Bursting Out in All Directions: Texas 2025 Tasting Report

Texas State Highway 290 heads west from the state capitol of Austin, leaving behind its famous taco stands, barbecue joints, high-rise tech company headquarters and Americana music venues. Nearing the historic town of Fredericksburg after an hour, the scene changes dramatically to include rolling hills planted with grapes and many large, modern wineries equipped to receive visitors.

As two of us on the JamesSuckling.com team arrived to taste wine and interview winemakers, it was a bustling time of year. The harvest was almost finished and the notoriously steamy summer weather had cooled to the point that wine lovers from Austin, San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth were flocking to the cool cellars here to taste and drink some of the state’s best wines.

We arrived to conduct our second major tasting of Texas wines in less than a year, finding a broader range of high-scoring wines than before and the same fascinating diversity in grape varieties and growing regions.

What stood out this time was our exposure to numerous high-quality wine producers that were new to us, as well as the huge span of wine styles and types. Our highest scoring wines include a roussanne (white Rhone grape variety) from the Texas High Plains appellation, chardonnay and tempranillo from the Texas Hill Country and a large number of red blends with the broad “Texas” designation on their labels.

It’s difficult to put Texas wines into a varietal box the way that one can put Napa into a cabernet sauvignon box, because Texas’ top wines seem to burst out in all directions. Ten good examples of picpoul blanc (a white, southern France variety), were mostly vivid, fresh and light-bodied. Ten high-quality tannats had most of the astringent tannins baked out of them by the Texas sun and four aglianicos, made from the southern Italian red grape variety, were equally impressive.

So instead of trying to declare which varietal wines Texas does best, let’s just examine the state’s dazzling diversity and innovation. We did that by tasting more than 240 wines and visiting 17 wineries to interview grape growers and winemakers. Although we based ourselves in Fredericksburg, the center of Texas Hill Country, we also toured the Texas High Plains, almost 400 miles to the northwest.

WILLIAM CHRIS WINES: TEXAS HIGH PLAINS VS. HILL COUNTRY TERROIR

For the second time this year, our highest score went to a small-production red from Calais winery, located in the Hill Country but sourcing grapes widely in the state. The Calais Cabernet Sauvignon Texas Cathedral Mountain Vineyard Cuvée de l’Exposition 2021 is a rich and ripe wine in which power and detail are seamlessly mingled.

Calais focuses on Bordeaux grape varieties. The Calais Cabernet Franc Texas Cuvée de Cantegral 2021 tastes of sweet blackberries and toasted cedar while the Calais Merlot Texas High Plains Cuvée de Ruisseau 2021 offers a full body yet with elegance.

French-born founder Ben Calais also owns a second brand focused on Texas Rhones called French Connection Winery. The flinty, mineral French Connection Viognier Texas High Plains 2023 and layered, meaty French Connection Texas Chateauneuf de Hye 2021 red Rhone-style blend are especially worth noting.

His openness to grape varieties rooted in divergent locales, and his willingness to blend, are at the heart of his philosophy as a winemaker in Texas and, increasingly, of others as well.

“I really think our state needs to move away from the dominant-variety model and just embrace the fact that there's going to be a lot of strengths in the diversity of the approaches,” Calais explained.

“There's tons of different varieties doing well out here, and there’s tons of different styles,” he said. “It’s really fun to go and drink 10 different cabs through one day, but you can come to Texas and find a place that's just doing Italian stuff, places just doing Bordeaux stuff, places that just do the Rhone stuff, a place that's doing different stuff from Portugal and Spain.

“It all has its own little spot.,” he added. “We don't have to scale everything to where it works statewide for it to be successful.”

Several wines from the Robert Clay winery also came out as favorites, as well as new releases from other wineries that dominated our last Texas tasting report, including Uplift Vineyard, Ab Astris, William Chris, Ron Yates, Blackmon and Pedernales.

But we also made visits to wineries not already on our radar that turned out to make terrific wines and in many cases boast spacious visitor facilities.

