C.L. Butaud Wines
Every bottle is 100 percent Texas-grown fruit, and the current lineup runs Graciano on its own, Tempranillo, Mourvedre and a Counoise off the High Plains.4
Why go
Randy and Brooke Hester started this in 2014 with one constraint, that the fruit is entirely Texan, and the interesting consequence is what they chose to plant their flag on.2 The 2023 Graciano is bottled as a single varietal rather than folded into a Rioja-style blend, which is the modern Spanish reading of the grape and not the traditional one.4 The Cease & Desist blend went the other way in 2022, back toward the Chateauneuf-du-Pape shape the couple had been making since their Lightning Wines project in 2011.4 That reads like the CV: Hester started as a 36-year-old intern at Cakebread Cellars, took viticulture and enology at night, and worked under Andy Erickson, Michel Rolland, Mike Hirby and Helen Keplinger at Colgin, Caldwell, Realm and Marciano before turning the training on Texas fruit.2
Order this / avoid
- Pour: the Graciano 2023, for fresh minerality and firm tannin, and because almost nobody in Texas bottles it alone.4
- Then: the Farmhouse Vineyards Counoise 2023, 100 percent Counoise from the High Plains AVA.4
- If you want white: the Albarino 2024, barrel fermented and aged, which the producer describes as keeping sea spray and citrus.4
What locals & experts say
- The producer, on the Graciano:
Modern Spanish producers have embraced Graciano as a stand alone varietal, which is what we have done here.
4 - I haven't found an independent rating of these wines. The producer's own page recites a Decanter 91 and a VinePair placing for older vintages, and I haven't read either at the publication that gave it.
Good to know
- There is a tasting room and the winery will not tell you when it is open. Visit Austin describes it as an industrial-style room in South Austin, on East St Elmo Road in the warehouse block that also holds The Austin Winery and Still Austin Distillery, and quotes the house rule:
C.L. Butaud and its sister label Pa Pa Frenchy is made with 100-percent Texas grapes, predominantly from the High Plains.
The winery's own site carries no tasting-room page, no hours and no booking route, so the Contact email is the only way in.14 - Where the bottles are, if the room is shut. The winery's own stockist page names Dai Due, Emmer & Rye, Hestia, Easy Tiger, Nickel City and The Roosevelt Room among its Austin accounts.5
- Hygiene: no public score exists. A winery that pours without preparing food may fall outside the food-establishment permit class, which would explain the gap, and an absent record is not a clean one.3
- Buying: the wines go mostly to a mailing list, with a statewide stockist directory on the front page for everyone else.5
Verdict
could-visit — A Texas producer with a rule rather than a range: every wine is 100 percent Texas fruit, and the current lineup is southern European in shape, a stand-alone Graciano, a Counoise off the High Plains, Tempranillo, Mourvedre, an Albarino. Randy Hester spent a decade in Napa cellars before starting it, which is what the varietal choices sound like. It sits at could-visit because no bylined Austin critic has scored the wines in anything read here, and because the tasting-room address is unresolved.