I will have more details on this coming up this evening, but the New Mexico bubbly house, Gruet Winery, has purchased the CapRock Winery, and does have plans to begin production of Texas "Champagne".
Early estimates that I had been hearing for the purchase price of the winery had been in the $2-3 million range, but when the smoke had cleared, the final damage came in at $6.5 million. The auction took little more than a minute and a half, and the tall, handsome Frenchman was left holding the winning number. Should be interesting to see what this means for Texas wine.
Update: Details of the auction, as well as video of the actual auction are now up here.
i cannot tell you how excited i am to hear of this-texas will sparkle!
Me too. I think that this is a great development for Texas wine. Should be really interesting to see how this story plays out.
We have a bottle of Brut, Blanc De Noirs, Gruet, Methode champenoise made with a predominant amount of Pinot Noir which is chilling in the fridge to celebrate!
Enjoy! I need to see if I can pick some up. I don’t have any around the house right now. Pretty excited about the idea of some good quality sparkling wines being produced here in Texas.
Gruet will bring deep pockets, an outside perspective, and a terroir-focused approach, which is what it does in New Mexico. Laurent Gruet is very, very sharp.
Having said that, the questions to ask: Will its Texas sparkling wine be made with Texas grapes? If so, which ones? Because we don’t have many grapes to begin with, and we don’t have any pinot noir or chardonnay to make wine of the quality that Gruet makes. Quality bubbly can be made with chenin blanc, which Texas has. But’s a whole lot easier to buy California fruit and produce more of the same. Which, if if have to pay off $6.5 million, I’d assume they’ll do.
Great news!
I was thinking about bidding earlier, but my top dollar was $5.
Not $5 million, $5, It’s all I’ve got to spare. Oh,well maybe next time.
Way to cover all this, dude! Very exciting for your state. We might have to revisit our TX-VA piece in the near future…
Hi Jeff. Agree with you on all counts. It will be interesting to see what they will do here. I would be surprised if they made all the wines from Texas fruit, but I do hope that they will make some legit Texas wines. I guess only time will tell. I hope to have the opportunity to talk with Laurent soon, if he is open to it.
Yeah, once the bidding got over $2 million, I wanted nothing more to do with it.
Thanks Josh. I’m very excited about it, and can’t wait to see what comes of the whole thing. If they start cranking out some TX bubbly, you’ll be on top of my delivery list.
We’ll need more Texas High Plains Pinot and Chardonnay. That will give Bobby Cox something to live for and work on for another lifetime….
Russ
Actually,
It would be good to use some of our Muscat Canelli in a Texas High Plains Supumante or Prosecco, not to mention Sparkling Vermentino, Sparkling Roussanne, and why not a good old fashion Aussie-style Sparking Shiraz. The possibilities are endless.
Russ
I think there are definitely some great options for sparkling wines from Texas fruit. Especially great, given that some of these varieties do quite well here. Would certainly be an interesting twist if this move started to gain Texas notoriety as a sparkling wine producing state.
Indeed.
Would be fun to see more Pinot noir and Chardonnay being produced here. Pheasant Ridge has proved that it can be done.
Ben- way to take the lead on this story. First I’ve read about it… congrats. Good luck getting an interview with Laurent Gruet- that would be really cool stuff. It should be interesting to see what approach Gruet takes in TX.
Thanks Matt. It was pretty fun being at the auction. I’d never seen someone drop $6.5 million before.
I’m hopeful that Larent Gruet will talk with me. He seemed open to it when I spoke to him at the auction, but we’ll see if I can get in touch with him once the dust settles a little bit.
The first responses I received on the Gruet/CapRock deal was interesting. See below:
“The first response from the growers was that sparkling wines like the Gruets make is probably the best use of what little Chardonnay and Noir the Texas winegrowers now produce. They can harvest early at low Brix and when the high acidity needed for a sparkling wine prevail, and be done with it. Who knows, this might be the hidden value of this whole venture. It might bring s new street cred when in a conversation someone says the words that have struck fear in many….”Texas Chardonnay and Texas Pinot Noir”.
However, my feelings on Texas sparkling wines are to look for more the Spumante and Prosecco-style wines as we can grow wonderful Muscat Canelli, Vermentino and even Pinot Grigio in Texas. All can make wonderful sparkling wines.
Russ Kane
Way to get the scoop! Gruet’s done great things in an “obscure” wine region. We’ll see what happens!
Good stuff. I bet we see a mixture of different things being produced there. The way Gruet kept throwing around the phrase “Texas Champagne”, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t one of the offerings being produced there. Regardless, it’s going to be exciting to watch this develop.
Yep, I remember we were just talking about Gruet in Washington. Wasn’t expecting to have them buy a winery in my backyard though.