Dry Comal Creek Winery Redux: Love In A Bottle

Dry Comal Creek Winery is a family-owned and operated vineyard and winery in New Braunfels, Texas.  Located just over an hour from Austin it is situated in a beautiful Hill Country setting, so if you live in central Texas I urge you to visit.  Franklin and Bonnie Houser purchased the land in the 1970′s, planted the vines in 1992 and produced the first vintage in 1998.  Franklin, a former trial lawyer, is still intimately involved in the winemaking process and led our tour of the property.

The Housers have dealt with a number of challenges in the vineyard over the years.  In 1998 and 2002 floods raged through the winery and wiped it out.  Additionally, in 2000 the owners confirmed that the vineyard had Pierce’s Disease, a pathogen that kills vines, and were forced to rip up the plantings.  Not keen on giving up the dream of growing grapes, the Housers took a stab at planting Black Spanish (or Lenoir) grapes, which turned out to be resistant to Pierce’s Disease.  Today, Dry Comal Creek has rows of beautiful hand-pruned Black Spanish vines that yield grapes used in several wines.

In addition to growing Black Spanish, the winery purchases grapes from other regions across the country to use in its lineup.  We tasted 15 wines for $15 including a sampling of their delicious “1096″ Port made from Black Spanish grapes and Everclear (yes, you read correctly) that is bottled by hand and aged a minimum of three years in the Texas sun.

Port Barrels

The tasting concluded with their off-the-charts Sangria made with their 2008 Foot Pressed Red, a red wine that is “foot pressed” at the winery’s annual grape stomp.

Since we tasted so many wines I’ll include a few highlights:

NV White-Black Spanish:  Very unusual blush wine made from French Colombard and Black Spanish grapes, beautiful garnet color, reminded me of Tawny port, dark berries, some cinnamon, not too sweet.

2008 Demi-Sweet French Colombard:  French Colombard huh…don’t see that too often, slightly fizzy, 5% residual sugar, not too sweet with peach/pineapple flavors, dare I say Texas meets Moscato D’Asti?

2008 Black Spanish: Made from native Texas grape grown on property, aromas of dark cherries, allspice, slightly sweet, nice fruit.

Hand Bottler

This is a small production winery and the majority of bottlings are under 700 cases (the Port is an amazing 54 cases).  Most of the wines are priced in the $18-$20 range with the Reserve wines ranging in price from $22-$30 (with such small production you need to pay the bills somehow).  They are really well-made and have beautiful labels so they’d make great gifts too.

You can tell that the Housers are really passionate about quality winemaking and offering a hand-crafted product.  The cozy tasting room is operated by Bonnie Houser and her daughter, Sabrina, who are extremely gracious and energetic hostesses.  In fact, there is a wonderful picture on the wall of Franklin and Bonnie taken at their wedding 53 years ago.  I think the photo is emblematic of the love that goes into each and every bottle of their wine.

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