Solaro Estate Winery

Solaro Estate grows the Montepulciano and Barbera varietals on the winery's eight acres and sources grapes from other parts of Texas to make nine additional wines including Tempranillo and an orange Muscat dessert wine, none of which are worth the stellar prices demanded in light of their mediocre to horribly undrinkable quality. There's not a wide division between the two extremes.

Fritz touted his winery's awards derived from little-known "international" and local events held exclusively within the U.S. only. Taste these poor-quality wines and wonder if the judges were dishonest, inept or all the competing wines were just that bad.

For the $15/person the tasting we each received parsimonious few drops of five wines representative of Solero Estate's best efforts. Fritz struggles with the pronunciation of foreign words and the names of grape varietals, taking great pride in carefully enunciating "Montepulciano" which he had obviously practiced repeatedly. The wines themselves are unbalanced, uniformly mediocre to actually, horribly undrinkable. Bring mouthwash.

No crackers or other palate-clearing bites were offered between the wines tasted. One wine was poured (sloshed) directly into the same glass as the wine just sampled without so much as a rinse beforehand.

Upon purchasing a bottle of the Solaro's wine we discovered that Solero offers no discount on the its already overpriced wines for those participating in a tasting.

Bottom line, skip this mediocre winery and its blowhard co-owner. Spend your time instead visiting a few of the other nearby wineries, distilleries or breweries. You'll be glad you did and so will your wallet.