our taste: WINE
Brings Award-Winning Texas
Wine to Parker County
By MELISSA MOORMAN
APRIL 2016
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
T
heirs was one of those classic
saw-him-across-a-crowded-room,
love-at-first-sight meetings. Cindy was
only 18 when she saw Ron Mittelstedt
across the parking lot on an Army
base in Washington State and instantly decided he was the man for her.
Now, more than 40 years later,
they work together, grow grapes
together and are on a mission to expand opportunities for small wineries
throughout North Texas, while getting
their product to the marketplace.
They became vintners when
Cindy gave Ron a wine-making kit for
Christmas. They made a few bottles at
first, sharing their wine with friends.
They made some adjustments, made
some more wine and then started
thinking about a different life for
themselves as they neared retirement.
Ron owned a construction company prior to opening Sweet Springs.
“We wanted a good consistent
business that was recession-proof. If
things are bad, people drink wine,
when things are good, people drink
wine,” Ron said. They planted the
vineyard on Sweet Springs Road five
years ago and a wine business was
born in Parker County.
Ron met Cindy in Washington
State when he was working with
former American POWs returning
from Vietnam. He said he was one
of the last of the draftees in America
and through the testing the Army did
looking for special gifts, they discov-
64
ered he had a talent for psychology.
“You saw things you can’t describe,”
he said. He was part of a group of a
dozen guys who were trained to help
our returning soldiers that had been
held captive by the North Vietnamese. “They would take things away
and then replace it with something
that irritated them. It could be a
sound, a color and it would drive
them crazy. My job was to deprogram
them,” Ron said.
He found that he could take that
same idea and make it positive when
he started in the wine business. “I
took a red wine and placed a certain
percentage of Concord grape juice
in it, something that people were
familiar with. It’s familiar to Baptists,
Lutherans, Presbyterians, Catholics
through communion. It worked pretty
well. It’s called Divine Temptation,”
Ron said.
At Sweet Springs Winery, the
Mittelstedts grow grapes on their
12.5 acres of farmland northwest of
Weatherford as well as on a 155acre tract in Brownfield southwest of
Lubbock. One of their white wines is
called Parker Peach, celebrating the
famed Parker County fruit. They have
won awards in Texas and at the national and international level for their
wines. The co-op that Ron has put
together includes 10 wineries from
North Texas that will be banding together to get their wines into grocery
stores throughout our area where they
have never been available before. The
wines would be on the same truck,
saving their dollars by distributing
together, making it more affordable
for all of them. “When it happens it
will be ‘Katie, bar the door!’ No one
has ever done it in Texas. No one
has ever attempted to do it in Texas.
When it happens it will be quite
great,” he continued. “There’s so
much opportunity here in Texas. It’s
putting a lot of people to work and
creating something totally different
that people will enjoy,” he said.
The tasting room is a tranquil spot
on North Main Street in Weatherford,
just a half a block from the courthouse, but it feels like you are a world
away when you enter through the
rock gates. When you enter it feels
like you are a lot closer to Italy than
you are to Texas. Comfortable rocking
chairs are clustered with cozy tables
with seating for 90 if you want to sit
outside and enjoy the sunshine. Or
there are plenty of seats inside its cool
interior with Western décor to taste
their delicious wines. A special event
area is inside that seats an additional
90 people. They have had showers,
rehearsal dinners and meetings in
their special events area. They will be
celebrating two years in their location
this summer, having opened a few
days before Peach Festival in 2014.
“People love our wines. They love
the atmosphere here. Most people
when they come here they meet Cindy and I and Beth. They get to know
us as people. They tell their friends
and it creates a following. When they
see it in the stores, they will pick our