Hill Country wineries

Texas in some parts looks like Tuscany, so it's no surprise, that on top of cowboy hats and chicken steaks, wine is another reason for local pride. Besides, as they said in one of the leaflets we read, Texas is pretty much the size of France, so it can make pretty much the same wines. Everybody knows that here, in States, size matters. So if Pawel is the size of Joe McEnroe, then he will play as good tenis as he did. We're just teasing. We absolutely love Texas and we hope Texas loves us back.

So they started making wines. First vinyards opened in Texas at the end of 20th century, so more or less 25 years ago. Texas however reaches to the tradition from 18th century, when settlers from Spain started making wines. Nowadays most of wineries gather in Fredericksburg area, by the route 290 a.k.a. wine route. We chose one, open longer than the others and we went to try local specialties made by a couple of doctors - the owners of Duchman Family Winery. 

Duchman Family Winery

The place itself looks very nice. Road winds through the hills, the winery is quite large and fenced, the main building and its surroundings pretends to be Italy quite convincingly. There are wine vats inside that you can see, there is also wine tasting.

We are being served by a very nice woman, Cynthia. Out of couriosity we ask if we can park overnight there. Unfortunately not. Few more minutes of chat over (pretty good) Texan wine and...Cynthia suggests we can stay in her backyard. Meantime Pawel talks to a young guy that also works there, he is not only a soccer fan, he does not only loves Lewandowski, but also a few years ago he was in Germany during World Cup game, the same one that Pawel went to see. They both had a chance to see "fantastic" game of Poles against Equador. Game was commemorated with a moment of silence... 

Wine was ok but not to die for considering the price. But much more interesting than wine tasting is meeting new people, so we waited impatiently for Cynthia to get out of work. We took a bottle of wine we liked the most and despite the weather getting colder and colder we went to the nearby playground. We sat next to "do not drink alcohol beyond this point" sign and Maciek went to play.

Playground

And our son, always extremely careful, for the first time in his life decided to go down the slide on his back and not belaying with his feet. Too bad this slide was ending pretty high and the ground was not too friendly - he ended up with a big bump and a small cut on the back of his head. 

Recovery

Finally we went with Cynthia to her backyard. She invited us to use the guest studio in a hangar that could hold a half of a boeing inside, but we decided to stay in our trailer, we are home-birds, besides it would be too much hustle to move just for one night.

In the morning we are invited by Cynthia and her husband for breakfast. They ask about our plans, we tell them a ittle bit about ourselves and listen to their story. They are very nice and warm hosts. Cynthia is an artist and Bruce, her husband, radiocommunication engineer. She is full of energy, traveled a lot across Europe, now she dreams of rv-ing, she even asks what are we planning to do with Eddie and how much it would cost. Bruce doesn't seem very into the idea, looks more like stay-at home person. 

After a short conversation however we find out that he traveled a lot too, mostly South and Central America when he worked on different contracts. We leave with a bag full of food, coffee maker (our broke down and they had an extra one), and last but not least, one of Cynthia's paintings. We invite them to Poland and we hope they will visit us some day. 

How could we not love Texas?