Hi All Y'All
As the salutation implies, I'm not in Snorbens. I'm spending five weeks in Austin, Texas working on updating a computer course.

Austin is the capital of Texas, sited on the banks of the Colorado River which has been dammed to make a series of lakes that are good places for recreation, picnicking and relaxation.

Austin calls itself 'The Live Music Capital of the World', and it's true that music is everywhere. In the downtown area original 1800's brick warehouses, saloons and bordellos are now home to over sixty music clubs. 6th Street www.6thstreet.com is closed to traffic at night to make room for hoards of revellers who roam bars looking for blues, rock, honkytonk, country and a uniquely Texan country/rock sound. It's not just downtown; shopping malls, coffee shops, even business functions at work are accompanied by live music.

And so is the grape harvest. Texas is the fifth largest grape grower in the United States, with 47 commercial wineries. And many of them are based in the hills west of Austin.

Summer is fiercely hot here and the vintage takes place in August. Wineries make an occasion of it. The real workers will have been picking at first light to gather in grapes while they're still cool, but visitors are welcomed at a more civilized time to help pick bunches left behind by the professionals, tip them into a half barrel and stomp them with bare feet before making purple foot imprints on a souvenir t-shirt. All the while fiddle players and accordions keep up a toe tapping rhythm.

Stomping grapes is an incredibly sensuous experience as thick pulp squeezes between your toes and massages your sole.

The varieties grown here are much the same as you'll find elsewhere. There is a growing fashion for Italian and southern Rhone varieties, with Sangiovese and Viogner becoming popular,

Gary Elliott moved from grape growing in California to plant 18 acres of vines in the hill country. He is blending Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese to make a 'super-tuscan' style wine. His Driftwood Vineyards winery and tasting room are on a high ridge giving a view over a valley planted with his vines. This is the first year they have bottled wine; previously their crop was sold to make prize winning wines for Texas Hills and Becker.

Although US Prohibition ended many years ago its legacy continues with restrictions on the buying and selling of alcohol. Driftwood is in a county that is 'dry'; only in 2001 was a bill passed to allow wineries in dry areas to sell their own wine. Currently a bill is awaiting approval that will allow wineries to ship their wine directly to customers.

Legal restrictions are not the only hazard. Like all farmers, the grape growers are at the mercy of the weather. Although the temperature reached 110 Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) last week, there were severe frosts at bud set earlier this year, followed by storms that showered hail the size of tennis balls. All vineyards in the area lost some of their crop; some lost everything and have to buy grapes to make any wine. And Texas suffers Pierces disease, carried by leaf hoppers, which stops vines from taking up water. There's no cure and it is quickly is fatal to vitis vinifera vines. Vineyards are well separated and some have not succumbed, but others including the leading Fall Creek Vineyards lost thousands of mature vines, and others such as Hill Country Cellars have given up after losing all of them to Pierces. Fall Creek lost 65 acres and have only replanted 5 of them: they're waiting for a cure. Others are using a variety of methods to keep the leaf hoppers away, some spray with kaolin clay which is supposed to deter the insects.

Native American vines are resistant to Pierces Disease and some wineries grow these and hybridized vines (crosses between vitis vinifera and native vines), but few make a wine acceptable to consumers. An exception is sweet wines made from Blanc du Bois, a white grape with a riesling like petrol/oil tones fronting a sweetish body.

Bob Cottle at Pleasant Hill Winery planted a test acre with eight different varieties. Ten years later he decided that only one, hybrid Lake Emerald was suitable for the area. The vitis vinifera vines weren't productive when they survived and while native vines grew vigorously producing plenty of grapes, they made unpleasant wine. Bob bought vineyards in other areas and now drives 500 miles to tend and harvest vines at his main vineyard near Fort Davis.

Americans are not great wine drinkers. At most restaurant tables you'll see people drinking iced tea or a cola. The drinking age here is 21 which is ferociously policed. Downtown bars and music clubs won't admit anyone who cannot prove they are over 21 by showing a driving licence or passport. My two companions - who admit to being in their late 30's - were bemused at first to have to show their ID. Later another club asked only one of them to show ID which was an ego blow to the other. But age has some perks; I am just waved through.

Rules are relaxing slightly but anyone in the alcohol business has a tough set of restrictions placed on them to the detriment of consumers. The 'three tier' distribution system requires that distributors must intercede between retailer and producers which limits consumer choice and adds to prices. And Texan citizens are not allowed to order wine from other states, or via the internet.

However wine shops are no longer restricted to limit in-store tastings to three tiny pours, but they cannot allow wine drinking (?). So Grape Vine Market which has a gourmet food counter and restaurant cannot serve wine with their food.

NEW ZEALAND WINES IN TX

METACORK

1) A plastic sleeve, about 2 inches long.
2) A standard sized normal cork
3) A plastic screw inserted in the cork with a round top.
4) A plastic screw cap that is intended to seal the bottle should you with to keep the contents.

The bottle is specially designed, with a neck that swells out to match the width of the sleeve, so that the sleeve doesn't appear any wider on the bottle than a traditional capsule. The top of the bottle has a thread for both the sleeve and the replacement cap.

How does it work?
The cork has a plastic screw inserted in it. This is a helter-skelter type screw, so I guess this closure wouldn't be reliable for very long term aging or poor corks. The top of the screw ends in a plastic disc with has a wider radius than the inside rim of the capsule which fits between the top of the cork and the screw disc.
Thus when you unscrew the capsule it pulls up the plastic disc on the screw and thus the cork. For photographs of the components click here.
For a brief online movie of using the MetaCork click here.

What I liked about it
It was very easy to open, I didn't need to mess around cutting a capsule and using a corkscrew. it looks good and there's a useful cap to close the bottle.

What I didn't like about it
Primarily that it is using cork, and that it is more expensive. The MetaCork website questionnaire asks if you are prepared to pay 70c extra for a MetaCork closed bottle (then 50c & then 25c - I guess 70c is the additional cost, plus any time & extra machinery in the winery.

Final comments
This is a very clever, well made and easy to use device. It's easier to unscrew than a screw cap and there's more to get a grip on. But I'd rather avoid cork taint by having a screw cap.

IN THE PRESS

And USA Today - the only national daily paper in the US - selected nineteen summer white wines, ten were American, imported wines included Grove Mill 2002 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, Wairau 2002 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc

As they say here - "All y'all come back real soon, now!"

If you have been, thanks for reading.

Notes

• The computer course is "End-to-End Scheduling - with Tivoli Workload Scheduler V8R2." This program, previously known as OPC, running on a mainframe will schedule, run & control work on all the processors in a company, including UNIX, Windows, HP-UX etc .


• Y'all is singular, All y'all is plural.


• My detailed report on Texas wineries in 2000 (to be updated soon) can be found at www.wineloverspage.com/reports/texaswines.shtml

If you have been, thanks for reading.

© Peter May
1 September 2003

Any feedback? Send it to Peter.