High Plains Winery Expands Into The Hill Country
- andychalk
- Apr 18
- 6 min read
by Andrew Chalk
There is a new, but familiar, name in the Texas Hill Country. Steve & Cindy Newsom, one of the long-standing grape growers in the Texas High Plains has arrived with not one, but two, tasting rooms and production facilities.
BACKGROUND
His winery, English Newsom Cellars, gets its name from a partnership with the English family of Caprock Cellars in 2018. Newsom has bought out his partners since then, but kept the name to retain the brand value built up during its existence. The winery uses 100% Texas High Plains AVA
grapes and has won dozens of medals at competitions from San Francisco to New York. Its impressive tasting room just outside Lubbock is a popular local attraction.
Whereas the High Plains, centered around Lubbock, is the production capital for Texas wine, the industry’s showroom is the Hill Country. Locals claim that the stretch of US-290 between Johnson City and Fredericksburg gets more visitors than any wine route in the USA except for Hwy. 29 through Napa County, California. It is little surprise that virtually every major Texas winery has expanded to include a tasting room in the Hill Country.
THE JENSCHKE ORCHARDS TASTING ROOM
Newsom opened one of his in 2024 on the site of a familiar name on US-290: Jenschke Orchards, a family-owned fruit farm (best known for their peaches) established in 1961, roughly halfway between Fredericksburg and Stonewall. The Jenschke and Newsom families collaborated to create a tasting room for both wineries so the sign on the road actually reads Jenschke Cellars. Newsom makes a line of Jenschke Cellars labeled wines as well as his own, and all are on sale inside. The tasting room provides a premium location on US-290 with ample parking, a Jenschke fruit and provisions store attached to the property and, a bonus, Leroy’s TexMex BBQ right on site. Despite Leroy’s premises looking like a shack that was thrown together, the food is not. The combination Tex-Mex and BBQ joint has a growing and militantly adoring following.
THE DOWNTOWN FREDERICKSBURG TASTING ROOM
Newsom’s other Hill Country tasting room is in downtown Fredericksburg, on Main Street, the eating and drinking heart of the town. The partner here was history as the tasting room is in a beautiful Victorian building that Newsom has gone to some lengths to painfully restore to its original state.
In early Spring I visited both locations and spoke at length with Steve.
ENGLISH NEWSOM WINE TASTING
Just ahead of the Saturday rush (Hill Country tasting rooms do 40% of their weekly on-premise sales in four hours on Saturday) Steve Newsom sits us down at a large table in the comfortable Jenschke Cellars tasting room. First up is a wine that I did not know grew in Texas: Picardin (aka Picardin Blanc), specifically, the 2022. Newsom grows four acres and, asked whether anyone else has it in Texas, confesses “It is one of the 13 certified Chateauneuf-du-Pape varietals, which is how Tablas Creek originally brought it over and they did it through quarantine. And to my knowledge, it's me and Tablas Creek right now. I don't know of anybody else producing it as a varietal.” Despite that obscurity, Newsom notes “these [vines] were planted, I believe, in 2017 or 2018. My years run together on varietals, so we're sitting at about sixth leaf on this one. And it seems to be a really consistent yielder, a really nice bud break, but we're having a hard time getting replacements because it seems to be sensitive to crown gall.” Crown gall is a vine disease. Newsom has never seen it on his plot but there is apparently a problem with it at the nursery.
Tasting it, I find it like a sauvignon blanc, without the herbaceous aspects. It has the lemons and the citrus character, but it doesn't have the sort of grassiness of a sauvignon blanc. That seems to be consistent with its description by Jancis Robinson quoted in Wikipedia “Picardan … considered to be light and rather neutral in character.” As Newsom puts it “It's not a wine I recommend pairing, except maybe with the patio. It doesn't have a lot of structure, a lot of body. To me, it's an easy-drinking wine.”
I appreciate that it takes some guts to invest the vineyard land and winemaking effort into any grape variety that is not a proven crowd pleaser. It’s welcome to find wineries that do.
Next up is also an audacious grape choice. The Riesling 2022 from the estate vineyard. After being told that Riesling did not yield, Newsom went ahead and planted it anyway. The result is ‘one in the eye’ for the critics, as they say, as it has won a slew of medals at wine competitions. Notably at the prestigious San Francisco International and San Francisco Chronicle shows.
The almost dehydrated climate and perpetual wind of The High Plains prevented another Riesling grape problem - rot. “That wind, everybody cusses up in the Lubbock area. It's a good friend to us.”
Sales fly at the Lubbock tasting room, aided by expert commentary from the serving staff. The Hill Country tasting room is too new for firm patterns yet, but they hope for the same. Retail is a different story. “Retail is difficult for Riesling nationally. I mean, global Riesling, selling German wines is really tough. Because a lot of people expect it to be sweet. We do a percentage sweet just because we know a percentage of the population is like, I'm going to want a sweet Riesling.”
How would he serve this dry Riesling? “I really enjoy this with shrimp or oysters even. It doesn't have the crisp acidity you're going to get with a Sauvignon Blanc, which some people absolutely love with the really fatty type of fish.”
This vineyard, the Steve and Cindy Newsom Vineyard, is at 3,579 ft. altitude. That would qualify as mountain altitude in Napa.
We tasted our way through a voluptuous 2021 Reserve Merlot from the estate. A 2021 Reserve Sagrantino, the grape that is the defining red grape of Umbria. It is taking to Texas with alacrity and I expect the state to become one of the best areas in the USA for the wine. The English Newsom 2021 Reserve is a very good example. “I think Sagrantino’s got a great future in the state.” says Newsom.
Another strong red was the English Newsom Cellars 2021 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon Estate. Complex and tannic, this is a wine to lay away for 5-10 years.
Somewhat out of sequence we also tasted the 2023 Reserve Viognier. An example of the ripe school of Viognier where the complexion of the nose veers towards mango. This is not the ripest example I have tasted, but it is very forward and ideal for quaffing by the pool on a hot summer day.
Newsom is also aware of increased consumer interest in sparkling wine and for that reason has some of his finished Picardan sent to a custom sparkling wine creator on the West Coast. They put it through all the steps to make it a sparkling wine in the Champagne style. The results (a ‘brut’, or dry expression) showed picardan’s promise as a sparkling wine grape.Future plans include moving the second stage to Texas.
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INSIDE THE DOWNTOWN FREDERICKSBURG TASTING ROOM
Fredericksburg has worse traffic than ever. On a Saturday afternoon virtually nothing moves on the road. However, that mass of humanity walking along is moving from tasting room to tasting room trying Texas wine. Hence the imperative to have some kind of facility there, even if it is a shop front shared with another winery.
Steve Newsom has done proud here. He has bought a whole building, and a glorious Victorian (1850) house at that. He has restored it so that it now stands out as something quite special. As the work continues on the second floor plans like club rooms come up. On the ground floor Fredericksburg health department were a hard taskmaster, including insisting on a new bathroom sink and the associated expensive plumbing.
He is on a busy stretch of the street. Nearby is one of the most successful businesses in Gillespie County, the Velvet Lounge, a Karaoke Bar. “If y'all ever driven by tonight, there will be a line out the building, velvet lounge,…and it is packed to the walls with a waiting list.”
The Main Street tasting room encourages sitting down and having a leisurely time. It is all comfortable, traditional furniture and artifacts of history. I think it will do well. In fact, we must move on as Steve’s customers are starting to come in, presaging another busy Saturday.
As you go through English Newsom Cellars operations in Lubbock, on 290 and on Main Street the enduring impression is steady, controlled expansion, well-executed, and staying true to the Texas grapes and wine.
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