United States of Wine

Landon Winery – Tempranillo – 2021 – Reserve

Purchased: Landon Winery – McKinney, Texas

Price: $36

After a delicious bowl of Frito Pie at Spoons in Downtown McKinney, Texas, we crossed the street to Landon Winery to try some of their red wines. Landon has several tasting rooms around the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and the one in McKinney provided a little warmth in the chilly air.

We tasted five wines, but chose to take a bottle of their Tempranillo to our family Christmas festivities the next day. It was our favorite and what this review will mostly be about. But we will have small snippets of reviews for the other four wines we tasted at the bottom.

We made sure to open the bottle 30 minutes early to let it breathe, learning at the winery tasting that this wine was going to need a little extra time. Upon opening, the bottle released a soft smell of wine, almost tender on the senses.

After waiting an appropriate amount of time, we gathered with our glasses filled with the dark red liquid. The first tastes gave us a lightweight generic wine flavor, a weakened version of a Spanish wine. One family referred to it as a “winey grape” with a “slight sour aftertaste.”

After nearly an hour after opening the bottle of Tempranillo, the aroma was better able to open up. It became ever so slightly softer, and the taste of fresh grapes off the wine expanded. Though the slight sourness in the aftertaste became more pronounced.

There was a family consensus that we would definitely drink this wine again, though we wouldn’t go out of our way for it. While it was easy to drink and even my beer-drinking father found it pleasant, there are far better Spanish Tempranillos for a third of the price.

Score: 7.5/10

LANDON WINERY TASTING NOTES – MCKINNEY

Landon Winery doesn’t grow their own grapes, but they are grown in the western parts of Texas. Most of their wines are made from these grapes, but they do have several wines made from California grapes.

Pinot Noir: This wine was very soft, as pinot noirs are, but smelled like tannins. It wasn’t very dynamic and we quickly moved on.

Petit Verdot: This one had a strange smell to it that reminded me of wet shoes. Definitely off-putting. It was definitely oakier than the Pinot Noir or Tempranillo, and it felt like a more dense dry wine. But a mix of high tannins and the oak made each sip feel like I was licking velvet.

Texan: This was darker and thicker than any of the previous wines we had tasted. It had a sweet smell with a bite. Tasting the wine revealed a very sweet taste, almost like a dessert wine with a slight carbonation. It felt heavy on the tongue, like molasses.

Signature: This wine was made from California wines, and the server admitted it was their best wine. That was disappointing to hear because I wanted to try a Texas winery whose signature wine was fully Texan. This wine was lighter in viscosity than our previous wines, with a more earthy flavor. In fact, the wine’s taste gave me a memory of being a child in South Texas and walking into the corner bodega-like shop. This small tiendita sold a lot of things our neighborhood needed, including fresh-made corn tortillas. The taste of this wine reminded me of grain, corn tortillas, sweet candy and dirt.