- The liquid the Permian Basin produces in the largest quantity is, of course, oil.

The Basin accounts for nearly 40% of all oil production in the United States but there are other liquids flowing in the basin.

From the brewing of craft beers to the growing of grapes and production of wine.

So tonight we ask, who's in the spirit in the basin?

I'm Becky Ferguson and this is "One Question."

(light music) Who's in the spirit in the basin?

Texas is the fifth largest wine producing state in the country.

There are 500 wineries and 5,000 acres of wine grapes grown in Texas.

But the largest winery is right here in West Texas just outside of Fort Stockton.

Tonight we'll take you there but should your tastes lean more toward barley than grapes we'll also show you some brewing right here in the basin.

- A lot of people doesn't know where Ste Genevieve Winery is located.

You know, they see our brand name you know, all over the stores in Texas because we are actually in all the big grocery stores and our biggest buyers is actually HEB.

If they look on the back it'll say, from Stockton, Texas.

Where that is?

You know, where that is?

And then a lot of people came here and say, wow, we didn't know this winery was here.

- I'm visiting with Michel Duforat with Mesa Vineyards.

You're outside of Fort Stockton and thank you so much for letting us come and we're standing in a storage room with immense tanks full of wine ready to be bottled.

Can you tell us how it is that a winery, a vineyard came to be in West Texas.

- It was the University of Texas that decided years ago, that was in the early '80s, to see if they could grow some grapes in West Texas.

So they had an experimental vineyards that was about five miles from here.

And where they planted about 30 acres of grapes different varieties, and they study, you know how they develop and how good the results would be to make some wine.

And they found out that actually we can grow grapes in West Texas even with, it's not an ideal climate but we grow grapes or we can grow grapes.

So they decided to have that land that was practically empty and flat with a lot of water resource, you know, underground.

They decided to plant commercial vineyard and they planted 1,000 acres and they started the first plantation in 1981, '82, 83, and then they finished it in '84.

So this is how they decide to grow a vineyard here.

- Michel, I noticed that you don't have a Fort Stockton accent.

Would you tell us where you're from and how you got here?

- Well, I'm from Bordeaux France, originally.

I was working for French companies.

I was doing a lot of business for wineries in France and my background is electro technics.

Which have nothing to do, at the beginning, with wine.

But you know, we work in the industry in France with the other company I was working with.

And I had a project coming up here in Fort Stockton.

So they send me here, you know, to start the construction of this winery.

It was for to do all the automation.

I mean the reception of the grapes, the fermentation, the production and everything.

And I was here for three weeks to actually start this project.

And that is more than 30 years now, still here.

So that's-- - We're glad you're still here.

And tell us a little bit about the label and where the wine is distributed.

- The labels, our main labels was created in 1984, its Ste Genevieve labels which is our main brand.

And we have several different brand now that is made here and produced here.

But the main brand is Ste Genevieve.

And a lot of people call this place Ste Genevieve Winery.

And we process the grapes ourself here at this facility.

And we bottle and then we distribute it through a distributor channel.

And we have our wine goes about, I think, you know, right now we're about in 14 or 15 different states.

Which our main buyer is actually the state of Texas.

The state of Texas, you know, it's probably I would say about 75% of what we produce.

And then we got some other wines that go to Florida, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and so forth.

- So everything happens here.

You grow the grapes.

You press them.

You ferment them.

And then you bottle them.

Take us through that process if you would.

- So we start pruning our grapes at the vineyard because this is where everything starts, you know.

You need to grow grapes and try to grow grapes of high quality so you can make high good wine.

Have some good results.

So you start with the vineyards and we start pruning the vineyard in early January, February.

We start pruning them because we have to prune those vines every year in order for them to produce fruit every year.

So, generally we had, after the pruning, we had after the bud break, that means what we generally call the blooming in April.

Which is at the end of March and April.

And then you see where we're gonna see actually what the crops are gonna look like for the season.

And then we start our season, the grapes get ready in about the third week of July.

So in the third week of July this is the most interesting moment of the season because this is where we start harvesting.

This is where we can see the result of all the work and effort we gave into the vineyard.

So, we have grapes coming in at night.

We harvest at night.

We start a 10 o'clock at night until generally 10 o'clock in the morning or unless if we finish earlier.

Depending what we were supposed to pick that night.

And we do this for two reasons.

First, because in the middle of July, end of July and August it's actually, the weather is very hot.

So it's better for the workers to work at night.

So it's cooler.

But it's also better for the grapes.

