) From the beginning, the vines are carefully pruned and nurtured from the first detection of bud break. The canopy of leaves is often thinned out as are unsatisfactory grape clusters to help balance the ratio of fruit to vegetation. All of the grapes are hand harvested rather than using a machine for absolute care of the fruit. It’s a lot of work, but for the Martin’s it’s a true labor of love.

The wines are minimally manipulated in order to let the true nature of the fruit shine through. The Martins let the grapes stay on the vine as long as possible to ripen to their fullest potential of flavor characteristics.

“Winemaking is one percent of what we do,” says Seth. “We’re really making our wine on the vine.”

For Martin, the goal is to have as much fruit on the trellis at as possible, which helps maximize overall production. (That’s Seth’s degree in economics talking.) Once harvested, all of the grapes are immediately cold soaked in water-chilled tanks to better control fermentation. The tank room is extremely clean to help prevent any contaminating effects on the wines. Once wine production is complete, the wines are either in tanks or in barrels and they are tasted. Again and again. Between Seth and Laura, if a wine doesn’t make their grade, it doesn’t go to the public. But it doesn’t get dumped down the drain either.

“We send wines that we think are bad to a third party lab to be analyzed,” says Seth who requests a full panel analysis as well as a microbial analysis to find out what faults are in the wine. If it has traces of acetobactor (a bacteria which turns wine to vinegar) or brettanomyces (a yeast which gives wine a pungent barnyard aroma), the Martins want to know.

“That’s how we learn how to prevent future faults,” says Seth. “Every year has its own learning curve with a new lesson. In some ways it’s something you can never truly master, and that’s what I like about it. It’s like you’re an artist who has to paint the same picture on an entirely different canvas. It could be burlap fabric one year and wood the next. The painting should resonate similarities but they are going to be different because of the canvas you started with. It’s the same with wine.”

These guys are serious about the terroir of estate grown wines. 

The vast majority of wines from Perissos are from grapes grown in their own vineyard. While many wineries source the majority of their grapes from grape growers in the High Plains, the Martins are committed to making as much wine as possible from the grapes they have hand-nurtured themselves.

It’s a control thing, yes. But when you taste their wines, you understand why.

“If you want to have the best quality in your wine, the only way to do that is to control how your crop is being managed,” says Martin. “We do source some of our grapes from well respected grape growers like Cliff Bingham and Neal Newsom in the High Plains, but we know that in general, farmers are looking to harvest grapes for the maximum tonnage of fruit they can give their clients. Our goal is to get the most extensive flavor. Which means that sometimes we compromise the overall volume of fruit we can harvest.”

When Perissos does use grapes from other growers, they do not blend those grapes with their own to make wine. Instead, they make estate-only wines using their outsourced grapes and clearly label their bottles with the specific vineyard from which it was sourced including the actual geographic longitudes and latitudes of that vineyard. (For a Roussanne using grapes from Cliff Bingham, the bottle clearly states Bingham Family Vineyards on the front label.)

“We do that because I think wine has a distinct sense of place,” says Martin. “When you arbitrarily blend your grapes with someone else’s, you lose that character.”

Of course, from year to year and from crop to crop, such a strong commitment to single vineyard wines means you don’t always get to produce a consistent amount of wines each year. For instance, in 2010, Perissos harvested 1,500 gallons of Viognier from 1,600 vines on their property. In 2011, those same vines only yielded 500 gallons. (Last year’s summer harvest was the result of the traumatic 2011 drought.) This year’s crop is promising to be significantly more bountiful than almost both previous years combined.

It’s one of the reasons you don’t see Perissos wines on the shelves at large retail outlets like HEB or Spec’s. Their commitment to estate wines puts a cap on how much production they can project from year to year. But for the Martin’s that’s just fine. Eighty-five percent of their wines are sold at the winery anyway. And for them, the experience of tasting that wine at the vineyard itself is half of the reward.

This is a family operation 

That’s because Perissos wines are a reflection of a family endeavor. And you can almost taste that in the wine itself. Walking through the vineyards with the Martins you see that each one of these vines is part of their family, which has already been blessed with five children. (That’s right, three girls and two boys, all of whom are raised, educated, and loved on this property.) Likewise, each grape is evaluated and cared for. They each have a temperament and a typicity; just like a child.

During harvest time, Seth and Laura pick and taste ripening grapes and bicker at each other about the exact date to harvest them. “We used to argue about taking out the trash. Now it’s about when to harvest grapes and if we should blend them,” says Seth who adds, “but she’s always right.”

For the Martins starting this vineyard has rooted their mission in life in more ways than they originally expected. It’s grounded their goals as winemakers and as a family. And who wouldn’t want to grow up here among beautiful vineyards in the heart of the Hill Country? They even have three horses, their school room overlooks their grape vines and they have endless nooks and crannies of God’s Country to explore. That’s something the Martins found as a pleasant bi-product of what began as an academic and entrepreneurial venture.

“Over the years we’ve found that this is not just about wine making from what you read in a book,” says Laura. “We work diligently and tirelessly to make this vineyard and winery a success, but what is happening here goes far beyond our own hands.”

“In the poker game of life, we are ALL IN.” adds Seth. “We live here, we work here, we raise our family here, and we are thankful for what we’ve learned along the way.”

And that my friends, is what authentic Texas winemaking is all about…

NOTE: As mentioned, you can’t find many Perissos wines in retail outlets across the state, but you can easily order them online. I tasted through almost their entire portfolio of wines and I have to say I didn’t find any that I didn’t like. Among my favorites: 2010 Syrah, 2011 Roussanne, 2010 Petite Syrah, 2010 Tempranillo, and the 2010 Racker’s Blend. 

- Jessica Dupuy

Tagged: Cliff Bingham, Jessica Dupuy, Laura Martin, Neal Newsom, Perissos Vineyards, Seth Martin