SLATE THEORY HAS ALL THE PIECES

Slate Theory Winery and Tasting Room is one of the most impressive-looking facilities in The Hill Country.

by Andrew Chalk

You never know how a new winery will pan out, but you can see if they have all the pieces in place to be successful. Slate Theory does.

• Tasting room in a premium location;

• Tasting room is an iconic building. One of the most distinctive in the Texas wine industry. Everybody stops;

• Winery is equipped with the most modern equipment to use the latest science and the best experience to make great wines;

• Winemaker is experienced, comes from a successful winery;

• Tasting room/marketing leadership is experienced;

• Clear commitment to Texas grapes (makes them part of the Texas wine industry, even if they came from outside);

The tasting room is a large part of the main floor of the winery building and is like the lobby of a modern 5-star hotel.

They gave me a tasting of their wines on a site visit in March, and they are good. I especially found the whites showing subtlety and refinement, rather than the oafishness that white wines from ripe Texas grapes sometimes exhibit. Viognier (aged in one third new French oak, one third neutral oak, and one third Acacia), Sauvignon Blanc, and Sangiovese Rosé were all great to ponder over on a hot Texas day. 

The underground catacomb of winemaking and storage areas is a frankly humbling tour of an organisation ready to take on the big time. The thick stone walls exude an almost Victorian sense of permanency and long-term purpose. I bet the wine club members have some really memorable dinners in the barrel room, and summer socials, to the strains of live bands, in the vast tasting room.  

The estate vineyards are near Fredericksburg on Pfiester Road, where there is also a wedding venue La Bonne Vie Ranch.

Slate Theory’s owners are the Jones Family out of Midland, TX. They were in the oil industry providing salt water disposal services from the 1980s until the 2010s. According to the winery web site they left that for the stability of the wine business. I had to do a double-take there. The wine industry stable? The salt water disposal industry must have been a roller-coaster. 

They purchased 1851 Vineyards on US-16 southwest of Fredericksburg, in 2019. They renamed it Slate Mill Wine Collective and expanded its scope to host several emergent Texas wineries, and its size from 35 to 130 acres. They sold it in 2022, as they had purchased Torre di Pietra Vineyards on US-290 and decided that was the site for the direction they wanted to move in. 

This guy is in the gift shop

The Slate Theory name is an homage to the seventeenth century English philosopher, John Locke, who enunciated Blank Slate Theory (or Tabula Rasa) in his book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689). I like its application to the creative side of winemaking and maybe Slate Theory should create a novel wine named Tabula Rasa. My problem is that, from Slate Theory’s website and tasting room paraphernalia, it appears to have been implemented to mean a fascination with the macabre. There is a skull on the label of the Sauvignon Blanc, a skeleton modelling shirts in the gift shop, and other things. I see the connection between creativity and winemaking, the two are on the same track, but I fail to see anything good about associating wine with the macabre. Maybe I don’t get out enough.

I would not abandon Locke’s thinking (indeed, his thoughts shaped the American Declaration of Independence), I would fully embrace it: Change the name of the winery to Blank Slate Theory and market it emphasizing the creative process going on between winemakers Tyler Wolz and David Newitt. Tabula Rasa could be their halo wine. A name like this is not unheard of. Examples of existing wineries who have based their name around a concept are Center of Effort , The Scholium Project, and Sine Qua Non.

While reorganising, they may want to correct their patriarch’s apparent name change on their web site.. He began as Randall but became Cody on leaving the oil fields. Or maybe eldest son Cody’s biography got mashed with his father’s page and nobody read the copy.   

I would also trim “illnesss” to “illness” on the “About” page. I think it is laudable and arresting to see an appeal for charity so prominently on a winery website, but spell check!

The winery donates to NAMI once a month, and also partners with The Big Silence, an Austin mental health charity.

With the relaunch they should also send their best wines to the most influential wine shows. Like every other Texas winery, they have Saturday afternoon visitors who come in and tell their tasting room staff that Texas wine is not as good as California wine. That is when the staff make available the picture of the Gold or Silver Medal from the San Francisco International Wine Competition, or the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, or the New York Wine Show, or the Finger Lakes Wine Competition, and explain that it was obtained by beating dozens of California wines in the opinion of expert judges (90% of whom did not come from Texas) and who tasted blind. 

If you need something to restart the conversation with visitor-man, ask how his journey was.   

The medals are one way, a simple way, an inexpensive way, of giving a new winery street cred. as well as harping the quality of the wines.   

CASE STUDY: THE BLANK SLATE THEORY APPROACH TO VIOGNIER

David Newitt and Tyler Wolz gave me some insight on the skunkworks type of environment that prevails at Slate Theory as we tasted through their oaked Viognier. I reproduce their description blow-by-blow below because it suggests that Slate Theory is a really fun place for a winemaker to work. 

Background noise made it difficult to distinguish between their voices so, in the transcription below, I attribute all comments to both. 

D&T:  So, this is a Viognier. This is our oaked Viognier. It was done in 33% French oak, 33% neutral oak, and the other 33% was Acacia wood.

Me: So, why the Acacia wood? 

D&T: The Acacia wood, in my opinion, doesn't really give it any woody oaky character. It kind of just enhances the mouthfeel, kind of gives it a little bit more lightness. And it boosts the aromatics. It's a pain to deal with, but... It's something we experimented with.

Acacia wood, it dries out so quickly if it's empty, so you have to pretty much throw the barrel into a bin full of water to hydrate it. But, the setting on the log actually was done in 18% Acacia for a month. And then it went back into stainless. It just adds a little bit of texture on the mouthfeel.

Me: Yeah, because if the resins and stuff come out of the wood, then that would add body and flavors.

D&T: Our first year dealing with Acacia wood, we didn't know anything about it, so we did certain percentages on different logs, and we found out 15% Acacia was way too much.

Me: Way too much? 

D&T: Way too much. So, like I said, how it enhances the paper profile.The malolactic characteristics, the buttery notes, it enhanced it to where it was almost unbearable. 

Me: Enhanced the what, the buttery notes? 

D&T: Yeah, so during the malolactic fermentation, you get that diacetyl. You get like the buttery popcorn notes in it. And it enhanced those masses.

Me: That's what the Acacia wood did? 

D&T: Yeah, that's what's in it, that 15% in there. Made it unbearable, but luckily, that was back when we were at Mills [Slate Mills] and we were doing some experiments. I say experiments, but we were kind of doing it for the tasting room at the same time. Where we did three white wines. We did a stainless version and an oak version. So we did a Marsanne, a Roussanne, and a Viognier. The Marsanne had that 15%. So we had to end up blending all the stainless with the Marsanne. 

Me: Kind of suppress it. 

D&T: Knock it down a little bit.