the ZuppeQueen Chronicles

Somehow somewhere in life I got the idea that producing and bottling wine was a long drawn out complicated process.  I don’t know where that idea came from.  Perhaps it was because in the days before the internet… “The information dark ages” access to knowledge was a little hard to come by.  Unless you lived in a major city the local library had maybe one or two books, if any books at all, on what ever subject in which had one’s interest at the time.

Take wine making for instance.  The ZuppeKing lived on the high plains of Texas as a boy.  It was remote, it was isolated, it was the Bible belt, and so a book on winemaking would have been difficult to find listed much less resident in the local library.  Today, well the sky’s the limit.  In just a few seconds one can have hundreds of listings for any subject imaginable. That’s why I call the pre-internet era the information dark ages.

Ok, now to my point, Winemaking.  It turns out that winemaking is really not difficult at all.  It’s arduous to be sure but not difficult.  Who would have thought?  So discovering the winemaking process by reading the internet is one thing but to experience winemaking first hand is another, more rich, experience.

Fredericksburg Texas sits at the top of the Pedernales River Valley which is the center of the Texas wine making industry.  So, here in Fredericksburg there are 10 or so wineries literally with in a few minutes drive from home.

One of those wineries, the Woodrose Winery http://www.woodrosewinery.com/ is one of the more progressive wineries in terms of the Texas wine country visitor.  Maybe customer friendly is a better term.  Lucrecia Klafka who runs the tasting room is friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful to everyone who enters.  She does a great job of making the customer feel appreciated.   Woodrose Winery is a place that any interested person can learn about the complete wine making process from planting and growing grapes to bottling the finished product.

For some reason there is an air of snobbery at some wineries.  Certainly learning to enjoy the complexities of different wines takes time and experience but it is not rocket science by any stretch of the imagination.  So I find it strange that some wineries seem to take joy at intimidating new wine tasters.  That is not a problem at Woodrose Winery.

A few weekends ago the ZuppeQueen and I plus two good friends who own A Place In Time B&B http://www.aplaceintimebandb.com/ visited the Woodrose Winery on bottling day. It is a fascinating process bottling wine.  First you visit the tasting room and sample the wares out on the deck while making “smores” over the firepits.  The ZuppeQueen reccommends the Three Dog White with smores.  Then you walk the 100 yards out to the bottling area get to work.  No real experience required because the process is quite automated… empty bottles and corks and labels in and filled wine bottles out.  It’s simple, fun, and educational.  And, it makes you dream of owning your own winery (mine [dream] is in northern Italy though I am not sure why?).