Su Vino Wines
Over the Christmas holidays, my wife and I visited Su Vino in Grapevine, Texas. Su Vino has been referred to as a micro winery or a custom winery, because it offers customers the opportunity to “make your own wine,” as well as some specialty fruit-forward wines produced by the winery. Opened in 2003, the Grapevine News reported it was the first winery in Texas that “allowed customers to craft their own wines by selecting various juices blends and varietals.” In 2006, Thomas Ciesla with TexasWineTrails.com indicated that “custom wineries” was one of the hottest trends in the Texas wine industry with the Dallas/Ft. Worth area boasting eight such wineries.
Su Vino was originally owned by Tim Weinheimer and Patrick Nelson. According to Nelson’s LinkedIn profile, by 2005, the winery was “the top-producing micro-winery in the country, and winner of 14 medals in recognized international wine competitions.” In 2005 Weinheimer and Nelson sold the winery to David and Chari Scott. In an April 2008 article in Texas Cooking, David comments that he leveraged his background in retail to expand the business by including gifts and wine centric merchandise. The Texas Cooking article cites that winery bottles 6,000 cases annually and the winery has won 45 medals at various wine competitions. In 2008, the Scott’s launched two internet store fronts to compliment their winery. The first is a website “dedicated to fun, sassy, and sophisticated gifts and apparel for women wine lovers,” called WineDivaShop.com. The second is website “devoted to holiday items with a wine theme,” called WineChristmas.com.
My wife first visited Su Vino several years ago and brought home a bottle of Summer Rain, a 2004 Lone Star International Bronze medal apple Riesling. The following visit yielded a Sauvignon Blanc labeled Island Paradise. On the latest visit, we tasted and purchased a White Chocolate Port, which received my wife’s highest marks when she commented that it’s “Yummy.”
Su Vino is definitely a unique winery as in evidenced by it’s wine selection. While it doesn’t conform to standards that we’ve come to expect from the wineries we visit, it remains a staple on the list of wineries to visit when visiting the Dallas, Texas area.
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