March 23, 2025: Our Journey to Make the Best Wine in Texas + Unique Experiences
In 2017, Nikhila and I set out to create Kalasi Cellars. At that time we had a lot to learn about the business, but we charged forward regardless. From the onset our goal was to “produce and sell world-class quality, estate-grown wines in Texas, while providing customers unique and memorable tasting room experiences.” So let’s talk about some of what we’ve seen, learned, and achieved over the years against those goals.
Best Wine in Texas
First let’s talk about wine quality. Our goal was to make “world-class” quality wines. Admittedly, that’s a bit vague. Wine quality in Texas has changed dramatically over the last few years, and there are numerous Texas wineries that can stake that claim. But what we really wanted to do was push the boundaries of what can be made in Texas. We want to make the best wine in Texas – because why wouldn’t you want that as your goal? To do that we’ve undertaken continuous education, mentorship / networking, exhaustive research, and major investments. On the education side, Nikhila and I have both completed the UC Davis Winemaking Certificate program. This program is comprehensive – covering everything from planting a new vineyard to bottling wine. There’s extensive coverage of wine stability, testing, quality, etc. In addition to this education, we’ve both undertaken one-off training to dive deeper into critical subjects like winery sanitation. This education is thorough and has dramatically improved the quality of the wines we produce.
When it comes to mentorship and networking, we’ve found it very beneficial to learn from others that have been around the industry. Through conversations you learn about what works and doesn’t work in the industry (e.g., customer preferences). You learn a lot of what the books don’t teach you. Not everything is idyllic in the wine world – you have to deal with different grape / wine chemistry each year, different logistics, etc. that force you to make judgement calls and sometimes you need to lean on others for guidance as they may have encountered similar challenges in the past.
Along with the formal education and mentorship / networking, there’s still a huge requirement for ongoing education and research. There are internal processes (e.g., empty barrel maintenance), packaging products (e.g., corks to minimize oxygen exposure), etc. that we need to continuously learn about to make incrementally better wine.
As for major investments – we need the right tools to make the best quality wine. Sometimes it is non-glamorous tools, like a steamer that we use to steam barrels and tanks so that we can limit spoilage bacteria. Other times it’s the first optical sorting line for a Texas winery. Because of the optical sorter, we’re able to select the very best grapes to use for all our red wines. We want just the ripest berries – avoiding material other than grapes (MOG) or underripe berries. These two examples of investments are ones that are critical to raising the bar.
As a result of this education, mentorship, research, and investing, we’ve produced some really fantastic wines, with every vintage feeling like it’s an incremental step in the right direction. The 2022’s we’re currently releasing are really blowing us away. These newer releases have also been rated highly by prestigious reviewers, and we are optimistic that our next round of wines to be reviewed will also see rave reviews.
Texas Estate-Grown Wines
Eight vintages in, we’ve been able to achieve our goal of only using estate-grown grapes. This is a critical component of what we do with raising the bar on quality. In order to make the best possible wine, we need the best possible grapes. When you control the growing and logistics of grape harvest / transport, you can ensure that you’re starting with the right grapes for success. That’s not to say there aren’t other fantastic growers in Texas, just that the end-to-end view and control simplifies our ability to achieve our goal. Using only estate-grown grapes is not without its challenges and risks, but so far we’re proud to say we’ve been able to achieve our goal here.
Wine Tasting Experience
Regardless of how great your wine is, if you don’t deliver great experiences to customers, then you’re going to struggle. We’ve been very fortunate to build a talented team at our tasting room to work with amazing customers day-in and day-out. We believe that real interactions with our guests helps connect them to our story. We’ve been able to offer some unique tasting experiences, such as a wine and chocolate pairing, a private tasting, and a winemaker’s tasting, to our lineup. Then we have gradually built some really fun (and also unique) events for our club, such as a winery tour during harvest, or a made-in-house chocolate and wine pairing for Valentine’s Day. Lastly we’ve met some great people over the years that have swooped in to work with us for special events, like our winemaker’s dinners with Chef Rosh. Collectively we’ve been able to accomplish a lot to date, and believe we have some great tasting experiences to roll out in the near future. If there are other experiences you, our guest, would like to see – please let us know! Sometimes it can be difficult to know what’s interesting to you.
So that’s a bit of a look into our journey against our mission. It’s been a very eventful 8 vintages of winemaking and 4.5 years of running the tasting room, but totally worth it. We’re happy with the progress that’s been made to date, but not done trying to push the limits on 100% estate-grown Texas wine quality and wine tasting experiences.
