For longtime Midlanders Tim and Amy Leach, a love of wine and family ties to Leakey, Texas, led to the creation of Frio Canyon Vineyard.Kim Leach, a manager of the winery, said the company was formed by her in-laws and grew from a small syrah (or shiraz) grape planting in 2007 to a 20-acre operation.“They’ve always loved wine, and Amy’s family has been going to a spot in Leakey for a couple of generations,” she said. “They had been going there for a while, and they kind of had a thought one day, 'W...
For longtime Midlanders Tim and Amy Leach, a love of wine and family ties to Leakey, Texas, led to the creation of Frio Canyon Vineyard.
Kim Leach, a manager of the winery, said the company was formed by her in-laws and grew from a small syrah (or shiraz) grape planting in 2007 to a 20-acre operation.
“They’ve always loved wine, and Amy’s family has been going to a spot in Leakey for a couple of generations,” she said. “They had been going there for a while, and they kind of had a thought one day, 'We love wine, and we love this area.'”
Kim said that from the first planting, the idea and the winery began to take shape — and it has done well.
“They won gold and silver medals a few years later at a San Francisco wine competition,” she said. “From there, they brought in viticulture expertise from Texas A&M to help on the viticulture side, and ended up planting 20 acres there in Texas.”
Today, the winery offers about six wines, with several new ones expected to be released in the spring.
“I think we are starting to get known for our tempranillo,” Kim said. “It’s really delicious. Our tempranillo is incredibly bright and energetic. We won an award for it a couple of years ago. We won the Best of Texas red wine at the San Antonio Rodeo.”
Frio Canyon Vineyard said they make single-vineyard wines that focus on small lot blends. They also emphasize texture and balance in their carefully crafted blends and varietals, focusing on quality over quantity.
“I just want to emphasize that our approach is really centered on quality,” Kim said. “And so we make small lots, and we really try to make the highest quality wine we can. We don’t try to make the most or be the flashiest winery. We just want to do what we do very well. And so that kind of guides all of our decision-making. In fact, we hand-harvest the fruit, and we age it in French oak barrels.”
As far as gifting wine to the wine connoisseur, Kim said the Midland-headquartered vineyard offers a wine club with semiannual shipments, as well as opportunities for tastings. She encouraged shipping wines only during the winter months to ensure the wine is kept at a consistent temperature. She also recommended matching the wine’s intensity to food, with lighter wines for poultry and fuller-bodied wines for beef.
For wine tastings, Kim said customers can book directly with the vineyard for the tasting room located in Leakey.
“We start with the rosé, and then we kind of go bigger and bolder from there,” she explained. “It’s a really great survey of what we have going on and what our latest offerings are. It’s fun getting to walk people through the story of the wine and sharing little anecdotes about each one while they’re tasting.”
Typically, Kim said the wine tastings can last anywhere from 45 minutes to a little over an hour.
“We tend to pick the varieties that do well in our warmer Texas weather,” she told the Reporter-Telegram.
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