Augusta Vin’s professional, delicious wines, like the Roussanne Texas High Plains 2024, are among the highest -rated whites in this report, offering a great combination of richness with linearity and drive from a Rhone variety. Almost as impressive is a non-Rhone white, the Augusta Vin Albariño Texas 2024, which yields a plush version of a varietal wine that's often more crisp and straightforward.

Two of their reds are also remarkable. The Augusta Vin Cabernet Sauvignon Texas Hill Country Estate 2022 offers blackberry flavors layered in fine tannins while the Augusta Vin Petite Sirah Texas Hill Country Estate 2022 bursts with velvety tannins and dark chocolate flavors.

A soaring, cathedral-like barn structure greets visitors and overlooks a significant 60-acre estate vineyard southwest of Fredericksburg that winemaker Zach Raines uses to make generous, structured wines. He was born and raised in Paso Robles, California, where his parents grew grapes and started Dubost Winery. Raines’ wines all have a feeling of polished substance and consistency.

Augusta Vin also has a unique Four Seasons Rosé program: They produce each one differently to reflect the specific time of year that they’re named after.

“We do a spring, a summer, a fall and a winter combination of whole cluster press and saignee, which tends to be farther in the winter and gives us more of that richer color,” Raines said. “And then as you go back down the seasons, closer to spring, we use more whole-cluster press for a little bit more aromatics, more grapefruit and some really nice, we call it Starburst, but it's those guava kind of strawberry aromas that we're really looking for.”

That level of obsession with detail is something we found throughout our reporting and tasting.

Back on Highway 290 to the east, Slate Theory bottles a collection of well-made wines under arresting, ghoulish labels featuring skulls and provocative names intended to start conversations about mental health treatment, which is the winery’s focus in charity giving.

Slate Theory’s massive steel and glass architecture hides a 16-foot-deep, arched cellar beneath it, where winemaker and former football linebacker Tyler Wolz makes lavish, impressive wines like the creamy but light-bodied, coconut inflected Slate Theory Viognier Texas High Plains  2024 and the spicy, meaty Rhone-style red blend that’s anything but sleepy – the Slate Theory Texas High Plains The Narcoleptic 2022.

Visits to Kalasi and Ron Yates turned up numerous top wines. Both of them – as we discovered is not uncommon – included bottlings that express top vineyard sites in the Texas High Plains, although their respective wineries are located in Hill Country.

NIKHILA DAVIS ON CLONES, SOIL, AND TEXAS WINE

Kalasi, in Fredericksburg, is helmed by the husband-and-wife team of Greg Davis and Nikhila Narra Davis, who also own their eponymous vineyard in Hill Country and Narra Vineyards in the High Plains. Narra includes 141 acres of vines and is the source of standout wines like the Kalasi Texas High Plains Narra Vineyards Kanchi 2022, a polished, intricate and harmonious Right Bank-style blend; and the Kalasi Cabernet Sauvignon Texas High Plains Narra Vineyards Estate Grown Clone 8 2022, which is full-bodied, concentrated and expansive.

Ron Yates also had significant success, including from High Plains standout Friesen Vineyards. His Cabernet Franc Texas High Plains Friesen Vineyards 2023 is well-spiced and loamy yet with beautifully expressive fruit. The Ron Yates Merlot Texas High Plains Friesen Vineyards 2021 is another winner, this one showing black cherries, flourless chocolate torte, violet pastilles and iron-like minerality.

We wrote about Robert Clay wines in our last report, and in our most recent tasting their micro-production reds and  whites, which go through extended barrel aging, were eye-opening and barrier-breaking. Robert Clay was the founder’s name but the vineyard and winery is owned and operated now by father and son Dan and Blake McLaughlin.

The abbreviation-heavy Robert Clay Chardonnay Texas Hill Country B 22 00 RCV CHA 2022 is the best white wine in this report, but sadly only 24 cases from one barrel were bottled. It captures a creamy yet taut feel that frames pears, almonds and nervy, toasty accents. Two outstanding Bordeaux-style reds from 2021s are equally enticing.

