BIG, BOLD AND BOOMING

WORDS BY STACEY INGRAM KALEH

Photo courtesy of Bending Branch Winery

It’s big and bold like Texas,” says Dr. Robert Young as he describes his signature tannat wine. Young is CEO and executive winemaker at Bending Branch Winery in Comfort, Texas. He’s also a retired medical doctor, affectionately known as Dr. Bob. “It’s like Cab on steroids,” he says of the varietal, pronounced “tuh-not.”

As soon as you take a sip of this deep purple wine, you’ll understand what he means. Robust, dry and packed with flavors such as blackberry, tobacco and vanilla, tannat is a slow-sipping wine with delicious complexity. Wine lovers appreciate it for its bold, striking qualities and its ability to take any steak dinner to the next level or just be enjoyed on its own. Collectors appreciate the wine’s capacity to age well. And winemakers and growers across the state love tannat’s versatility and hardiness as well as the way it resonates with Texans.

A grape with origins in Madiran, a small village in southwest France with a climate similar to that of the Texas Hill Country, tannat is making a big impression in the Lone Star state. While Uruguay, the secondest largest tannat grower after France, may call it the country’s national grape, Texas tannat is gaining notoriety in the United States.

After years of traveling to wineries with his wife and then meeting Dr. Richard Becker and his former partner and wife Bunny of Becker Vineyards and learning their story, he began thinking that working with wine might offer everything he was looking for. He purchased acreage in Comfort that was close to his daughter and conducive to grape-growing. It’s situated on a hill at an elevation of 1,730 feet with good soil, good drainage and solid protection from frost.

After attending University of California, Davis’s online winemaking program, Young put his love of research and in-depth knowledge of chemistry into action by planting a vineyard and studying the performance of various grapes and winemaking processes. On 16 acres, he planted 16 varietals such as tempranillo, petite sirah, cabernet sauvignon, aglianico and malbec. Then he observed which grew well, held strong through the Texas heat and made great-tasting local wine.

After thorough testing, tannat was the clear winner. “There was nothing even close to it,” says Young, “Tannat is hands down a better grower, more effective in fighting off disease and more drought- tolerant than any of the other vines.”

In addition to these beneficial qualities, likely aided by the grape’s thick skin, he also found tannat to be more versatile. It could produce rosé, bold reds and port. Not only that, he found tannat to be rich in procyanidins — what we might notice as smooth tannins. It’s a compound in red wine that research by Roger Corder, Ph.D., published in Nature in 2006, had shown to enhance blood flow in the body. What more could a doctor ask for?

“When you look at the science of wine, there’s a category of compounds that really have the most profound impact on the wine — they’re called polyphenols,” says Young. Polyphenols include the color molecules, the flavor molecules and the tannins. “Outside of acid, those are the most important three things in the grapes,” he says. Polyphenols are also a type of antioxidant, which some research suggests can help neutralize harmful free radicals. Young’s mission soon became, “How do we take a Texas red grape and get more of those wonderful compounds extracted from the grape and into the wine?”

So, Young invested in growing more tannat on Bending Branch. He even sent some of his tannat vines to nearby Newsom Vineyards and other growers to ensure he’d always have access if his vineyard faced weather extremes.

Next, Young began testing to determine how best to harness the natural goodness found in tannat, or what Bending Branch general manager Jennifer Cernosek calls “amplifying all of the grape’s natural qualities.” Young observed that common winemaking practices only extract one-third to 40 percent of the polyphenols in the fruit. So, he invested in top-tier equipment to propel innovation.

“The first thing we did is experiment with cryomaceration — a fancy word that means we freeze the fruit, keep it frozen for several weeks to a few months, then we thaw it out and ferment it,” says Young.

This resulted in preserving about 25 to 50 percent more polyphenols than a control batch using whole-berry fermentation, a way of making wine in open top bins by hand. It also passed the test, with flying colors, when it came to taste.

Another process that results in extracting even more of these key compounds is flash détente, which Young is the first to use in Texas. “For this process, we do the opposite of freezing,” he explains, “We put the fruit into a tank and then it gets heated up to 178 degrees Fahrenheit for a few minutes, then it immediately gets transferred to a tank, which is a vacuum chamber.” There, the components of the grape skin that contain the polyphenols “burst open,” resulting in extraction increasing to about 80 percent, which “translates to more color, more flavor and more tannins,” according to Young.

An additional benefit of these boundary-breaking approaches is they are certified organic and sustainable. “I think it’s important to use the fewest chemicals possible, not only for the sake of the land but for the sake of health, the long-term health of everybody,” Young says.

In 2010, Bending Branch opened its tasting room with tannat on the menu, a 2008 vintage. The winery is now known as pioneers of tannat in Texas, along with Westcave Cellars and Reddy Vineyards. You can find their signature tannat in many H-E-B’s, and it is a staple for many Texan’s wine cellars. Last year, they harvested more than 90 tons of tannat, and vineyards in California are purchasing their vines.

Mike Nelson photo by Ab Astris Winery

Bending Branch currently offers more than nine different tannats, many of them award-winning. Whether you are looking for an elegant dry rosé, a vibrant frizzante rosé or a trademark bold red, you can find an expression of tannat to surprise and delight you. If you’re concerned about the off-the-beaten-path trek to Comfort, don’t. The drive to Bending Branch is an attraction in itself, filled with beautiful twists and turns through unobstructed country. Their tasting room is casual and welcoming, embracing the warm hospitality that Young and his team exude, plus it has a panoramic view of rolling hills.

