Vinter Series pairs nicely with Texas wine industry

The 21st Annual Vintner Series returns at the Blair House Inn for the year 2022 as vineyards across the Hill Country look to showcase their wines.

Chris and Lois Mahoney have been putting on the Vintner Series for the last eight years since they acquired the Blair House Inn.

“In about January for six or seven nights, we put on these Vintner Dinners,” Chris Mahoney said. “It’s our Saturday night dinner but what makes it unique is that there will be a local winemaker or vintner that will come to the Saturday night dinner. We will feature their wine. The wine is complimentary, so if you were to come to our place and have dinner the wine is complimentary. Every Saturday night there is a different vintner here featuring their wine. So people get a great dinner, sample three or four different wines from that winery, and it’s a winwin for everybody. It’s good for us, good for the vintner, and it’s great for the guests.”

Because of the intricate pairings of the wine and food, Blair House Inn plans these dinners out months in advance in order to find the right pairings for both the wineries and the chef.

“In the fall we contact a number of wineries and line them up to be here,” Chris Mahoney said. “We will share our menu with the winemaker and a lot of times they will visit our chef to come up with appetizers, soup, salads and entrees that can be paired with the wines. Most of the time it is three wines, but there is a lot of planning ahead on what the menu and wines are going to be.”

The Blair House Inn and the local wineries that they help showcase are all located in what is collectively called the Texas Hill Country AVA.

AVA, or American Viticultural Area, are designated regions in the United States that grow wine grapes.

Texas was one of the first in America to produce wine grapes going back all the way to 1650 when Spanish Missionaries came through to help colonize the territory, but it wasn’t known for its wine until much more recently. Now, Texas is the fifth largest grower and producer of wine in the US.

Texas officially has eight AVAs in the state with Mesilla Valley AVA(1985), Bell Mountain AVA (1986), Escondido Valley AVA (1992), Texas High Plains AVA (1993), Texas Davis Mountain AVA (1998), Texcoma AVA (2005) and finally Texas Hill Country AVA (1991).

And the roots of the Texas Hill Country AVA were actually planted by one of the wineries being featured at the 2022 Vintner Series. Fall Creek Vineyards, which opened a tasting room in Driftwood across from the Salt Lick, has been instrumental in the Texas Wine Community.

The winery was started by Ed and Susan Auler after touring through France. The couple established the Hill Country into a vitalcultral region that eventually led to gaining an AVA accreditation in 1991.

“We’re concerned about putting Texas on the world (wine) map,” explains Ed in a previous article published in the Wimberley View. “For a time, a lot of people in Texas were putting things in a bottle that they didn’t know anything about. There’s been a lot of improvement over the years.”

The Hill Country AVA has since become the third largest AVA in the country, which covers nine million acres with over 60 wineries.

The Aulers work in the Texas wine industry has allowed other wineries in the Hill Country to flourish as well such as Pontotoc Vineyard, Texas Hills Vineyard, Kerrville Hills Vineyard, Solaro Estate, and Bell Spring Winery which all will be featured in the 2022 Vintner Series at Blair House Inn.

That effort and care is what has allowed the Mahoneys to enjoy keeping up and maintaining with the Vintner Series at the Blair House Inn.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Chris Mahoney said. “When we got here and acquired the business, the Vintner Dinners were already something that happened every year, and you can tell those Saturdays were very popular and busy and yeah it’s always been that way… It’s like I said earlier, it’s a winwin for everyone, and it’s a tradition here at the Blair House Inn.”