Winery hotels & vineyard stays in Texas Hill Country

Texas Hill Country is the second-largest AVA in the United States, and the part of Texas that has worked out what actually grows there. Rather than fight the heat with Cabernet and Chardonnay, the serious producers along US-290 between Fredericksburg and Johnson City have gone Mediterranean: Tempranillo, Mourvèdre, Viognier, Vermentino and Sangiovese on shallow limestone soils.

The AVA covers about nine million acres across 22 counties, though the planted area is a tiny fraction of that and most of the fruit in Texas wine is actually grown on the High Plains near Lubbock, where the elevation gives cooler nights. What Hill Country supplies is the tasting rooms and the visitors — the Fredericksburg wine road is the second-most-visited wine destination in the United States by some counts, and it is under 90 minutes from both Austin and San Antonio. Fredericksburg itself is a German settlement founded in 1846 and still trades on it, which gives the region an odd and appealing double identity: Texas-German bakeries and beer halls alongside Spanish and Rhône varieties. The limitations are real — late spring frosts, hail, Pierce's disease and summer heat all take a toll, and vintage variation is severe. Come in spring for the bluebonnets or in autumn for harvest, which starts unusually early, in July and August.