our tates: HEMP WINE
Story and Photos
By ZACH LUNDY-PETERSON
P
84
arker County is quickly gain-
ing ground in the wine indus-
try — Napa Valley isn’t shaking in
its proverbial boots yet, but maybe
soon? It’s all thanks to one
man who sees opportunity
where others simply see the
risk.
Most likely you’ve never
had a wine like this, but
you can remedy that quickly
and you might want to. This
wine is truly a first. What’s
so unusual about this wine?
It’s the first wine ever on the
market that’s hemp-infused.
For those of you who
completely missed the 1960s,
hemp is a breed of canna-
bis -- that’s right, a cousin
to marijuana. These vintners
have used hemp as a critical
ingredient in the winemaking
process.
I know what you’re think-
ing, I’m sure questions abound
and, yes, it is 100 percent
legal when used for the manu-
facturing of wine in Texas.
The winery has produced four
different hemp-infused wines,
namely Fantasy, Forbidden,
Covert and Taboo. My person-
al favorite is Taboo, a sweet
spiced rhumba-and-cola-
flavored wine.
And, no, it didn’t taste like a
1980s rock concert. It didn’t make
me overly mellow. It’s sweet, like a
cocktail a cheerleader might order,
but it’s pleasant. It’s not overly sweet.
On a scale of one to 10, I’d give it a
seven.
I’m not sure if the man that came
up with this idea, Ron Mittelstaedt, is
Hemp, Hemp Hooray! Combining
Hemp with Cabernet — Hey!
a madman or a genius for making this
a reality — that is for you to decide.
What method do they use to put
the hemp into the wine?
Ron and Cindy Mittelstaedt are happy with
their “happy wine.”
“When we were making it,
the process was quite a chore,”
Mittelstaedt said. “So we spent the
last three years developing processes
in which we can put the hemp in the
wine without destroying the wine’s
flavor and still give it a good balance.
Also, it’s easy to avoid having a
(hemp oil) residue in the wine.”
Mittelstaedt declined to give out
his secret hemp winemaking process
or the seed extract of the oils that go
into the wine. The seed/oil
infusion is at the beginning of
the winemaking process. But
that’s all Mittelstaedt would
give up, only adding that it’s a
patented process.
While on the legal path
of bringing this mystical wine
into reality, one could imagine
a few hiccups along the way.
Mittelstaedt thought that his
winery, TMV Wines, was the
second, not the first to distill
hemp wines; but, turns out he
was mistaken. Yep. Our little
Weatherford, Texas, winery
beat the “Big Apple’s” winery
to the punch.
“When we started the
process through the Alcohol
and Tobacco Tax and Trade
(TTB) (AKA the government)
we got accepted on December
2 nd , so we went through
the next process which is
getting your labels approved,”
Mittelstaedt said. “So we
summited our labels.”
TTB came back to
Mittelstaedt and informed him
that the federal government
never approved a hemp–
infused wine from a winery out of
New York. That made Mittelstaedt’s
TVM Wines the very first to produce
hemp wine in the USA. Now every
Parker Countian can enjoy the wine
knowing it all started right here.
When you raise your glass of wine,
you can do it in the name of Ron
Mittelstaedt.