People like to say there’s nothing between
the THP and the North Pole to stop the wind
but barbed wire. The area is also called the
Llano Estacado—the Palisaded Plain or, more
commonly, the Staked Plain—and at up to
5,000 feet in altitude a testament to endurance and conquistadorial madness. Coronado
passed through in 1541, looking for a city of
gold, and found more or less what you find
today with the exception of assorted structures protruding from the 360-degree horizon. Disoriented, harassed by Comanche,
Coronado ordered his soldiers to drive stakes
into the ground, according to local lore, so he
could find his way back to Mexico.
There were no fine wine grapes on the
Llano Estacado in those days, but now dozens of European varieties of Vitis vinifera
grow here, and from them flow good wine and
good stories. Like that of the man who met me
outside the Lubbock airport in an old pickup.
He wore Levi’s, a plaid shirt, a down vest, and
sneakers (cowboy boots don’t cut it on cold
concrete winery floors). The crease in his graying beard was full of white teeth. “Gol-lee,” he
said, “it’s almost seventy degrees, and tonight
it’s dropping into the twenties. Welcome to
West Texas.”
He was Kim McPherson. His father, Doc
McPherson, was a chemistry professor at Texas
Tech and a true pioneer of the state’s modern-era wine industry. Back in the sixties, Doc and
a colleague found vines that researchers had
thrown out and planted them next to Doc’s patio, without knowing exactly what they were.
Some flourished, proving that fine wine grapes could take the climate. (Doc also tried planting
grapevines from Spain that one of his students
had wrapped around the rims of a used VW Bug
and smuggled over aboard a ship.) From these
serendipities sprang an industry and a way of
life no one predicted for the THP.
In the seventies Doc and his friend started a
winery called Llano Estacado on the outskirts
of Lubbock. Though they later sold out, the
winery remains part of the McPherson legacy
and is now the second largest producer in the
state, bottling upwards of 180,000 cases annually. Texas as a whole now makes about 1.2 million cases of wine a year, although it remains a
vinous puppy compared with, say, Bordeaux
or California. (Little Napa Valley alone produces enough grapes for some 9 million cases.)
Wine was made in Texas out of various fruits
from early on, but Prohibition shut down what
little commercial production had once existed. Now, the industry is growing rapidly—270
wineries at last count. So far, however, the national swirl-and-sniff press hasn’t given Texas
wine much good ink, the general belief among
critics being that the state concentrates too
heavily on its swilling tourist trade.
The THP is the second largest viticultural
area in Texas, behind the Hill Country, but it
has a bare handful of wineries and an overall
paucity of fruit. Llano Estacado is by far the area’s largest winery, and it has to buy grapes and
juice from elsewhere, including New Mexico
and California, to meet ambitious commercial
goals. McPherson Cellars, started in Lubbock
by ole Doc’s son in 2000, has a tenth of Llano
Estacado’s production, and though it too may supplement on occasion, the vast majority
of its wines are made only with grapes grown
right there on the plains.
Kim McPherson believes strongly in terroir,
that unique combination of soil and climate
that creates truly distinctive wine. This has
gained him a considerable following in Texas
and beyond. It was Kim to whom I was referred
whenever I asked knowledgeable people about
Lone Star viticulture, one adding pointedly,
“He’s an individualist.”
A vineyardist told me,
“Kim can be blunt. I wasn’t sure I wanted to
get into business with him. Thank God I did.”
Kim drove me past the Buddy Holly Center
and the old Cactus movie theater, along sparsely populated streets typical of small Western
cities that emptied decades ago and are beginning to refill as suburbanites seek better
schools and something to do at night. He pulled
in behind a low building on Texas Avenue left
over from the thirties, a classic example of art
deco and functional minimalism that had once
been the local Coca-Cola bottling plant.
“I wanted to hear the fire engines,” he said,
of his decision to build his winery here, instead of out on the plains. The long, curvilinear
“pillbox” window on the sidewalk that once
offered a view of Coke’s bottling line now revealed visitors happily bending their elbows
next to stemmed glasses of red and white
wine. We joined them and in the next hour
went through a dozen McPherson wines from
screw-cap bottles, a proven technology still
not embraced by traditionalists but accepted
by edgier winemakers.
What surprised me about the wines was their quality, and consistency. No matter what grape had gone into the bottle, they all had originated in hot European climates, and all had a recognizable McPherson signature: balance, structure, and lean, bright fruit well suited to assertive food.
“We’re the Ribera of America,” Kim said, a reference to the Ribera del Duero, one of Spain’s choice wine-producing districts on the dry, rocky northern plateau. It produces Tempranillo, Mourvèdre, and other varieties Kim thinks best suited to the THP. “The fruit behaves a little different here,” because of the extremes of temperature. “During growing season it’s ninety degrees during the day and sometimes forty at night. So we get great color and body.”
He grows some cabernet sauvignon—still the darling of American red wines—in a small legacy vineyard started by his father, but he isn’t really interested in grape varieties from Bordeaux. “When I mention merlot to Kim,” one of his growers told me, “he makes a spitting sound.”
My favorite McPherson red was La Herencia, which means “inheritance.” (“Which I’ve spent,” Kim added.) The wine’s a blend of mostly Tempranillo with Carignan, Grenache, and Mourvèdre, all widely used in Spain, and Syrah from the hot Rhône Valley in southern France. Kim doesn’t hesitate to blend grapes associated with different countries, and even mixes colors, a no-no in more genteel climes. (His Tre Colore is a blend of Carignan, Mourvèdre, and Viognier, a white Rhône variety that does exceptionally well on the THP.) I also liked his unblended Roussanne, a full- bodied Rhône white.
The McPhersons, father and son, have the reputation as the collective patriarchs of Texas wine. It was Doc who encouraged Kim to attend the University of California at Davis to learn winemaking, and later urged him to leave the less-stressful winemaking in NoCal to return to Texas and make wine for Llano Estacado Winery. A dutiful son, Kim complied, saying only, “I didn’t think you’d insist, Doc.”
Kim said of his time in Napa, where he worked for Trefethen Family Vineyards and others and knew many of the people who went on to enological fame, “I didn’t give a big one about the Texas High Plains then. Now I’d love to get four or five guys here together, the ones that do a really good job, and put on a dog and pony show. Bring Texas wines to the forefront.”
Eventually Kim went out on his own—with Doc’s encouragement—and has since been recognized as the THP’s vinous Yoda. Doc him- self had died just a few months before my visit, at age ninety-five. “Doc’s old ticker finally wore out,” Kim said, without elaboration.
We crossed the street to La Diosa (the Goddess) Cellars, a bistro run by Kim’s wife, Sylvia. Dark tiles, Spanish art on the walls, good
smells. A lean hombre in a black shirt sat alone
at the bar. He said as we passed, without turning around, “They’ve run out of Herencia,”
an ominous pronouncement.
The scene was
straight out of the 1890s except that the man
wasn’t talking hooch but wine made fifty yards
from where he sat. And it wasn’t a double-action Colt, the weapon that enabled Texans to
prevail over the Comanche, next to his hand,
but a luminous iPad.