Young’s thoughtful, scientific approach, which has yielded award- winning wines, has inspired others to get into the business and to make their own tannats.

One of those is Mike Nelson, co-founder and winemaker at Ab Astris Winery between Stonewall and Hye. He grew up visiting the Central Coast of California with his parents, fostering a deep appreciation for wine and the wine community there. He fell in love with Texas wine at Bending Branch as he enjoyed a glass of their tannat during a visit to the Texas Hill Country in 2009–2010. “One of my biggest Aha! moments with Texas wine was Texas tannat. I had never heard of the varietal when I tasted it. It just blew my socks off! I fell in love. It was life-changing,” says Nelson.

The experience inspired Nelson, who studied law, along with his wife and co-founder Kristen, to take the leap into wine making and move to the Hill Country. They both thought the area was on the verge of becoming a wine community like some of the regions they were familiar with in California.“I felt like Texas was on the verge of something special,” he shares.

Since his first visit to Bending Branch, Nelson kept in touch with John Rivenburgh, a co-founder and former winemaker with Young. As he and Kristen forged plans for their own winery in 2015, they hired Rivenburgh as a consultant. Nelson considers him an invaluable mentor. “He helped with our first vintage and subsequently taught me how to make wine, how to manage a vineyard, and how to drive a tractor and a forklift. He taught me, a city boy and former attorney, everything I needed to know over the course of about four years,” says Nelson. When Nelson and his partners started planning Ab Astris, they found land tucked away off “Wine Road 290,” a stone’s throw from the historic Junction School, where President Lyndon B. Johnson attended as a young boy and returned in 1965 to sign the Elementary and Secondary Education Act into Law. There, they immediately planted tannat.

Ab Astris opened in 2018 and started serving, in a gorgeous tasting room, its first estate-grown tannat in 2022. Nelson now makes at least three tannats each year. Beyond the estate wine, he sources grapes from Newsom Vineyards and the Texas High Plains.

“Tannat is excellent because it produces very high-quality fruit. It can ripen to the right point, it grows well in Texas. It’s low maintenance, low intervention,” says Nelson. According to Nelson, the Ab Astris’ 2020 Estate Tannat, which is aged in neutral oak and American oak, evokes the flavors of blackberry cobbler. “It is one of the only wines we’ve ever gotten the acidity, the PH, the sugar, everything at the perfect level, so we did very little to it once we started processing it,” he says. “When you’re in the situation where you have to do very little to very good fruit, you’re in the territory of exceptional wine.”

He enjoys pairing it with ribeye and gamey meats like venison and bison or, for a lighter bite, Chaumes cheese on a crostini with a dash of blackberry jam. If you are looking for other tips, Nelson reminds us, “what grows together, goes together,” and encourages customers to seek local, in-season products and to pair them with Texas wines made from varietals that grow well in their area.

Kelsey Kramer, director of education at William Chris Wine Company and the Hill Country Wine Academy, also highlights that power of place. She says William Chris’ approach to making tannat (and other varietals) is “about letting the grape variety showcase the place where it grows.”

William Chris currently grows about seven acres of tannat on its estate in Hye, and also sources grapes from vineyards in the Texas Hill Country and High Plains, like Vintage Press and Timmons Estate Vineyard. According to Kramer, the goal is to “showcase a raw expression of tannat, with mostly neutral barrel aging, primarily unblended tannat, with the intention of it developing over time in bottle, revealing its core.”

What’s at the core of this wine? “Tannat is structure, leather, tobacco and wild berries,” Kramer says. “It is far more tannic than cabernet sauvignon, less fruity, and more brooding.” Kramer says she personally enjoys the challenge of coaxing the available fruit from tannat, which is not predominantly fruity, to bring it into balance with the other aromas natural to the grape. “This grape naturally smells like Texas, rough around the edges with aromas reminiscent of horseback riding and woodland areas,” Kramer says.

Beyond its enticing flavor and aroma profiles, tannat has a big personality. It’s audacious and memorable. “Tannat embodies the idea that everything is truly bigger in Texas,” Kramer says. “Not only that, but very practically, wines made from this grape can age in a cellar for 15 years, while also being quite pleasant to drink when young, which is when the wine is at its boldest and driest. Not all wines have this dual capability.” For wine lovers at any stage of their wine journey, this makes tannat a must-have for your collection as well as a great addition to any dinner party, especially if you want to show off how great Texas wines with Texas characteristics can be.

As we linger in the drawn-out Texas summer and embrace the fun and familiar chaos of fall — heading back to school, enjoying festival season and prepping for holidays — there’s no better time to create special moments to unwind with a glass of tannat from a local winery.

About the Contributor

Stacey Ingram Kaleh is a native of the Texas Hill Country. Born and raised in Austin, she lives in Spicewood with her husband, two young daughters and fluffy dog Zeus. She’s been exploring Texas wineries for more than a decade, enjoying great wine, stellar company and scenic views as she learns from local winemakers. Follow her wine adventures on Instagram @TXWineGirl.