Tiny Orange winery stuns the big guys with win
ORANGE - Alfred Flies just might be the David of the Goliath Texas wine world.
Texas has become a wine-rich state, with wineries scattered from the picturesque Hill Country to West Texas. The state boasts numerous vineyards with hundreds of acres of old-vine, heritage-style grapes, large facilities and master winemakers.
But the 85-year-old Orange man with six acres of native Texas muscadines humbled all the rest when his semi-dry Texas Moon Magnolia wine took home the Top Texas Wine award at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo International Wine Competition last month.
This was not a category win, such as Best Texas Dessert Wine, or Best Non-Vintage Wine, although he did take two other class awards. This was THE Top Texas Wine - beating out all other entries of all varieties.
"Big wine connoisseurs frown upon drinking sweet wine or chilling a red wine," Flies said, in a voice made huskier from a stroke and heart bypass surgery 12 years ago.. "There is a place for this - because I've succeeded at it."
The Houston competition is a large one, so it was no small accomplishment. Tasters uncorked 1,969 wines from 606 wineries.
The top winner in the three champion categories: Grand Champion Best of Show, Reserve Grand Champion Best of Show and Top Texas Wine each receive a hand-tooled saddle.
The first four years, Messina Hof, located in Bryan, took the saddle home. And as a news release from the wine competition said, in 2008 "the next to impossible happened. Little Piney Woods winery from Orange in East Texas won with …a non-vintage, non-vinifera white wine that also got consideration for Top White Wine and votes on the Best of Show ballot."
Flies bottles around 1,500 cases of wine a year, with names like Heart of Texas - Noble Red Muscadine, Texas Sunset - Blush Muscadine and Texas Sweet-Tooth Cherry Chocolates.
"I cater to people who are just beginning to drink wine. There is no place for them to go. About 80 percent of my wines are sweet or semi-sweet. I have a dry and semi-dry red and a blush," Flies said.
"But my best sellers are Blueberry, Red Muscadine - Port Style and Pecan Mocca. I just put out the Cherry Chocolate and it's outselling everything else three-to-one. Even people who like dry wines like it for dessert. And some people just like to sip a sweet wine. If they like a couple of spoons of sugar in their tea, they'll like it."
The tasting room at the tiny Southeast Texas winery is a Formica-covered board where elbows would be a problem if more than six people lifted a glass at the same time.. The walls are pressed wood and the linoleum floor is well-worn.
But the eight gold belt buckles, and gold, silver and bronze medals hanging on the walls are a testament to Flies love of the little muscadine grapes that most wineries shun.
One of the judges in Houston commented: "Clean, fresh and utterly refreshing, this is a delicious white wine that is hard to pin down, probably because I have never tasted anything quite like it before…The fruit is in the peach and pear range with sweet grapefruit and lime citrus notes and a fine bit of minerality. This is a shockingly good wine made from Texas native grapes. Do not be put off by the varietal. If you try it, you'll be glad you did. Excellent."
Flies grew up in Western Oklahoma, where his father made wine from wild sand plums. He also made beer, Flies said, during a time when people in the German Catholic community couldn't buy alcoholic beverages. After earning a degree in interior design from Oklahoma State, a stint in the military, 10 years in advertising and 29 years in interior design, Flies retired.
He got into the wine business on a whim.
For seven years, he made home plum wine, modeled after his father's wine. He found it "so fascinating" he tried other fruits.
Then, bored with retirement, he decided to get serious about it.
"Texas was getting a lot of publicity over its wine industry. The closest wineries were a couple of hundred miles away. I wanted to do something, but I had no desire to pull an 18-wheeler around the country. I felt like I had everything I needed right here. It's 10 miles from the store and 10 miles from the hospital, but I'm still in the country."
Flies, who moves with a fair amount of vigor in spite of his stroke and heart condition, is facing a big challenge. He lost his wife a few years back, then the man he depended on for 12 years to do the physical labor and keep things in order was killed in an auto accident.
"Now, I've gotten all this attention and success and I'm without help," he said about losing assistant Dwayne LeBlanc. "I depended on him like the sun coming up. He was honest and hardworking. He was a wonderful young man. I really miss him. I've had three people since who didn't work out."
Flies does have an assistant who helps out, he said, and his eldest daughter who lives in Houston and works at St. Luke's Hospital helps when she can. His other two daughters are registered nurses and his son is an architect in California.
The stormy weather last year almost took his whole production, Flies said.
"After this Christmas, it'll be a short batch of '08 wine. I'll be bottling '07 and '08 in '09. We'll focus on the Cherry Chocolates."