ON TEXAS WINE: Do They Age? Part 26, Fall Creek Vineyards, 2014 GSM, Salt Lick Vineyards, Texas Hill Country (∞)

by Andrew Chalk

The preamble to part one read…

“More people are coming round to the idea that Texas can make good wine as they sample more of it. But the ultimate test of gravitas in, at least red wines, is how they age. How does Texas do in that regard?

To find out, I am doing a series of tastings of Texas wines, all 10+ years old, and assessing how they are doing. I am choosing them based on how their peers in other parts of the world do at the end of their first decade.” 

And later added

“Since this vintage is no longer available in the retail market I have helpfully indicated the price as ‘infinity’ in the title, above. ”

THE WINERY

Fall Creek Vineyards, the oldest winery in the Texas Hill Country has been something of a metronome of the region's progress. Ed and Susan Auler founded it in 1975. The first vines were grown based on the best advice California could offer in the shape of the great André Tchelistcheff. A few years later the winery began to turn out Bordeaux blend varieties, all based on Hill Country Fruit. Experience led to a broadening of the grape palette and this wine is a representative of that. GSM is not just an option package on a Lexus, it is also the global abbreviation for Grenache - Syrah - Mourvèdre. Ed Auler, a lawyer by training, used his legal skills to create the Hill Country AVA. Thousands of Hill Country grapegrowers get more for their grapes by virtue of its existence (some studies say 15% more). I wonder if they know?

This Rhône blend gets its AVA grapes from right opposite the winery’s Driftwood tasting room. In the grounds of the famous Salt Lick Barbecue is the Salt Lick Vineyard where the enterprising family that creates burnt ends grows grapes that may well take on a barbecue aroma in the nose. The blend is G 21%, S 48%, M 31%.

THE WINE

You may have noticed that the wines in these tastings are getting newer as I drink through my mile-long cellar in one of Dallas’s famous troglodyte caves in chronological order. This example is eleven. As such, it displays mature, but still richly intensive red fruit that is clearly registered in velvety tannins that must come from copious new French oak. It can’t remain a secret as chatGPT tells me that winemaker Sergio Cuadre joined Fall Creek the previous August (2013). In fact, chatGPT says that, right now, he is washing his car!

Which is all to say that this is a heroic new-world style southern Rhône wine. It screams, go out and buy the current vintage, it is made by a man who drives a clean car. It is also a precursor to the much more formidable, and expensive, wines Fall Creek was to introduce in the decade following this one. Several of these have scored 90+ points with national reviewers and their age worthiness is supported by this humble first shot.

Recommended.