I’m a first-timer at TEXSOM’s Sommer Camp in Irving, Texas this year. I’ll be sharing my conference experiences here on The Wine Fairy blog. This is Part Two, in which we polish a billion glasses, drink a really old Napa Cab, and pair sweet Bordeaux with Tex-Mex. If you haven’t read Part One, you can check it out here.
Did we all dream of stemware? There’s a high probability that at least a few Sommer Campers were polishing wineglasses in their sleep on Thursday night, only to wake up on Friday morning and do it again.
But all that hustle paid off, because as of Friday evening, many thousands of crystal glasses were ready for TEXSOM, Texas’s premier wine education conference. Spotless, counted, allocated, and staged, they sat waiting to be united with the marvelous wines that were simultaneously arriving on the dock.
It’s my second day at Sommer Camp, where I’m among the several dozen volunteers who are helping to get things ready for opening day. I’m here to meet some people, encounter some wines, and to immerse myself in several days of working, tasting and learning.
The morning began, as yesterday did, with wines from Virginia. “Virginia wine: It’s what’s for breakfast,” Sommer Campers chuckled as we passed around the bottles. Just like Thursday’s wines, they were varied in style and united by high acidity and intense fruit character.
Lately, I’ve been hearing lots of buzz around Virginia in the wine media. (One of WSET’s two research paper topics last year was Virginia, and a significant number of Diploma candidates have been studying and writing about Virginia wines. Coincidence? I think not.) Virginia Wine, the trade group, also supports Sommer Camp every year by sending wine for campers to taste and share.
As a Texas wine supporter, I can see a lot of parallels between Virginia’s wineries and Texas’s. (Focus on events/tourism, recent emergence of some excellent small producers, difficulty marketing lesser-known varieties, etc.) I visited Loudon County recently and enjoyed the wines–but Sommer Camp is one of the only places that I’ve been able to taste them outside of the state. Two Sommer Campers, Jesse and Brittany–recent transplants to Texas who are Virginia Wine enthusiasts–led us in a tasting of three wines. Along the way, they explained some of the history, locations, and styles of the Virginia producers.
Mornings at TEXSOM usually mean bubbles, so we began with a 2021 King Family Vineyards Blanc de Blanc Brut. Hailing from the Monticello AVA, it’s a skillful take on a classic style–lively and fine-textured with fresh apple and sourdough flavors. The 2023 Walsh Family Sauvignon Blanc was vivid, bringing grapefruit and lemongrass to lighten its Sauv Blanc pungency. And the 2022 Paradise Springs Petit Manseng was a lovely surprise. Complex and textured, it leans fuller and dry with stone fruits, tropical melon, and musky aromas of guava and magnolia.
After that highly enjoyable Virginia wine interlude, we shuffled back into the dish room to polish some more stemware. The racks were piled high–but thousands of glasses are no match for many hands. Soon, glassware man Clay announced that we were ahead of schedule–hooray!
Sweet Wines of Bordeaux and Abruzzo DOC Lunch
Lunch on Friday was a very special treat: A joint presentation featuring the sweet wines of Bordeaux and Abruzzo DOC. Leading us in a tasting through the roughly twelve (!) wines at lunch were Emma Baudry of Union des Vins Doux de Bordeaux and Jeremy Parzen, Abruzzo’s wine ambassador to the United States.
The Bordeaux segment was focused on the variety of Semillon–its history in Bordeaux and its many flavorful expressions. We tasted five Bordeaux including sparkling, dry, and sweet, with a special emphasis on sweet whites from the Right Bank.
There are eight appellations of Bordeaux sweet white wine, producing two styles–Moelleux (sweet) and Liquoreux (really sweet). The style permitted depends on the appellation. They have Semillon as their base (sometimes with Sauvignon Blanc) and are usually produced via botrytis. Depending on age, vintage, and winemaking choices, they exhibit a staggering range of flavors, from herbs, citrus, and ginger to tropical/exotic fruits and nuts.
