Texas is the fifth-largest wine-producing state in the country, and most people outside it have no idea. The catalog tracks well over two hundred Texas wineries, the great majority clustered in the Hill Country west of Austin, where high elevation and limestone soils do something the summer heat should not allow.

The short version: Texas wine is not a novelty anymore. The Hill Country AVA and the High Plains AVA up on the Llano Estacado now grow Rhone and Mediterranean varieties, Tempranillo, Mourvedre, Viognier and Sangiovese, that suit the climate far better than the Cabernet and Chardonnay the state chased in its early decades.

The Hill Country: Fredericksburg and Highway 290

If you visit one part of Texas wine country, it is the stretch of US 290 between Johnson City and Fredericksburg. Tasting rooms line the highway the way they line Highway 29 in Napa, and a weekend here is the easiest introduction the state offers. 1851 Vineyards in Fredericksburg and 290 Wine Castle in Johnson City sit right on the corridor.

Fredericksburg itself is the hub, a German-founded town with a main street of tasting rooms, and it works as a base whether you have a car or not.

The High Plains: Where the Grapes Actually Grow

Here is the part that surprises people: most Hill Country tasting rooms pour wine grown three hundred miles away, on the High Plains around Lubbock and Brownfield. The elevation up there, over three thousand feet, buys cool nights that the vines need. When you read "Texas High Plains" on a label, that is why.

Wineries like 3 Texans Winery show the range of what the state now does with estate and sourced fruit.

What to Drink

Order the Tempranillo and the Rhone whites first. Texas Tempranillo, in particular, has become the grape the industry quietly rallied around, and a good one will tell you more about where the state is headed than any Cabernet.

Visiting Texas Wine Country

Spring (March and April) and fall are the seasons; Hill Country summers are punishing. Reservations are increasingly the norm at the smaller estates, walk-ins still fine at the highway rooms. Browse every Texas winery we track on the winery browser and plot a route on the map.