Category: Lake Conroe Area News

The Texas vineyards along the Gulf Coast have been harvested of their hybrid grapes. The vineyards further inland containing the vitis vinifera, being the classic wine grapes, are maturing nicely with expectations of another great grape harvest in Texas.  Vineyard owners and winemakers have a lot of promising fruit coming along in various vineyards. Here is what they have to say:
Pedernales Cellars
David Kuhlken, Co-Owner and Executive Winemaker, Pedernales Cellars
Our estate Kuhlken Vineyards, still in young-vine mode from replanting several years ago, is looking good and vigorous and we expect to get 1 or 2 tons of fruit from it, with first pick in the latter half of July. Quality is on track given the generally moderate temps and timely rains.  We expect to get the majority of our fruit from the Texas High Plains, where everything is looking better than most of the last few years. At the moment, most of our vineyards appear to be carrying anywhere from 2 to 5 tons an acre on most blocks, with only a couple trending toward higher yields. Thankfully, almost all of our vineyards have hail nets, which has helped reduce hail-damaged fruit. In all, harvest is trending well and we expect to our first High Plains harvest to be Viognier around the first two weeks in August and the rest of the varieties to be on schedule over the course of September.  
Spicewood Vineyards
Ron Yates, Owner, Spicewood Vineyards
Harvest is looking quite promising is on track to be about two weeks early in the Texas Hill Country. Bud break occurred in February instead of March so it’s not surprising that we are ahead of schedule for verasion. We have had abundant rain – about 13 inches since March – so everything is looking good. We will harvest Sauvignon Blanc first, probably in mid-July. While our crop will be slightly smaller than last year’s record estate harvest, we are excited about the quality of the fruit. We also get fruit from the Texas High Plains and far west Texas in Dell City. It has been unusually hot in Dell City so I expect to get that fruit in before the High Plains.
Bending Branch Winery
Dr. Bob Young, Co-Owner and Executive Winemaker, Bending Branch Winery
We are looking forward to quality fruit from across the state. Spring hail caused mixed levels of damage for a few of the Texas Hill Country vineyards where we get fruit. And in general, the wetter spring and summer had a lot of benefits, but in many cases, it has also created additional work in the vineyards. We are expecting fruit to begin arriving mid-July. Again this year we are working with around 30 different vineyards and approximately 30 different grape varieties. This will be our second harvest of Charbono from Tallent Vineyards, and we are eagerly anticipating higher yields from these vines after another year of development.Tallent Vineyards in Mason County, which has avoided hail damage and enjoyed good rains this spring and summer, is expecting a good quality crop. Fruit from a couple of the vineyards located closest to Bending Branch is also looking really good. 
Duchman Family Winery
Dave Reilly, Winemaker, Duchman Family Winery
The 2024 crop is looking terrific – a big crop, coming in a bit earlier than usual, and excellent quality. We source our fruit from some of the most experienced Texas High Plains growers. Our 18-years-long relationship allows us to make last-minute decisions on the absolute best time to harvest based on the weather and fruit maturity. We expect harvest to kick off in August, with Roussanne coming in first, followed by Vermentino. For the reds, Sangiovese will be the first, followed by Montepulciano and then Aglianico.
Texas looks to have another great winemaking year!
Ron Saikowski may be reached at rsaikowski@comcast.net. 

