The Texas Wine Trail

With over 172,000,000 acres, five wine regions and eight different Federally approved Viticultural areas ranging from El Paso to Denison to the Texas Hill Country, Texas has a thriving and growing wine industry. Spring is a great time to travel the state, enjoying a wide variety of vistas and landscapes while sampling the offerings along the wine trails.

The Texas Bluebonnet Wine Trail kicks off at the Colony Cellars Winery in Waller, TX. With seven wineries on the tour, finishing up at the Cork This! Winery in Montgomery, TX (where you can even make your own wine), you get a lovely view of the fabulous bluebonnets on the first three weekends in April. The wineries along the trail will pair two select wines with local cheeses and also offer a packet of Texas Wildflower seeds. Tickets need to be purchased in advance and are good for any of the three weekends, April 3-4, 10-11, or 17-18. You can download a copy of the trail map here.

The Texas Hill Coutry Wineries has the largest number of wineries of any of the tours with 24 participants. Wildflower season is upon us and their Wine and Wilflower Trail will be April 9-11 and 16-18, 2010. At each stop wines will be paired with a variety of cheeses and each participant will receive two wildflower seed packets per ticket. Ranked the #2 fastest growing wine region by Orbitz (second only to Napa, CA) and with a host of bed and breakfasts, spas, and fine dining, this is an area that is not to be missed. Tickets are available here with a trail map located here.

Located along State Highway 290, in an area that looks similar to central Italy and the French Rhone Valley region, you'll find a collection of nine Texas wineries on the Fredricksburg Wine Road 290. March 20, 2010 is their Vino and Pasta event providing food tastings by top local restaurants, with no extra charge for food tastings. The map for this tour is located here.

North and Central Texas offers the Cross Timbers Wine Trail with seven wineries. La Buena Vida in Springtown also makes artesanal cheeses making it a great choice to stop for a picnic lunch. The tour finishes up in the Red River Valley at Arché, 1 ½ hours northwest of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. The tour brochure is available here.

The Munson Wine Trail has 12 different wineries available. The trail is named for Thomas Volney Munson, a horticulturist from Dennison, TX who developed over 300 new grape varieties specifically for the American South and Southwest and was a member of many different viticultural and scientific associations in his time. The trail has a passport http://www.munsonwinetrail.com/passport.htm which offers discounts on purchases during designated Wine Trail Weekends, the map is available here.

April 16 & 17 brings the New Vintage Tour along the Grapevine Wine Trail. There are nine wineries on the tour, including the unusual La Bodega Winery located inside the DFW Airport. The map for this trail can be found here.

South of Dallas-Ft. Worth is a charming collection of eight boutique wineries along the Way Out Wineries tour. Events on this tour will be the St. Patrick's Day Road Trip on March 13, 2010 and the Wildflower Road Trip on May 20, 2010. Sign up for the mailing list to get more details on these events and get the map here.

The Dallas Wine Trail is the smallest of the trails with four select wineries. Their next event is March 27, 2010. Each participant in the trail receives a commemorative wine glass and a their choice of a bottle of wine from one of the participating wineries. There are three tastings from each of the wineries. Tickets can be purchased, and a map downloaded, from the website.

Note: Wine, drunk in moderation, is known to be good for you. Studies show that resveratrol (one of the phytochemicals in wine) can prevent cardiovascular disease by changing lipid, or fat, profiles (it raises HDL or "good" cholesterol), it also prevents arterial placque formation. The National Cancer Institute is looking into the beneficial effects of resveratrol for cancer patients. There is more resveratrol in red wine than in white because it is primarily concentrated in the skin which is left on during processing of red wines.