The Viti+Culture Podcast Chris Missick

Chris Brundrett, co-founder of William Chris Vineyards, is a force to be reckoned with in the Texas wine scene. His winery, its growth, and his vision for Texas wines are as big as the state itself.
Check out our William Chris Vineyards at: http://www.WilliamChrisWines.com
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and don’t forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
Our show today was recorded in the gorgeous Wine Club tasting room at William Chris Vineyards, along the 290 Wine Trail in Texas Hill Country.  Chris Brundrett, co-founder of William Chris Vineyards, is ubiquitous in the Texas wine industry.  From his personal and political push to ensure wine labeled as Texas contains 100% Texas fruit, to his efforts to promote elevated service and wine education amongst industry members, to his charitable and philanthropic efforts to aid communities in Texas.  Chris seems to be everywhere at once.  He’s also done a great job presenting the many faces of Mourvèdre that are grown in Texas, via his numerous single vineyard and cuvee bottlings of the varietal.  
He’s an affable man, who at the same time feels part evangelist, part farmer, part winemaker, and part CEO of one of Texas’ most recognizable wine brands.  More importantly, he seems to be the kind of person you just want to be friends with, the kind of person who would be happy to help if you needed something, and the kind of person you’d be happy to lend a hand to if he asked.  He’s the picture of the budding Texas wine scene, and I’m happy to share our conversation with you.
With that said, the Texas wine industry is bursting with wonderful, big personalities.  From Sil over at Saint Tryphon, to Dr. Bob at Bending Branch.  And from the picpoul blanc at Lost Draw, to the Roussanne at Kuhlman - fascinating, and wonderful wines await you at the most unlikely of locations and visits.  
And as a final word, there is a lot of good food to be had in Hill Country.  We loved Hill and Vine and Otto’s in Fredericksburg, I even grabbed a great panini at a roadside gas station that echoed the quality of Oakville Grocery, but the best combo of food, a relaxed and comfortable environment, a predominantly and not pretentiously dominant Texas wine list, and my favorite overall Hill Country restaurant, was 259 Brantley’s Bistro and Bar in downtown Boerne - spelled BOERNE.  Boerne isn’t a wine town, at least not yet, but this beautiful Hill Country, riverside village offered an array of wonderful regular menu options and original specials.  If you’ve visited and dined in the Finger Lakes, it was like a marriage between Ports, Kindred Fair, and Vonney’s roadside biker bar.  I enjoyed the wild hog schnitzel, the mussels were the best I’ve had outside of Belgium, and the service staff always donned a pleasant smile and ensured your glass was full.  The mussels were especially good with the Muscat Pet Nat by Saint Tryphon, and may have been one of the best Pet Nats I’ve ever had.  Life was good in this place.  
This may be the end of this short series on Texas Hill Country, but it is not the end of my coverage of Texas wines.  I love this place - the people, the spirit, the service, and the sense that the best is yet to come.  As a cool climate winemaker, the alcohol levels in some of the wines do take a bit of getting used to. I’ve produced Cab Franc with alcohol levels ranging from 10.8 to 12.9, but generally simply seek balance and a representation of what the vintage represented. Then again, Texas not only has a longer growing season than the Finger Lakes, it has a lot more sun and a lot more heat. The balanced wines though, are really something - and when paired with local cuisine and a cool night by the Guadalupe River, are the stuff dreams are made of.  Chris Brundrett is another man w

The Texas wine scene is growing by leaps and bounds, and Hill Country as a destination continues its growth at a record pace. In this episode, we change up our format to introduce you to some of the leaders of the Texas wine industry. You’ll meet the Executive Director of the Hill Country Wineries Association, Cliff Bingham of Bingham Vineyards, and Michael McClendon, a winemaker/owner at the custom crush facility, Sage’s Vintage.
Check out our guests and some other great links at:
* Texas Hill Country Wineries: https://texaswinetrail.com/
* Bingham Family Vineyards: https://binghamfamilyvineyards.com/
* Michael McClendon and Sage’s Vintage: https://www.sagesvintage.com/
* Texas Winemakers Docu-Series: https://www.youtube.com/c/TexasWinemakers
* Shelley Wilfong’s “This is Texas Wine” Podcast:
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and don’t forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
My first taste of wine from Texas, was actually a little more than seven years ago. One of the things many people don’t know, is the Finger Lakes international wine competition is largely a fundraiser for a place called Camp Good Days and Special Times, which serves as a retreat for children that are fighting cancer. An additional fundraising stream for Camp Good Days through the competition, is a large banquet that follows the end of the competition.  A component of that banquet is a silent auction of many of the remaining wines.  In 2015, I was invited by Scott and Ruth Osborne, owners of Fox Run Winery, to be their guest for the dinner. Scott, if you recall from our first show, the subject of our very first viticulture interview nearly a year ago, has been called the Robert Mondavi of the Finger Lakes.
The Finger Lakes International Wine Competition is one of the largest in the country, and entrants come from all over the world.  Texas wines have done well in that competition, and one of the lots I had bid on was a case of Gold medal winning reds.  Fortunately for me, many of them came from Texas producers.  Within this box were several Texas producers, one of which I had heard of at the time, but many of which were still new names for me. The Pedernales Tempranillo was a wine I had some vague acquaintance within my mind, probably from reading about it in a magazine or seeing something online. 
In the weeks after winning that auction in 2015, I tasted two of the Texas wines that were in that lot. I enjoyed them, and at the time, if I recall correctly, they were of the 2013 and 2014 vintage, and I remember thinking that these wines simply needed a bit more time. Periodically, throughout the years, I would enjoy a bottle or two, to see how they had come along and each time I was impressed. It was sometime around Thanksgiving in 2021, that I discovered a YouTube series called Texas winemakers. This 11 part series of shorts was impressively produced, and followed a handful of Texas producers from throughout the state as they tended their vineyards, made their wines, and discussed their philosophy and their tasting room experiences. The docu-series, produced in 2020-21, captures what was a very difficult period for the Texas wine industry. Inclement weather including freezes, a pandemic, and a difficult business environment throughout the entire country was a headwind. Despite the challenges, the community of Texas winemakers seemed optimistic, tight-knit, and focused on making Texas one of the premier wine states in this country. Between the high quality of production of the series, and the larger than life characters that were featured, there was a sense that there is a momentum and energy to Texas wine that reminded me of what I first felt in the Finger Lakes in 2009.  It convinced me that I needed to visit. I also headed down to my own cellar after watching the serie

