More than eighty people from Williamson County and beyond were in Milam County recently to take part in the Marek Vineyard annual grape harvest at the end of July.
“I have fun doing it,” said Chick Gladwin of Sun City. ‘This is the second time I’ve been out. You can’t go wrong with free food and wine.”
Gladwin is a wine club member with Georgetown Winery in Georgetown, which is owned and operated by Daniel Jr. and Becca Marek, former residents of Rockdale.
Daniel graduated from Rockdale High School in 1990 and spent four years in the Navy serving in Desert Storm and doing three sea service deployments before getting into the wine industry.
He and Becca bused in 82 people from Williamson County to help pick grapes for the wines made at Georgetown and Thirsty Mule wineries, which they own.
GRAPES—The Mareks moved to Georgetown in 2010 and first opened the Georgetown winery in Williamson County in 2007.
Of the 1,200 wine club members, 40 are from Milam County. Marek wines can be found at both Duchess locations in Rockdale and at Thorndale Meat Market, Daniel Marek said.
They have been offering the wine excursions during harvest in the fall and pruning season in the spring to their club members for the past six years, and according to Gladwin, the trips fill up fast.
Stacee Burns, a club member from Round Rock said, “We have a lot of fun. It feels good to come out and help out the winery. There’s lots of wine and good food. Plus, I’m learning all about the grapes that are being used in the wine I’m drinking.”
Marek said he harvested fi ve tons of Black Spanish grapes at his father’s place off of County Road 303A.
SOIL—“We average about 5-7 tons each year which is about 4,000-5,000 bottles of wine a year,” he said. “The Rockdale area is a perfect soil for grapes and is a potential to become a grape growing region in Texas with the right farmers and passion to grow grapes for Texas Wineries.”
Ed Hellman, professor of viticulture and enology, at Texas Tech University, which was the first university in Texas, and only a handful in the nation, to offer an undergraduate program in the study of grapes and wine agreed with Marek’s assessment.
“Why not have more grapes in Milam County,” he said. “Historically it takes somebody in the area to say, ‘I wonder what kinds of grapes will grow.’ “
Hellman said the challenges of growing grapes in the Post Oak Savannah region are not unlike the challenges in the Texas Hill Country. “They have the same insects and diseases with a little more rainfall,” he said.
Marek decided to grow Black Spanish (Lenoir) grapes in Rockdale because the soil is perfect. And according to Hellman, the variety is tolerant to Pierce’s Disease, a common bacterium that spreads and kills off grapevines.
“This is a statewide problem and the vines have to be treated year round,” Marek said of the disease.
His mother and father Daniel Sr. and Zephyr Marek work the vineyard on their property. Grape growing has been an active family tradition, since Marek’s great, great grandfather came to America from Czechoslovakia in the late 1800s. Vaclav Hanus planted over 100 grape varietals by himself near LaGrange and gave away his harvest, according to the Georgetown Winery website.
VARIETIES—“The sugar sand with the red clay is the same soils found in Italy,” Marek said.
“We planted our first commercial vineyard nine years ago in Milam County. They have been producing now for the past fi ve years.”
They have grown Lenoir, Cabernet and tempranillo commercially and the other varieties on test plots over three and a half acres.
The High Plains of Texas around Amarillo and Lubbock has 4,000 acres of vineyards in commercial production and is responsible for 85 percent of the grapes grown in Texas, according to the High Plains Growers Association.
“What you typically see outside the High Plains are smaller vineyards,” said Hellman. “You can have a few acres and turn them into wine, and as inefficient as that is, it can be profitable when a winery has its own vineyard. Once you have decent location and your marketing is successful, then maybe another winery will open up and another one.”
There is one other vineyard in Milam County, located to the northeast.
En Gedi Vineyards, was founded in 2016.
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