James Suckling’s 2025 Review of Texas Wines Is So Incomplete as to Misrepresent the State’s Industry
- andychalk
- Jan 2
- 3 min read
by Andrew Chalk
On November 21, 2025, James Suckling’s eponymous wine-review website published a report on Texas wines. The tastings were conducted by Jim Gordon, Editor-at-Large, and Brian Freedman, Staff Writer and Critic (hereafter collectively referred to as “Suckling”). According to the article, they visited wineries in the Texas Hill Country and noted that they also spent time in the Texas High Plains. In total, they visited 17 wineries on this trip, plus additional producers from an earlier visit, for a stated total of 35 wineries. From these visits they published tasting notes on 239 wines, scoring between 60 and 96 points on a 100-point scale.
Welcome to Texas, Mr. Suckling—Sincerely
Like many people who care deeply about Texas wine, I was pleased to see an international publication devote attention to the state. I was particularly encouraged that the team considered Texas important enough to warrant a second visit within the same year. Their results confirm, at least in part, what many of us in Texas have believed for some time: real progress is being made, and some wines deserve to be taken seriously. Many of their individual tasting notes will inevitably be compared with the experiences of other tasters.
But the First Effort Is Seriously Incomplete
That said, I finished reading the article wondering whether it had been truncated. Was there another installment still to come? The reason for this reaction was simple: a striking number of established Texas wineries—many of them familiar to me from more than 15 years of tasting—were entirely absent. These are wineries that have won medals at leading competitions in California and New York, yet they appeared nowhere in Suckling’s coverage.
I contacted several of these producers directly. It quickly became clear that many had not declined to participate; they had never been asked. This raises obvious questions. Who advised Suckling on which wineries to visit? What criteria were used? Were there unexamined biases, whether for or against particular producers or regions?
The cumulative effect of these omissions is that the published results offer, at best, an incomplete picture of Texas wine, and at worst a skewed one that misrepresents both the quality and diversity of the state’s best producers.
Texas has roughly 150 producing wineries. Even allowing for logistical constraints, the absence of so many significant names is difficult to justify.
Notable Omissions Across the State
Even within the Hill Country—where Suckling chose to base themselves—the omissions are striking.Fall Creek Vineyards, the oldest winery in the Hill Country, was not asked to participate.Lost Oak Winery and Michael Ros Winery were also not asked.
In North Texas, Eden Hill Vineyards & Winery, Arché Wines, and Edge of the Lake Vineyard & Winery were not contacted.
In East Texas, Kiepersol Estates was not asked.
In the Texas High Plains, omissions included Bingham Family Vineyards (which also operates in the Hill Country),English Newsom Cellars (also in the Hill Country),Newsom Vineyards (also in the Hill Country), and Oswald Vineyard.
Other wineries missing from the report—though I have not yet received confirmation from them regarding whether they were contacted—includeLlano Estacado Winery, Reddy Vineyards, Dry Comal Creek Vineyards,Messina Hof Winery, Pontotoc Vineyard, Saint Tryphon Farm & Vineyards, Solaro Estate Vineyards & Winery, and Wedding Oak Winery.
Any tasting that excludes producers of this stature cannot give readers an accurate or representative understanding of Texas wine.
Research Matters
I do not know who assisted Suckling in selecting wineries for this tasting, but the result suggests inadequate background research. Wine, like any serious discipline, demands intellectual rigor. Too often, food and wine writing is indulgent of superficial preparation, an attitude that should no longer be acceptable. The late Robert Parker understood this well and insisted on depth and seriousness in his work.
Suckling has the influence—and the responsibility—to do the same. At minimum, the scope and limitations of the tasting should have been clearly disclosed. Ideally, the sampling itself should have been far broader and more methodical.
The article opens with the declaration, “We arrived to conduct our second major tasting of Texas wines in less than a year.” Relative to the size and complexity of the Texas wine industry, this was not a “major” tasting. It was a biopsy.