I return to the Finger Lakes for an interview with Gene Pierce, the pioneering founder of Glenora Wine Cellars on Seneca Lake in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York.  Gene’s experience in vineyards spans more than 50 years, and his leadership in the Finger Lakes wine industry spans more than four decades.  Founding Glenora as the first winery on the west side of Seneca Lake, he blazed a trail for the region shortly after the passage of the 1976 Farm Winery Act. 
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube. 
Due to the extraordinary amount of time video editing has taken, I have put the YouTube portion of the show on hold for a little while. The podcast will continue, and we will continue to deliver great audio content. Stay tuned for more!
Check out Glenora Wine Cellars at:
https://www.glenora.com/
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and don’t forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.


Get full access to The Viti+Culture Podcast Newsletter at viticulturepodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We conclude our Yadkin Valley, North Carolina wine series with Ethan Brown, a member of the next generation of Yadkin Valley winemakers, and winemaker at Shelton Vineyards - a pioneer in North Carolina fine wine.
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube. 
Check out Shelton Vineyards at:
https://sheltonvineyards.com/
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and don’t forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
In this interview, we’re speaking with Ethan Brown, winemaker at Shelton Vineyards in Dobson North Carolina.  As pioneers of the Yadkin Valley AVA, Shelton Vineyards is the largest estate vinifera winery in the state of North Carolina, and one of the oldest in this young wine region. 
Ethan carries a heavy responsibility for building on a tradition of winemaking excellence, and charting a new path with new product lines for Shelton.  Ethan was kind enough to take me around the  tasting room, the winemaking facility,  and the impressive grounds of this vineyard.  With the Blue Ridge mountains an ever present shadow on the horizon, the gentle rolling hills of Shelton inspire a sense of awe at the beauty of the place.  The winery is built into a hillside, allowing much of the production and aging areas to be entirely underground.  This impressive feature was compounded by exceedingly high ceilings, and a first rate design for the placement of everything from tanks to the bottling line. 
This winery is in a transition, as the baton has been passed from the founders to their children.  This, combined with Ethan’s youth and professionalism, have set the stage for a renaissance at Shelton Vineyards, which I have the sense is about to explode with life and an even further elevation of their reputation.  


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We continue our Yadkin Valley, North Carolina wine series with Diana Jones, of the remarkable 35 acre estate vineyard, Jones von Drehle Vineyards and Winery.
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube. 
Check out Jones Von Drehle at:
https://www.jonesvondrehle.com/
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and don’t forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.

In this interview, I share my conversation with Diana Jones, one of the proprietors of Jones Von  Drehle, located in Thurmond, North Carolina.  I have visited hundreds of vineyards throughout the world in my life, but there is magic in the air at Jones Von Drehle.  Its isolated location, the serendipitous even fateful beginnings for this property and this vineyard, the working relationship between two sisters and their husbands in growing this winery, and their philosophy, of place, of authenticity, and of excellence, combine to make this one of the most memorable visits to a vineyard in my life.  There is no pretension here, just slow and steady dedication to an ancient craft, one that requires hard work, but that promises a delightful reward.  Diana and her husband Chuck discussed the history of the winery with me, tasted me through whatever I was interested in from their portfolio, and showed me around the winery.  It was a  taste of home as the tanks were all manufactured  by Vance Fabricators, a metal engineering firm located in Geneva, New York, just down the road from the podcast studio.  Their wine tanks adorn my own cellar, and their quality is second to none.  
The property itself is dedicated to 30 acres of grapes, and we’ll discuss the varietals in the interview.  The  banquet room is now complete where they will host wine dinners and special events, the commercial kitchen is small, but can handle everything a chef needs, and the new amphitheater is ready to entertain.  Set in a location that  abuts the vineyards, this location will feel like magic for both musicians and entertainers, and the guests visiting the winery.  As we were speaking throughout my tasting, the song “It’s a Great Day to be Alive,” came on over head.   The Travis Tritt classic always brings a smile to my face, and I could tell Chuck noticed it.  Although not in the interview,  Chuck shared a story with me that I wanted to relay.  His father, who had been a small business owner,  had told him years ago about a delivery driver he had, a hard worker, but a guy with an amazing voice and a pretty good guitar player too.  Travis was a great worker, but eventually went on to other things.  It was until after his father  passed away, until Chuck and his brother were sharing old stories about their dad.  As Chuck was recounting the story, his brother interrupted - you know that was Travis Tritt, right?  Chuck was aghast, and excited.  He’s made it a priority to try and book Travis Tritt for an upcoming show, and quite frankly, listening to his songs, sipping on Jones Von Drehle, and enjoying a North Carolina evening, truly sounds like it would be a great day to be alive.   



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As we explore North Carolina wine, this winemaking veteran crafts a dizzying array of beautiful wines in the Yadkin Valley.
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube. 
Check out Childress Vineyards at:
https://childressvineyards.com
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and don’t forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.


Get full access to The Viti+Culture Podcast Newsletter at viticulturepodcast.substack.com/subscribe