With each wine came suggested food pairings. Everyone knows that sweet Bordeaux is great with cheese, but Emma’s pairings included unexpected ideas like fish curry and roast chicken. The high sugar tempers salty and spicy foods, while the heightened acidity keeps the wines refreshing.
We opened our minds to the possibilities of pairing savory dishes with these rich and complex sweet wines. “I know here you drink them with dessert, but sweet and sweet is not good,” she instructed us. “The palate needs to be balanced.” She later declared the Sommer Camp meal pairing–a Tex-Mex buffet–to be “perfect.”
Jeremy Parzen’s segment was also centered around one variety: Montepulciano, the hero grape of Abruzzo. Montepulciano is highly valued in Italy for making deeply colored, moderate-tannin red wines that are easy to enjoy at the table. But like any superhero, Montepulciano has a clever disguise. It’s also the grape behind Cerasuolo, the cherry-hued dry wine that was the guest of honor at Friday’s table.
The familiar, plummy and (usually) inexpensive Montepulciano d’Abruzzo wines are the most important export. But Cerasuolo is what Jeremy described as Abruzzo’s “own wine”–the wine that Italians prefer to drink at meals and celebrations.
It may look pink, but Cerasuolo is properly classified as a light red wine–even when made with free-run juice. That is where it properly belongs on wine lists, both for food pairing and price/marketing reasons. As Master Sommelier James Tidwell pointed out during the Q&A, Cerasuolo is priced more like a red wine and doesn’t compare favorably to inexpensive pale rosés in the mind of a consumer.
“You shouldn’t see any Provence pink,” Jeremy said, adding that Cerasuolo producers must submit their wines for a color evaluation in order to use the Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo appellation. An even stricter chromatic test is proposed for the new premium category, Cerasuolo Superiore.
I had been asked to take notes for TEXSOM’s media team and my hands were busy typing. So alas, I barely got to sniff most of these gorgeous wines during lunch. (Much less see how they tasted with fajitas!)
Fortunately, the open bottles also showed up later in the Somm Lounge, the cozy corner of the grand ballroom devoted to education and hydration. Many of them were also available at expo tastings during the main conference, along with even more selections from Bordeaux and Abruzzo.
If we’re caught up on work (and the presenter isn’t too busy), Sommer Campers are treated to “Somm Chats” in the afternoon. These are informal, half-hour meetings with wine experts who bring specialized knowledge–and yes, more wine.
Red Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo–don’t anyone call it rosé–had taken on a leading role at lunch. But the afternoon’s Somm Chat focused on premium white wines of Abruzzo, specifically from the Trebbiano grape.
Though it’s often regarded as a simple, early-drinking wine variety, that’s not all Trebbiano is capable of, according to Jeremy Parzen’s short lecture. The right combination of terroir, controlled yields, and aging can make Trebbianos to rival fine white wines anywhere in the world. He proved his point by pouring two Trebbianos–one young (2022) and one older (2014). Though each wine was distinctive, they were bound together in my mind by layered flavors of florals, nuts and honey with concentrated apple fruit.
It seemed that we had only just finished the Abruzzo tasting when the next lineup of Virginia wines hit the Somm Lounge. We then continued the day’s globe-trotting adventure, traveling from Italy back to Virginia, and then on to the Land Down Under. Australia expert Mark Davidson–who had also presented wine on Thursday–came back with two mystery bottles of exceptional quality. Sommer Campers tasted them as a group and talked over our impressions.
The blind bottles ended up being Tyrell’s Hunter Valley Semillon and a Wendoree Shiraz-Malbec blend–both 2005 vintages, in honor of TEXSOM’s 20th anniversary. We sipped on them with applause all around.