Twisters
Rated PG-13 for intense action and peril, injury images and some languageRotten Tomatoes Score: 77% at time of writingIn Theaters
I have very fond memories of the original 1996 Twister as I was attending the University of Oklahoma (Boomer Sooner!) as it was being filmed.  And to give the film gravity, I saw a tornado as I was driving home from the theater.  Talk about a scary moment!  So now, almost 30 years later, we are getting Twisters, which sounds like a sequel, but actually doesn’t have any relationship with the original, other than it is about life-threatening tornadoes in Oklahoma.  
Directed by Lee Isaac Chung (director of the multi-Oscar nominated film Minari) the film follows a young woman (Daisy Edgar-Jones) who is a smart young meteorologist who loses three friends during an attempt to do tornado research.  After her tragedy, she moves to New York but is lured back when one of her former research buddies (Anthony Ramos) gives her a new opportunity to finish her studies.  But while attempting to once again tame a tornado, she meets a tornado chasing YouTuber (Glen Powell) who seems like a dangerous villain at first, until she starts to get to know him better.  
And of course, all of this is set in the middle of a bunch of storm chasing with maybe too many deadly tornadoes destroying everything in their path.  While I was looking forward to watching the film, based on seeing the trailer, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot.  The original was a guilty pleasure, and I expected this one to serve as much the same.  But there is a lot to like here, and the two-hour experience should be a thrill for most audiences.  Yes, it is a big, loud roller coaster of a film, but I really liked the characters, the story and the special effects-driven adrenaline rush.  
Director Lee Isaac Chung, who was so impressive with his film Minari, with help of The Revenant screenwriter Mark L. Smith, infuse the action with organic but fun characters who really help you get invested in the plot, even if it is a bit unrealistic.  And while the acting is good throughout, actor Glen Powell really drives the movie through both action and romance as he attempts to both chase storms, while at the same time chasing the leading actress, pushing the audience to really hope they change the world and possibly even end up together.  
The icing on the cake here is a terrific soundtrack that I can’t wait to check out in my car once it is released.  It has a Top Gun kind of feel, only with some rocking country music filling both the quiet and the action-packed sequences.  And by the end you get an even better Twister movie, with better action, better characters, and much better storytelling.  B+
Danny Minton may be reached at danny@dannyminton.com. 

    “Are you ready to be scared?”    That’s the fragment of a conversation I overheard in the lobby of Main Street Theater before heading into their production of “The Woman in Black.” But having just eked through Hurricane Beryl and the days without power in the Houston heat that followed in its wake, I was sure nothing could scare me except maybe the words, “CenterPoint” or “Entergy!” As I awaited the dimming of the theater lights, I couldn’t help wondering if Main Street hadn’t been cursed by having a horror story on its schedule just as its audiences would be trying to recover from the horrors, both petty and great, of a hurricane.
    They were not.    For despite its tricks with lights and veiled Victorian women floating on and off the stage, Main Street’s “The Woman in Black” trumpets the power of theater—even theater whittled down to bare bones–to explore and work to exorcise our nightmares and fearful memories. Based on a novel by British author Susan Hill, this adaptation by British actor Stephen Malatratt opened in a pub in 1987 and ran in London’s West End from 1989 to 2023—the second longest playing non-musical (outpaced only by Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap”) in English theater. It knows what it is doing, and, not surprisingly, it has actors and acting at its heart.
    An older man, Arthur Kipps (Ian Lewis) has hired a young actor (Danny Hayes) to help him stage a reading to his friends and relatives of an account of his ghostly encounter when he traveled into the northeastern edge of England to settle the estate of the elderly woman, Mrs. Alice Drablow. But when Kipps’ reading is dull and prosaic, the actor insists that he dramatize, act it out, and with the blink of the lights, the two men switch roles: the actor becomes the young Kipps experiencing the encounter, and Kipps enacts the frightened locals who shy from visiting Mrs. Drablow’s aptly named Eel Marsh House and try to steer Kipps from going there. But go he does, and the haunting ensues—all brought to life with lights, sound effects, and brilliant acting on the part of Hayes and Lewis who even manage to bring to life a never seen dog—Spider—that they interact with.
    In short, director Philip Hays has done a masterful job of polishing this gem of an English script and transplanted it beautifully onto Main Street’s stage. He has blocked the movements of his actors in their claustrophobic space to create illusions of a host of unstagables: a horse-driven cart, a railway car, a cemetery, and a deadly causeway into the marsh. Moreover, he keeps a steady pace, never rushing toward the thrill moments yet letting them have a full run when they arrive. His work is amply supported by Jodi Bobrovsky’s ingenious set design, Andrew Archer’s lighting, and Shawn W. St. John’s sound design. These mesh to evoke the tangible and the supernatural, the explainable and the terrors of the unconscious.
    Though I found the script’s ending a big foggy, I’m not sure fog is a bad thing in a play such as this whose focus is not solvable mysteries but inner ones that have to be dealt with. And, sitting in the dark of the theater certainly helped my thoughts drift away from the harsh things just beyond the theater doors. Did you read in the paper about our odds for another visitation by a hurricane?
“The Woman in Black” is at Houston’s Main Street Theater through Aug. 11.
Robert Donahoo is a professor at Sam Houston State University and writes theater reviews for The Courier.