Sparkling in the Hill Country
San Antonio hit triple digits again this weekend, so I drove North from San Antonio to the Hill Country. Highway 290 through Johnson City and Fredericksburg can run a good ten degrees cooler and it happens to be lined with the best wine being made in the state. Recently, Texas sparkling wine has been taking root. If you read The Generation That Chose Bubbles last week, you know I’ve been tracking this trend closely. This weekend gave me a chance to dive deeper into this category, glass by glass, across four stops and one very well-timed bottle from three weeks ago.
Reddy Vineyards
First stop was Reddy, and I’ll admit the tasting room caught me off guard. I expected Hill Country and got something closer to West Texas, all leather and warm wood. The theme fits the brand better than a wine map would suggest. Reddy’s Hill Country tasting room opened in early 2025 in Stonewall in a remodeled space that used to house Cicada Cellars. It’s a short drive from everything else on this list, and is located on Highway 290.
Reddy is a grower first. Dr. Vijay Reddy, a fifth-generation farmer who holds a PhD in soil and plant science, planted the vineyard in 1997 after discovering what the Texas High Plains could do for grape quality. That estate, near Brownfield in the Texas High Plains AVA, has grown into roughly 300 acres and 38 varietals. It is one of the most diverse plantings in the state. For most of its history Reddy has sold fruit rather than bottled it. Dozens of Texas producers still source from the vineyard every year, and the estate label only started in 2015 once the family decided the fruit deserved its own name on the bottle. Vijay’s son Akhil, a dentist turned CEO, now runs the winery side.
The wine that greeted me at the door was a 2024 sparkling rosé, traditional method, made from Pinot Noir. It’s part of a young sparkling program that Reddy is building by hand, and the estate leans hard into the “grape grower first” identity: everything poured is 100% estate grown, right down to The Circle, a field blend from a 360-degree vineyard block planted in concentric rings, a layout the winery says is one of a kind in North America.
Standouts on the day: a Gewürztraminer and Riesling blend, a 100% Riesling, and a Picpoul that drank bright and easy in the heat. The surprise was Petals & Clay, a Sauvignon Blanc with real minerality, true to the grape and name. And then there was the 2019 Superior Texan, a Sangiovese and Tannat blend. At $40 it’s one of the better values I’ve tasted out of Texas all year. The newer 2022 vintage shifts the blend to 62% Sangiovese, 32% Petit Verdot, and 6% Cabernet Sauvignon, so if you loved the 2019, taste before you assume it’s the same wine.
Rebecca Caroline
A short drive down 290 gets you to Hye, and to William Chris Wine Company’s new sparkling-only label, Rebecca Caroline. The name comes from the combined middle names of Chris and Katharine Brundrett’s two daughters.
The tasting room opened this summer inside the historic Hye Post Office, a building with a real claim to Texas history: four-year-old Lyndon Johnson mailed his first letter there, and in 1965, President Johnson swore in his Postmaster General on its front porch. William Chris restored it without stripping out the character. It’s caviar service in a building that still has the old post office boxes, upscale and historic at the same time.
Everything here is traditional method, 100% Texas-grown fruit, produced across the street at William Chris Vineyards. Because the label is brand new, the wines are still hand-riddled, though the plan is to move to gyropalettes as volume grows, since hand-riddling is labor intensive, doesn’t scale, and the equipment isn’t cheap.
My favorite pour was a 100% Meunier from the Letkeman Family Vineyard, made extra brut with only 2 grams per liter of dosage. Meunier on its own is hard to find anywhere, let alone in Texas. The Dell Valley Cuvée, a Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc-driven brut, comes from Dell Valley Vineyard out in far West Texas, a site currently the subject of an actual AVA petition before the TTB (more on that below). And the Boxing Rabbit Cuvée works Sauvignon Blanc into the blend, an unusual move for a sparkling cuvée and one that gave the wine a bit more lift than I expected.
Hye Meadow Winery
Next door, literally, is Hye Meadow, founded in 2013 by Mike Batek, a former elementary Spanish teacher who traded the classroom for a vineyard. The patio is big and the pace is slower, which was welcome after the dry, focused lineup at Rebecca Caroline.