Friday’s Louis M. Martini Dinner – The Night of the 1968 Cabernet
The rest of the afternoon was devoted to setting up the seminar rooms and expo spaces…and of course, polishing more glasses. The work isn’t hard–especially with so many volunteers pitching in–but the days are long. With sore feet and dry mouths and dwindling caffeine levels, we settled in for one more Friday tasting: A hosted dinner by Louis M. Martini Winery.
I know I’m not surprising anyone when I say that big legacy brands don’t always get a lot of love in the wine education community. (Martini is owned by Gallo.) But their largesse was impressive, and their chosen wines remarkable.
Over dinner, Louis M. Martini’s estate director Michael Claypool talked through the legacy of this iconic Napa Valley winery. He discussed its scrappy past and its uncertain future, from Prohibition (bad) to the wine industry’s current moment of climate challenges and demographic panic (maybe worse).
Forks were hanging in the air as a room full of wine pros contemplated the possibility of a new generation uninterested in buying wine. Then, Michael dropped an even bigger bummer bomb: The prospect of a Napa Valley climatically unable to continue its focus on Cabernet in the next century.
On the theme of old and new, there was a selection of fantastic mountain wines to lighten the mood. We tasted a 2023 Monte Rosso Semillon from vines planted in the 1880s. The 2021 Gryphon Cabernet–young and powerful and classically Napa–was also on the table. Martini’s Estate Chef Aaron Meneghelli was in the room whipping up a special vegetarian pairing: Fried sunchokes glazed in pomegranate molasses and plated with carrot puree and watercress.
But the real stars of this dinner were the library wines that Martini brought out: The 1968 Cabernet Sauvignon and the 1971 Zinfandel.
I have never had the privilege of tasting a 56-year-old wine before, and I poured my own glass with excitement and reverence. (There was a bottle on every table.) The Cabernet in particular was in remarkable shape, holding onto its acidity and a cherry-fruit core along with its tertiary-driven nose and palate. The Zinfandel was more faded, but still totally drinkable. We learned that it’s co-fermented with a small amount of Palomino (in 1971 and continuing to this day).
In short, it was a stunning end to a Friday that was already jam-packed with learning and surprises. As part of the pre-event prep crew, it feels like we’ve had a full conference already–and TEXSOM doesn’t officially open until Sunday!
Though I feel that I have a lot of catching up to do, I’m incredibly grateful to the TEXSOM team for bringing me onboard as a volunteer. Lots more to come! (Read on for Part Three.)
Wines Tasted (selected):
King Family Vineyards Blanc de Blanc Brut (2021) – Monticello AVA, Virginia
Walsh Family Sauvignon Blanc (2023) – Virginia
Paradise Springs Petit Manseng (2022) – Virginia
Lagrange Bastiste Crémant de Bordeaux Brut (NV)
Château Bel Air Bordeaux Sec (2023)
Château Barbere Bordeaux Moelleux (2023)
Château Dauphine Rondillon Loupiac (2020)
Château La Grave Sainte-Croixe du Mont (2016)
Château Majoureau Côtes de Bordeaux Saint-Macaire Liquoreux (2023)
La Valentina Spelt Trebbiano d’Abruzzo Superiore DOC (2022)
Masciarelli Marina Cvetic Trebbiano d’Abruzzo Riserva DOC (2014)
Tyrell’s Semillon (2005) – Hunter Valley, Australia
Wendoree Shiraz-Malbec (2005) – Clare Valley, Australia
Louis M. Martini Monte Rosso Vineyard Semillon (2023) – Sonoma County, California
Louis M. Martini “California Mountain” Cabernet Sauvignon (1968)
Louis M. Martini “California Mountain” Zinfandel (1971)
Louis M. Martini “The Gryphon” Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (2021)
Sponsor disclosure: I was not compensated or provided any free products in exchange for this post. Opinions expressed on The Wine Fairy blog are entirely my own.
Wines were provided to Sommer Campers through TEXSOM partnerships with Virginia Wine, Charming Taste of Europe, Abruzzo DOC, Sweet Wines of Bordeaux, Louis M. Martini and Gallo.
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