If asked to picture an award-winning vineyard, your mind may well wander to a traditional wine-growing region such as Rioja in Spain, Napa Valley in California, Tuscany in Italy or Burgundy in France. It seems unlikely that you would begin with the sweeping plains and granite hills of Texas, but that may be about to change.
The past few decades have seen an explosion in the Lone Star State’s wine production, with the number of Texan wineries soaring from around 20 in the 1980s to roughly 450 today, according to industry body Texas Wine Growers.
This has been coupled with an increasing appreciation of quality—the Top Texas Wines website recorded the state’s wineries won a record number of top awards at international competitions in 2024.
The question isn’t whether Texan wine is on the rise, but rather how far the current surge will go.
A History of Winemaking
Texan wine is nothing new, with Spanish missions being recorded as producing Communion wine in the state as early as the 1600s. Texas boasts one of the United States’ oldest wineries in continual operation: Val Verde Winery near the Mexican border, which has been in operation since 1883.
“Before prohibition, Texas had a very vibrant, growing industry and prohibition and the discovery of oil and cotton kind of closed it down,” John Rivenburgh, president of nonprofit organization Texas Wine Growers and owner of the Kerrville Hills Winery, told Newsweek.
Speaking from a tractor in one of his vineyards, Rivenburgh described the past 20 years as “modern Texas wine rising,” with an “exponential” increase in wine production from the state.
“Most of that growth, quite honestly, it really happened in the last 10 years. The industry was growing quickly, but I think in the last 10 or 15 years you’ve seen a massive understanding and growth as it relates to good wine,” he said.
“We were growing exponentially, but when we really coupled good wine and good grape-growing along with the things that [we] were already doing well, I think that’s what took the rocket ship off.”
Rivenburgh noted the industry has traditionally been concentrated in Texas Hill Country and Texas High Plains. However, he said this is starting to change, with “great growing regions” acknowledged across the state.
Adding to the Texas Wine Growers’ figures, Jeff Cope, who runs the Texas Wine Lovers website, told Newsweek the number of Texan wineries had reached over 500 as of his most recent count.
“Even with the 15 years I have been covering Texas wineries, the growth in the [state’s] wine industry has been very rapid. When I started visiting Texas wineries back then, I was told that Texas was about 25 years behind California, about at the same time when the 1976 Judgment of Paris happened, which put California wines on the map,” he said.
In 1976, a wine-tasting event took place in Paris, with blind tasting for chardonnays and red wines. In a move that sensationalized their French hosts, wineries from Napa County were best rated in both categories in what became known as the Judgment of Paris.
Improving Quality
The dramatic increase in output of Texan wines has been accompanied by a growing recognition of their quality.
“The wines in Texas 15 years ago were good, with some very good ones,” Cope said. “Anybody who drank Texas wines then and now will agree that the wines have dramatically improved due to the reasons I just stated. More and more Texas wines are winning international wine competitions and people are starting to notice.”
In January, Texan wines won 295 awards at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, the second highest of any U.S. state following the clear overall winner of California.
The Top Texas Wines website reports that last year, 105 Texan wineries received 635 top awards, classed as a gold medal or higher, at wine competitions around the world—a record for the state.
Texan Amy Gross, founder of Wine4.Me and national president of grassroots organization Women for WineSense, told Newsweek: “I’ve really enjoyed watching so many new and established wineries thrive in Texas, especially over the past five to seven years. The quality in viticulture and winemaking has really grown to be exceptional, after decades of a foundation being set. Texans are trailblazers at heart.”
The Science Behind the Wine
Elizabeth Carter, a wine markets expert at the University of New Hampshire, told Newsweek that improvements in scientific research have helped wineries spread outside of their traditional strongholds.
“There have been great strides made in viticulture research, and areas that weren’t previously known as wine regions are really now coming into their own,” she said.
“Specifically, there have been major strides in viticulture research around adapting grape varieties to different climates. So regions that may have once been seen as inhospitable to wine grapes are now producing robust, expressive wines, thanks to both new hybrids and improved vineyard practices.”
This view was supported by Anna Katharine Mansfield, an associate professor of enology (the science and study of winemaking) at Cornell University. Referring to Texas A&M AgriLife, a partnership involving the Texas A&M University System, she said: “TAMU AgriLife extension has been providing research and technical support that helps producers fine-tune viticultural practices to suit the climate. I’m impressed with the growth I’ve seen in the industry, and with the high quality of wines made.”
Rivenburgh said: “I’d say the last 15 years we’ve really started to hone in on the enology and the viticulture and getting those things correct.”
Marketing has also played a role in the boost to the state’s wine industry. Rivenburgh admits that it had something of an image problem until quite recently.
“Texans had these preconceived notions of Texan wines and my friends with the ability to buy Texas wine, they often…turned their nose up at Texas and said, ‘We go Napa, we go here,’” he said.
Notably, Rivenburgh said it was people who moved to Texas from out of state, particularly Californians, who helped to break this perception.
“People who were transplants, like all the transplants from California that came into Austin, they came into Texas and they embraced us wholeheartedly. I would often hear things like, ‘These wines are amazing, we had no idea. We don’t have to go back to our home state of California [for wine],’” he said.
“Out-of-states folks with the growth of our state, I think they’re more forgiving and interested than the people who have lived here or are from here.”
Texas has recorded a booming population in recent years, growing from 29.1 million to 31.3 million between July 2020 and 2024, according to Census Bureau data. Around 102,000 people moved from California to the Lone Star State in 2022 alone, the Texas Realtors’ 2024 Texas Relocation Report found—a phenomenon so common it has been dubbed Texafornia.
Professor Tony V. Johnston, a wine expert who used to teach at Middle Tennessee State University, told Newsweek that one of the reasons for the industry’s growth in Texas has been clever marketing around wine trails, against the backdrop of a growing wine tourism industry.
Other factors cited by Johnston include the availability of capital to fund new vineyards, large areas of dry arable land with a generally low insect population and the “careful identification of grape varietals that grow well in the soils and environments at Texas locations.”
New Horizons
While the Texan wine industry has seen explosive growth, opportunities remain for further expansion both within the U.S. and internationally.
Professor Justine Vanden Heuvel, who teaches viticulture at Cornell University, told Newsweek that “the vast majority of Texas wines are sold within state borders, suggesting that Texas wine consumers are significant drivers in the growth of the industry.”
Her colleague Mansfield agreed. “My impression is that the market within Texas is big enough that most wines are sold within the state, so wine drinkers on the East and West Coasts may be unaware of the variety and quality of wines being produced,” she said.
Only around one percent of Texan wines has been sold to customers outside the state in recent years, according to the Houston Chronicle.
For Rivenburgh, this all suggests there is a lot of room for future growth.
“As a modern wine region, we’re still an infant. We have a long way to go compared to other regions of the world like Germany or France or Italy, or even California at this point.
“I can see us in 20 years being the new California as it relates to the U.S. We have inexpensive land, we’re a business-friendly state, we’ve got the investment. Kind of what happened in California in the ’70s.”
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