We are so excited to be named a winner of the 2025 Vintners Wine Cup competition for our 2023 Sparkling Wine (Pinot Noir). Follow the link below to read the complete article!
“In her tiny house tasting room, a couple of Jones’s pals were seemingly already a few samples in. The 2023 trebbiano bubbly on offer that day was rounder than you’d typically want in a sparkling wine but bursting with a nose-tingling yeastiness. Jones said Texas is an unexpectedly great place to make sparkling wines, thanks to limestone in the soil. (Typically, bubblies are made from cold-climate grapes.) In 2007 her family planted blanc du bois grapes, perfect for sparklers, on some land outside College Station that had been passed down through generations since the 1870s, but it wasn’t until 2020 that she started making her own sparkling wines.
She now makes four each year out of a variety of grapes, including Texas-
grown pinot noir. When asked where she got the famous cold-weather grape in Texas, Jones said that there were three vineyards in the High Plains that grew them in 2023. Wistfully, she added, “I’ve tried to get some since then, but I haven’t been able to. Maybe next year. It’s my goal.”
Expect to leave Fredericksburg with sunburned arms, an obliterated palate, and more than a case of bottles you can only get in the Hill Country. My haul contained wines from Ab Astris and Elisa Christopher along with a few other places I enjoyed, including Sandy Road Vineyards, Kalasi Cellars, Ron Yates Wines, and Pebble Rock Cellars.”
We are so excited to be named a winner of the 2024 Vintners Wine Cup competition. Follow the link below to read the complete article!
We are happy to be one of the few that make Sparkling wine in Texas. Here is a snippet from the article!
“One of the most common misconceptions people have is “oh, you mean a pét nat?,” and we have to explain what we mean by méthode champenoise,” says winemaker/co-proprietor Elisa Jones of Elisa Christopher Wines.
“When I married Chris, his favorite wine was sparkling – and we drink sparkling wine every week at home, so we decided we really wanted to make traditional method sparkling in Texas,” she says. Jones, a former US intelligence officer, co-founded her 43-acre (17.4 ha) Texas Hill Country winery and estate vineyard with her husband Christopher in 2022.
“I did not want to be just another winery in the Hill Country,” Jones insists. “I wanted to extend my passion for sparkling wine into making it.”
Elisa Christopher Wines, located in the Texas Hill Country, has made history by introducing full-scale sparkling wine production to Texas, utilizing locally grown grapes and the traditional méthode champenoise. This move aligns with the surging global interest in sparkling wines. The winery’s recent acquisition of specialized equipment, including the Oenoconcept Duo riddling machine and TDD Grilliat Machines, demonstrates their commitment to excellence and sets a new standard for sparkling wine production in Texas, aiming to elevate the region’s wine reputation.