What is a Tasting Room?

Blog contributed by Kristen Nelson, Co-owner and General Manager of Ab Astris Winery, Member of Texas Wine Growers

One question that frequently comes up in the tasting room is, “Where do you get your grapes from?” While I am not here to write a piece about truth in labeling, I do think an important distinction should be made to the consumer about the difference between a tasting room and a producing winery. 

A tasting room is a business where wine by the bottle and glass can be purchased and tastings are conducted. While many vineyards and wineries have tasting rooms on property, you can also find tasting rooms, for example, on Main Street in Fredericksburg, urban wine trails in Grapevine, and in ever so trendy places like the Funk Zone in Santa Barbara or Tin City in Paso Robles. Many producing wineries, such as Texas Wine Grower member Bingham Family Vineyards, choose to have satellite tasting rooms in other cities in addition to their Estate vineyard and tasting room. However, it is important for the consumer to know that sometimes tasting rooms are places where discounted wine from other countries is sold or bulk wine from other states are bottled and sold. When this happens, there is little connection between the actual practice of growing fruit, making wine and the selling of glasses, bottles and tastings from wine that the winemaker on site has actually made themselves.

When you visit a boutique winery, a family run operation, and/or a winery that has a sizeable vineyard on site (i.e. two or more acres), and/or a production facility on site, this is a good indication that the tasting room will be selling wine that is actually handcrafted by a local winemaker and in Texas Wine Grower members’ case, 100% grown in Texas. One important distinction near to my heart as a founder of Ab Astris, is to note the up-and-coming trend of smaller boutique wineries participating in winery co-ops, such as Texas Wine Grower member John Rivenburgh’s (Rivenburgh Wine) incubator project called Kerrville Hills. The co-op project allows newer and perhaps smaller wineries to share in the cost of winemaking equipment, team members, and to build their education on winemaking at a central location before taking on the expensive costs of outfitting a production facility. As the caveat to previous statements- while you may not see a large vineyard or production facility on site at some of the co-op member winery tasting rooms, all wine made at Kerrville Hills co-op is 100% Texas grown and Texas made. 

If a consumer is mindful about the authenticity of where their glass of wine comes from or wants to stay committed to supporting wines that are grown from the terroir of the place they are drinking and purchasing from, please consider asking thoughtful questions of your wine steward about where your wines come from. Our family works tirelessly in all facets of the tasting room, vineyard and production to grow, make, age, bottle and sell 100% handcrafted Texas wine. There is something special about the process of vine to wine versus purchasing wine made by a potentially unknown winemaker, from fruit that we haven’t grown and worked with, and labeling it as our own- it feels inauthentic to our core values and our brand. 

At all times in the Texas wine industry, authenticity matters. And, just as the movement to eat local and support local growers is increasingly popular with many Texans, I believe that drinking local and supporting wine growers (families like my own) should be considered too.