Tatum Cellars

Hill Country Trip Day 2: Stop 4

The day started pretty strong at Uplift Vineyards. However, the next two stops were less than stellar. I was left scrambling to try and find a way to close the day strong. We ended up landing on Tatum Cellars in Johnson City. I didn’t really know too much about it. Not only was this a suggestion from Andy at Sandy Road, but someone who reads my blog suggested it as well.

Tatum Cellars has a quaint tasting room location near the corner of W Main St and Nugent. While it may be small, it’s everything I would want in a tasting room—minimalistic rustic charm full of class and personality.

There was a good crowd on the inside with owner and winemaker Josh Fritsche when we arrived. So we decided to sit out back at a picnic table on the back patio. Josh came to greet the four of us with wine glasses and give us the scoop on his offerings. We all came for a tasting, so he went and got our first wine.

Our first wine was a showstopper, the 2024 Trois Etoiles. This wine has the most beautiful, delicate honeysuckle perfume. This wine could even moonlight as a women’s perfume—it smells amazing. The palate doesn’t disappoint either, with notes of lemon peel, stone fruit, honeysuckle, and Granny Smith apple.

Our next pour was the 2024 Rosé of Carignane, showing notes of apricot, peach, honeysuckle, and a slightly nutty finish. It was nice, but I was still really enamored with the Trois Etoiles, to be honest.

Next up were the reds. These you need to take your time with. They need decanting and air to really open up, but when they do, they’re very nice. Pours of the 2020 GSM and 2020 Syrah preceded my red standout—the 2020 Mourvèdre. This was a flavor bomb with notes of cherries, raspberry, blackberry, licorice, cured meat, anise, vanilla, baking spices, black tea, and toasty oak.

As everyone was finishing up their final pour, I noticed that the inside bar area was completely full, to the point of standing room only. There were also two large parties at picnic tables on the back patio. Josh easily had 30 guests he was pouring wines for. But he was cool, calm, and collected. Everyone was still getting their tastings; he’s telling stories and spending time with each group at his pace. It was a welcome sight, as our two previous stops had servers who couldn’t even handle a simple four-top.

Josh surprised us with an unlabeled bottle as a freebie to our tasting—a barrel sample of his ’24 Mourvèdre. It was gorgeous and probably my favorite red of his for the day. This wine had big, juicy red cherries, strawberry, and licorice with grippy tannins. It was my thought that it didn’t need any more aging. I would purchase this bottle as-is.

We weren’t done enjoying wines here, so we decided to dive into a bottle of bubbles. We ordered the 2023 Sparkling Rosé of Counoise. Really nice notes of apricot, juicy peach, and toasty brioche as it opens. It was really nice and refreshing as the end of the day began to get hot and humid. I also like the stemware here as well. It’s in that top tier for me.

I’d decided pretty quickly that I was going to award the 2024 Trois Etoiles one of my JGDoesWine Gold Medals. The only problem was that he was way too busy to take him away from his business. When we checked out, I also purchased a bottle to go. I figured we could stop by on Sunday right around open, when he would be less busy, and go through the motions of awarding the medal.

Unfortunately, when we stopped by on Sunday, he wasn’t open. I misread his hours of operation. He’s open Thursday through Saturday. I thought it was Friday through Sunday. That’s my bad and on me. But since I have a bottle here at home, I’m officially awarding the gold medal today, as of this post, and will connect back with Josh on our next trip down to the Hill Country, which should be pretty soon.