It didn’t take long for Chuck and Cyndi Tordiglione to make a name for themselves in the wine world. In 2010, the owners of Bull Lion Ranch decided to try their hand at winemaking, expanding their cattle and horse ranch near Hico, Texas into a vineyard that now produces award-winning wine. After winning numerous medals at GrapeFest, they opened a tasting room on Grapevine’s Main Street, which proved so successful that they're moving next door to a larger space on College Street this fall. However, Cyndi and Chuck, president of the Cross Timbers Wine Trail Association, have an even bigger mission — to encourage people to support Texas agriculture and drink Texas wine.
Chuck: MY GREAT GRANDFATHER MADE… wine in his basement. All my uncles did, too. So in the ‘60s, when we'd have family dinners, my aunts would all bring their famous pasta dishes and all the uncles would bring their wines. Winemaking runs in the blood.
Cyndi: WHEN CHUCK TOLD ME HE WANTED TO… make wine, I said, ‘Well, you know, if no one else will drink it, I will!’
Chuck: IT REALLY IS A… family business. Our daughter Olivia works the tasting rooms, our son Tony handles the vineyard and the winery, and our daughter Alex does our marketing. My 97-year-old mother makes a cheesecake that we sell at the tasting room that people can’t get enough of.
Chuck: WE’RE 100% TEXAS… in our wines. We grow all of our reds, and we work with other local growers for our whites. We always stay local.
Cyndi: THE WHOLE WINEMAKING PROCESS… takes years. The first three years, you just throw out the grapes. In the fourth year, you produce wine, but it's not something you're going to serve to anybody else. But by the fifth year, we were ready to start distributing to restaurants, and they really liked it.
Chuck: WE HAVE A MASTER… winemaker. Patrick Johnson is known as one of the top five winemakers in Texas and a legend for his cabernets. He and I just clicked. Now, he’s taken my son under his wing and has been training him for nearly eight years.
Chuck: I’M A HUGE ADVOCATE FOR… Texas wines. I spent a lot of time in Austin fighting for rights with the Texas Department of Agriculture, working with them to help us with marketing and everything we needed to get the message out to the people.
Chuck: WE HAVE A CABERNET FRANC CALLED… Cabernet Frank. Ours has a picture of Frank Sinatra on the bottle. But Cyndi’s favorite is our montepulciano, and mine is the Texianti, which is our family Chianti.
Chuck: THE SECRET TO OUR CHIANTI IS… just that it’s a true Italian-style Chianti. But, OK, we can't give out our percentages. Kind of like you don't give out your family’s secret spaghetti sauce recipe.
Chuck: WE ALWAYS HAVE THE LONGEST… line at GrapeFest. People tell me, ‘I really enjoy talking with you about wine.’ And I just think that’s cool. If they have 6,000 people at GrapeFest, I'll talk to all 6,000 of them if I can, because I want them all to have the experience.
Cyndi: WE HAVE GREAT CUSTOMERS… here in Grapevine. And the best part is that a lot of them even regularly visit our ranch.
Chuck: NOTHING BOTHERS ME MORE THAN… going into a Texas restaurant and the wine list is just full of California wines, but we’re working to change that.
Chuck: OUT OF 40 WINERIES IN OUR ORGANIZATION… only eight or 10 are large enough now to be able to distribute wine to restaurants. But they’re good wineries and they’re only getting better.
Chuck: WE GET A LOT OF… wine travelers in our region. There are 2 million wine travelers a year in the state of Texas — 49% of that 2 million are from the DFW Metroplex. They're heading down to Hill Country, but we're trying to get them to stay right here touring the Cross Timbers Trail.
Chuck: WE’VE BEEN VERY BLESSED… as a family because we’ve had lots of people who have loved our wines and supported us from day one. Grapevine has given us support like no other.