Drama in the Details

This is a good place to discuss recent vintages in Texas, which tend to feature lots of drama, from damaging freezes to hailstorms to drought, which really tax the patience of growers and the skills of winemakers.

Many of the reds in this report are from 2022 – a problematic, hot year that started with a bad freeze in the Hill Country and a hailstorm in the High Plains. The shoots that survived yielded tiny berries in the High Plains and generally powerful flavors everywhere, said Tyler Wolz of Slate Theory.

In 2023, generous rain in the spring helped hold off the effects of summer heat and dryness, providing good conditions that made for a successful harvest, according to winemaker Claire Richardson of Uplift Vineyard.

Despite still-widespread perceptions that Texas is generally hot and dry during the growing season, the reality is actually a lot more varied. “2020 and 2021, we had a little heat spike, but it wasn't as bad” as some previous vintages, recalled Chris Brundrett, the co-founder and CEO of the William Chris Wine Company. “2024 was lights out, just an exceptional vintage. It was very much like 2025: We had really good, solid spring and summer rains and then no rain at harvest – very moderate weather; we didn't get any heat spikes. I mean, it was just such a long growing season.”

We are able to make some tentative quality comparisons between the major Texas regions, based on our wines tasted this year. The average score of all wines labeled "Texas Hill Country," leaving out a few low outliers, is 91.9 points. This slightly beats the Texas High Plains wines, which averaged 90.3.

It was a straight 90 average for all the other wines, mostly labeled simply "Texas," that could be blends from different regions, and some that bear county designations and single vineyard designations outside the two large AVAs.

It’s interesting that Dell Valley Vineyards in far west Texas, near the New Mexico border at an elevation of 3,500 feet (1,066 meters), appears in our notes like an appellation unto itself. Wineries like Calais, Ron Yates, Ab Astris and others rely on the property for high-quality chardonnay, semillon and tempranillo, to name a few grape varieties.

The High Plains region looks and feels dramatically different from the Hill Country. While the Hill Country is rolling terrain, cut through by rivers and streams, fed by rainstorms that can fall any month of the year, the High Plains is high, dry and flat. That doesn’t mean, however, that it lacks in a diversity of terroirs, despite the relatively consistent appearance of its terrain. This is what makes comparing the two so fascinating.

Of note for the High Plains is the historical importance that farming, particular of row crops, has played there – and continues to. As a result, it’s a place where an ingrained understanding of the land in general, and of farming techniques in particular, have helped raise it to impressive winegrowing heights in a relatively short span of time.

The changes in grape-growing and winemaking there have been impressive and fast. “As you've seen quality continuing to increase, there's more competition,” Brundrett said. “Five or 10 years ago, wineries were competing for the best vineyards. Now it’s the opposite: Now the best vineyards are competing for the best wineries, competing to sell fruit.”

Throughout the state, blending is taking on increased importance. Many high-scoring wines in this report are crafted from a range of grape varieties, and top vineyards are happy to oblige. Narra, for example, grows 21 varieties, incorporating more than 30 clones, from the usual suspects like cabernet sauvignon and syrah to less-expected ones like teroldego, malvasia bianca, sagrantino and many more.

“Probably half of our production is now blends,” Calais, of Calais Winery, pointed out, noting how blending helps with many things, not least of which is consistency. “If you're putting consistently high-quality wines out there, you're going to be rewarded,” he added. “It doesn't matter if there’s a dominant variety.”

More and more, a greater sense of consistency is manifesting itself throughout Texas. From Hill Country to the High Plains and beyond, the world of Texas wine becomes increasingly exciting each year. The best wines we tasted for this report transmit that with complexity, nuance and a growing sense of regionally specific terroir.

– Jim Gordon, Executive Editor, and Brian Freedman, Staff Writer & Taster

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated by the JamesSuckling.com tasting team. They include many latest releases not yet available on the market, but which will be available soon. 

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