We tried the Hye-Albert Cuvée, an 80% Mourvedre and 20% Roussanne blend, then moved into the 2023 Chica, a riper, sweeter pour that felt like the right palate cleanser after all that extra brut wine. The real winner of the stop was a bottle of 2023 Viognier we grabbed to share with friends. It didn’t last long and I’ll be returning for it.
A Texas AVA cheat sheet
Texas has eight federally recognized AVAs: Texas Hill Country, Texas High Plains, Bell Mountain, Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country, Escondido Valley, Texas Davis Mountains, Texoma, and Mesilla Valley (which it shares with New Mexico). Everywhere I visited this weekend sits inside the Texas Hill Country AVA, the third-largest AVA in the country by land area, with Bell Mountain and Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country carved out as smaller sub-appellations within it. Reddy’s fruit comes from the Texas High Plains AVA, where the bulk of Texas’s wine grapes are actually grown. You can read more about the Texas AVAs from a story last April.
Dell Valley Vineyard, the source behind Rebecca Caroline’s Dell Valley Cuvée, isn’t in an AVA yet, but it’s trying to be. Texas A&M’s Dr. Justin Scheiner filed the petition, originally under the name “Hidden Waters” before it was changed to “Dell Valley” for better name recognition. It’s one of several Texas AVA petitions currently sitting with the TTB, a process that can take years to clear. It’s just outside Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
More names worth knowing
I grabbed a bottle of Hilmy’s sparkling rosé about three weeks ago and it’s worth a quick mention here. Hilmy is a family-run Fredericksburg estate that Erik Hilmy started in 2008 and opened to the public in 2012. It’s one of the more unusual sustainability stories in Texas wine: instead of pesticides, the vineyard uses a flock of guinea fowl for pest control.
No conversation about Texas sparkling gets far without Heath Sparkling Wines, the state’s first winery built entirely around bubbles. Heath launched in 2019 at Grape Creek Vineyards, the Fredericksburg estate the Heath family bought in 2006 from founder Ned Simes, who planted it back in 1983. Everything at Heath is traditional method with 18 months of sur lie aging, across a four-wine core lineup: Euphoria, Adoration, Ebullience, and Blanc de Blancs. Adoration, a rosé built mostly around Pinot Noir, and Ebullience are my two favorites in the portfolio. I’m consistently drawn to the blanc de noir and rosé styles over the blanc de blancs, and Heath is a good place to taste the differences side-by-side.
Keep an eye on Michael Ros Winery, too. It’s a small, family-run, 100% Texas operation in Fredericksburg pulling fruit from both the Texas High Plains and Texas Hill Country AVAs. Its Grenache is my favorite in the state right now. Michael Ros has also been an active presence in the Rhone Rangers’ Texas events, and for my money makes the best Rhone-variety wine coming out of Texas at the moment. It also has a some rising stars in the sparkling wine segment.
Six Twists in Fredericksburg
If you’re staying in town, Six Twists is worth carving out an evening for. It’s a dedicated champagne and sparkling wine bar with a rotating list that runs deep into both Champagne and sparkling wine from around the world, alongside a solid still wine list. Ask for Daniel. I spent a good chunk of the evening geeking out with him over Georgian wine, and Six Twists is the only place I’ve encountered that is pouring Georgian sparkling.
Fun facts
Reddy’s “Circle” field blend comes from a vineyard block planted in a 360-degree ring, a layout the winery says has no equal in North America. It stems from the circular irrigation that is widely used in West Texas agriculture.
The Hye Post Office, now home to Rebecca Caroline, is where a four-year-old Lyndon B. Johnson mailed his first letter, and where he later swore in his Postmaster General on the front porch in 1965.
Rebecca Caroline’s Boxing Rabbit Vineyard, source of one of its sparkling cuvées, started life in 1975 as Martin’s Vineyard and is the oldest continuously operating commercial vineyard in Texas.
Dell Valley Vineyard’s AVA petition was originally filed under the name “Hidden Waters” before it was changed to improve name recognition.
Hilmy Cellars uses guinea fowl, not pesticides, for pest control in its vineyard.
Six Twists gets its name from the six twists it takes to loosen the wire cage on a bottle of sparkling wine.
