EATS // saluté A worldly look at wine
REDS, WHITES & BLUEBONNETS Occasionally you find interesting wines where you least expect them. The Texas Bluebonnet Wine Trail is one such place where creative winemakers are not afraid of thinking outside the bottle
E
PHOTOS: Shutterstock.com
ach spring, carloads of tourists pack east Texas roads looking for bluebonnets, a violet-blue flower that blankets pastureland and signals winter is over. The native wildflowers are so popular that an entire website has been created to report bluebonnet sightings. Suffice it to say, most tourists are too busy snapping photos to realize they are in the midst of an emerging wine region. The seven wineries along the Texas Bluebonnet Wine Trail are young compared to those in California and even to the Texas Hill Country, which has been a popular wine tourism destination in recent years. But the winemakers along the Bluebonnet Trail, which lies between I-45 and U.S. Highway 290 in Washington County near Brenham, are demonstrating their creativity and their commitment to creating a new wine region along with some unusual wines. “We made a lot of bad wine at first,” says Steve Morgan, a former engineer who now owns Saddlehorn Winery that is situated on a scenic 390-acre
122
I lakeandsumter
.com
