Texas, south-western state in the united states, currently the country’s fifth largest wine-producing state after California, New York, Washington, and Oregon with about 4,100 acres/1,660 ha planted mainly with vinifera vines in production in 2012. The first vineyard was planted by the Spanish at the Ysleta Mission near what is now El Paso in the early 1660s. The production built to more than 200,000 gal/7,570 hl by 1853. In the 1880s, the famous vitis taxonomist T. V. munson, from Denison, Texas, shipped native Texas vine species to France and saved the European wine community from devastation by phylloxera. In the early 20th century, the Texas wine industry was almost eliminated by prohibition. Dr Clint McPherson and Robert Reed of Texas Tech University revived the modern wine industry in 1976 with the creation of Llano Estacado Winery in Lubbock, experimenting with multiple grape varieties and spurring others to do the same. The industry has grown steadily ever since, to the point that there were 275 bonded wineries in Texas in 2014.
