Eat My Words :: Texas Wine: Ducking in to Duchman Family Winery

Duchman Family Winery winemaker, Dave Reilly

‘Tis the season for air conditioning, swimming pools, backyard barbecues and cool, refreshing wine. The question is, which white wines bring the best relief to the Texas heat. Your answer may just come from Duchman Family Winery in Driftwood.

About a year ago, I snuck into a last-minute barrel tasting with Duchman winemaker Dave Reilly and found some exciting wines in production that made me really look forward to coming back once they made it into bottles. (See post here.) Yesterday, I swung back by Duchman Family Winery with some friends to do exactly that. As Reilly brought out a few much-anticipated bottles from last year’s impromptu tasting—as well as a few other new ones—I found I was in for a treat. (And so are you, Texas, if you can get your hands on a few bottles of the some 2010 releases from Duchman.)

In the past couple of years, the Duchman name has fast become synonymous in Texas with the Vermentino grape variety. It’s a crisp, white wine with lemon zest and orange blossom notes, but there are a few other varietals you should associate with Duchman:

2010 Trebbiano (treb-ee-AH-no) (~$15) - Believe it or not, Trebbiano is the second most widely planted grape in the world. (Accounting for one-third of all white wine in Italy, and the most planted white grape in France as Ugni Blanc) And based on what Reilly is doing with this grape for Duchman, it may soon be as widely planted in Texas.

Though primarily a grape used to bring acidity and structure to other white wine blends, the Trebbiano grape makes a crisp, beautiful wine all on its own. The Duchman Trebbiano is searingly crisp and tight with tiny hints of tropical fruit, and mounds of chalky, limestone minerality that easily match the acid-driven, food-friendly Chablis in the Bordeaux region of France.

2010 Viognier (vee-OH-nyay) (~$15) – We’ve seen this grape making a major mark in Texas for a number of years now. And this year will be the first release from Duchman. This wine has the floral and white peach notes that you’d expect from Viognier. But where many Texas versions can present as a little overripe and flabby, the Duchman Viognier follows suit under Reilly’s motis operandae of making crisp, clean, acid-driven white wines. This is an example of a wine you could easily distinguish in a side-by-side tasting against other great Texas Viogners from Becker Vineyards or McPherson Cellars. Whether or not it’s better or worse than other top Texas V’s is completely up to you, but in my book, this one certainly is memorable.

2010 Estate Vermentino (~$24) – In May 2010 we named the Duchman Family Winery (then Mandola Estate Winery) 2008 Vermentino as the Texas Wine of the Month and with good reason. It’s citrus and light stone fruit flavors have been consistently good from year to year. But the “Estate” version is a little different. For one, the grapes come from the winery’s Hill Country vineyard as opposed to the majority of the grapes they buy from Bingham Family Vineyards and Reddy Vineyards in the High Plains. And secondly, this wine has the unusual distinction of being aged in oak barrels—just for a little while. An experiment to quell his curiosity, Reilly made this wine almost by accident after picking the grapes at the peak of ripeness to yield a wine that has a staggering alcohol ratio of 15.4 percent, without tasting at all “hot” or “boozy.”

Reilly let the wine undergo lactic fermentation about halfway to impart some of the creamy characteristics you might recognize from California white wines, but still maintain a crisp, clean character.

“This is a fascinating wine that has great balance and great acidity,” says Reilly. “There’s nothing poking out of it. It’s nicely rounded.”

There are only about 40 cases left of this wine—minus the one my companions and I brought home with us yesterday—so, if you’re interests are piqued, become a Duchman Family Winery club member and get-you-some.

“Across the board, our 2010 vintage blows away anything that we’ve ever done—red or white,” says Reilly. “Honestly, I’ve really loved making the white wine. When you’re working long hours late into the night to produce these wines, there’s nothing better than getting up in the morning and dipping your head into a tank of fermenting Viogner that makes you say, “this is why I’m doing what I’m doing.’ It’s so crisp and refreshing. I loved making our white wines this year and hopefully that shows through in what you taste.”

Duchman also has a collection of red wines that are either just being bottled or are on their way to the bottle. I tasted the newly released “GSM,” ($13) which is a light and fruity version of the common French Rhone blend of Grenache-Syrah-Mourvedre. The yet-to-be-released Montepulciano is showing great promise with a little more weight than the GSM and a pleasant delivery of dark fruit and chocolate.

But, as mentioned in my post a year ago, I’m most anticipating the release of Reilly’s Aglianico (ally-on-i-ko), which has spent almost a year in barrel and is turning out to be a luscious, fruit-driven wine with nutty, cocoa characteristics. When this wine is released later this year, it could easily be the perfect match for the quintessential Texas steak dinner and an immediate competitor for the Texas Tempranillo that everyone has recently come to love.

I’ll be honest. I fell in love with all of these wines, which may just mean that I’m hopelessly fickle. But if someone told me I had to choose one of these as my favorite or it would mean my life, I’d have to request a glass of each for my last meal and die very, very happy.

EVENT NOTE: You can taste some of these Duchman Family Vineyard selections at the “Come and Taste It” event on Thursday April, 19th at the Grapevine wine shop in historic Gruene, Texas. On the third Thursday of each month, the Grapevine has invited visitors to Meet the Winemakers in their tasting room and taste the best of what Texas wine has to offer. Complimentary tastings and food samples available.

- Jessica Dupuy