Drink Up

But the city isn't the only area feeling the impact of the Texas Legislature. In May 2004, Emilio and Maria Ramos opened San Martiño Winery & Vineyards in Rockwall on the shores of Lake Ray Hubbard. "The liberation of some of the laws made a big impact, when we opened, on the size of our winery," says Emilio Ramos, a dean of technology for Dallas Community College District. "It's helped us increase the business." Ramos says their initial business plan called for a 500-case winery. "Now we're pushing 3,500 cases this year," he says.

Most of the Sangiovese, Viognier, Syrah, Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, Merlot and Cabernet bottled at San Martiño comes from the Texas High Plains. But Ramos says he also uses small amounts of Chardonnay and Zinfandel from a four-acre vineyard he owns in the Southern California wine region of Temecula. Plus, he has a two-acre vineyard at the winery in Rockwall where he grows Blanc du Bois, a disease-resistant hybrid white wine grape developed by a University of Florida grape breeder, and Albariño from vines Ramos obtained from his grandfather's vineyards in Northwest Spain, an area that produces some of Spain's best and most expensive white wines. Ramos plans to expand his Rockwall vineyard to five acres.

But perhaps the oddest winery in Dallas is locked in a downtown high-rise: Swirll in the Davis building on Main Street. There Louis and Peggy Davion have established a street-level winery below the home they occupy in the lofts above. Swirll bleeds faux Tuscan touches with textured columns and arches, concrete floors and exposed ceilings, wooden wine racks and a wine-tasting bar. Like the Eubankses, the Davions' experience with fine wine and winemaking is not particularly deep, but that probably doesn't matter.

"Here at Swirll, we're not farmers," says Peggy Davion, a bubbly 58-year-old former residential real estate agent with spiky blond hair. "We're a pipeline business...We were wine lovers, of course, but not to this extent." The Davions don't make wine, either, at least not much more than what goes into the Swirll samples offered for tasting and sale. Inspired by a winemaking store in San Antonio called Water 2 Wine, the Davions say they founded Swirll to transition from their longtime careers (Louis Davion was a technician specializing in mainframe computer installation). Swirll is a role-playing fantasy where you are the winemaker. Customers taste the wines, choose their favorite, and then--for anywhere from $179-$359--set about to make a 28- to 30-bottle run of the stuff, hoping it approximates what was sipped at the tasting bar. "We pour the grape juice into the pail, you pitch the yeast, you become the winemaker," Peggy Davion says. You also toss in wood chips for some simulated barrel aging.

Far from a traditional winery, Swirll is little more than an attractive environment for fiddling with home winemaking kits. With four mixing and three bottling stations just aft of the tasting bar, Swirll supplies varietal grape juices and concentrates in 6-gallon bladders ("Like a mini-waterbed," Peggy says) from the British Columbia firm Winexpert Inc., owned by the Canadian winery Andrés Wines Ltd. Winexpert bills itself as the world's largest manufacturer of premium winemaking kits, and Swirll stocks Winexpert's Selection brand of juices, which range from New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc to Stag's Leap District (Napa) Merlot, to Barbaresco (Italy). With Winexpert's Island Mist brand, customers can ferment fruit flavored wines such as black raspberry Merlot and peach apricot Chardonnay. The winery also offers kits for Port, cream sherry and Riesling Eiswein or ice wine, the German wine rendered from frozen grapes. "You could put it on your pancakes, it's so good," Peggy Davion insists.

Once the wine is blended, the plastic buckets are stocked on steel racks in a temperature-controlled backroom for fermenting. Swirll's "winemakers" then transfer the wines at various stages to a stepped series of 6-gallon clear plastic carboys for racking before the wines are clarified and filtered.

Though this is hardly the stuff to arouse the tongues of hardcore wine enthusiasts, Swirll's concept will no doubt appeal to downtown's herd of professionals huddled in firms and partnerships. What law partner wouldn't beam over a few bottles of French Merlot with his or her name on the label?

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Will Texas cities be the next terrain to be invaded by hordes of commercial winemakers? With the Texas wet-dry patchwork cast into irrelevancy, the bet is good that they will. As wine consultant Bobby Cox says, Texas law has been a suffocating barrier, forcing the industry into Lilliputian dimensions for generations. Now Texas wineries can infiltrate metropolitan areas, where most of the state's wine enthusiasts live.

The propagation rate of new Texas wineries and vineyard acreage is likely to accelerate at a mind-bending pace. Gabe Parker, owner of Homestead Winery in Ivanhoe and chairman of the Texas Wine & Grape Growers Association legislative committee, says he expects the total number of Texas wineries to strike between 300 and 500 over the next five years. By contrast, California has 1,294 wineries. But the growth comes with a stern warning: Texas is perhaps the riskiest region on the planet to grow and produce wine. "It helps to be good and rich, but it really helps to be lucky," Cox says. "The newcomer always takes it in the shorts. "