The Texas Wine Industry Is Just Getting Started. Grape Farmers Say the End Is Near.
Something is killing Andy Timmons’s grapevines. On a cool Thursday morning in August, the 53-year-old farmer was walking me through one of his vineyards just west of Lubbock. “You see how these leaves are shriveled up?” he said, grabbing one of the chest-high branches and pulling it away from the trellis. Some of the leaves in the cluster were the size of my hand, while others were stunted and had curled back on themselves, as if in physical pain. “That’s called cupping.”
Timmons, whose long, white beard and confident pronouncements give him the air of an Old Testament prophet, owns around two hundred acres of vineyards spread across the Texas High Plains. He comes from a long line of farmers. His ancestors grew row crops in Georgia until the Civil War forced them to relocate here. After earning a degree in agronomy from Texas Tech, Timmons went into the family business, growing cotton and peanuts.
His farms prospered, but Timmons worried about water. The Ogallala Aquifer, which irrigates the High Plains, was being pumped faster than it could be replenished. Droughts seemed to be more frequent and more severe. “I didn’t feel like I had a legacy I could pass on to my children,” he told me. “To make money with less water, you need a high-value crop.” And few crops offer higher value per acre than wine grapes.
Timmons starting planting grapes for economic reasons. But, like many other vineyard owners, he fell in love with the craft and challenge of winemaking. He sought out mentors such as Bobby Cox, who owns Pheasant Ridge Winery and has been growing grapes in the High Plains since the 1970s. Building on Cox’s advice, Timmons soon made a name for himself through innovations including the use of wind machines, to keep frost from setting on the leaves, and hail netting. He now sells grapes to some of the state’s most decorated wineries, including McPherson, Grape Creek, Pedernales, and William Chris. In 2014, Timmons and his nephew founded their own winery, Lost Draw Cellars, which sells its 100 percent Texas-grown wine from a tasting room in Fredericksburg.
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