Because when receiving the grapes, you know that's a low temperature.

As low as it can be at that time.

And so that save us some, a lot of energy cost in chilling the juice down.

Because we have to chill the juice down in order to prepare for fermentation.

We receive the grapes, we press the grapes.

It's all harvested, you know, mechanically.

And we take the weight of those grapes.

So we know exactly how many tons we bring in.

And then after that we do two different process for the white and one for the red.

And we are leaving the grapes for about 12 hours in a tank and they're just by their own weight, you know, they extract the juice naturally.

And we pull that juice out, the natural juice that was extracted.

This is what we call the free wine.

Which is the best, high quality juice that you can have to make wine.

Then after that we just extract all those grapes that are in the tank.

Then we put them in a press.

Then we're gonna extract two more juices the juice is sent, you know, to our cellar team.

Where they start filtration and starting to control the fermentation.

And depending the quality of wine that you want to have, then you can do a slow fermentation or a fast fermentation.

It's all a matter of the winemaker and our marketing strategy about where we want to go and what kind of high level product we want or if we just want to do a generic product.

Depending on, of course, the quality of the grapes and the quality of the juice.

And then when we gonna start bottling process for a particular wine, then we're gonna get some of that wine that is in storage and we're gonna work with it a little bit before it goes to bottling.

Now, for the red the process of the red is actually, we ferment everything inside the tank.

Inside the fermenters.

And that means that there is the berries, there is the pulp, the seeds, everything is there.

We let everything ferment together.

So we extract the colors out of the pulp, out of the skin and it becomes red.

And a very dark color red, you know, depending which variety it is.

Then we do also pull the free wine which is the best wine because at that point it is not juice like the white but it is wine because it's already fermented.

So, we get the free wine and then we go to the press and we go the P1 and the P2.

And then we go back to exactly the same process as for the white.

And do some filtration, do some chilling and store the wine and do the same process.

- Can you tell me how many bottles of wine y'all produce in a given month?

- Within a month we probably produce in between 40 to 45,000 cases of wine, yes.

I am very proud, you know, compared to when I came here in 1984, you know the wine industry in Texas was, I would say some kind of poor.

I think, you know, people did not have the information or it was not very popular in Texas.

Texas, especially West Texas, people drink beer most of the time.

So it was not a lot of people that was consuming wine here in Texas.

And I'm very proud for the state of Texas to have developed so much wine industry in this state.

And there is a lot of.

Of course it's not due to Ste.

Genevieve wine or here even if we are the largest winery in the state of Texas.

But it's also all the other winery, all the other producers that work hand on hand to try to develop the Texas wine industry.

And I'm very proud of all of them, all the work in that industry because I think as of today you know we show that Texas can produce some very good, high quality wine.

(patrons murmuring) - I was working for a company for about 10 years in the oil and gas business.

And I enjoyed the comradery of the oil and gas business but the actual business didn't do anything for me.

And it was a corporate gig.

And I realized after awhile it wasn't my thing.

So, I got with two of my best friends who were entrepreneurs and took them to lunch.

I just started talking and said, hey guys, I'm looking at doing something different.

And they said, what do you wanna do?

And I said, I have no idea.

They said, do wanna open like a barbecue joint or something?

I said, I don't think so.

And they said, well, whatever you wanna do we're in with ya.

I was like, okay.

So that gave me some confidence that all right, I can come up with some ideas or whatever and talk to them about it.

My sister just moved from here to Austin, to Dripping Springs.

We were at a brewery called Jester King.

And it's a big, open space area.

Kids were running around.

I was eating a pizza and having a beer with my brother in law who's one of my best friends and I got like this, it felt like a slap in the face.

Like, this is what I need to do.

This is what Midland needs.

They don't have anything like this.

I'm born and raised here.

Well, I texted my guys, my best friends and it took about 10 seconds for them to say yeah, we're in.

Let's do this.

And so, it's one of those things where the best ideas come two beers in.

The worst ideas come three.

And that was like, at two and a half.

You know, it was that half beer.

It's like the sweet spot.

The small window and I hit it.

And so I get back in town and me and Eric, and Nicholas, my best friends were playing golf and we're ordering brewing equipment while we're playing golf.

Like, we have no idea what we're doing.

These are like igloo coolers that you brew in.

It's home brewing stuff.

And we didn't have any intention on brewing ourselves.

We just wanted some knowledge of it.

We knew we were gonna hire a brewmaster.

And we actually learned how to brew.

It wasn't just a hobby.

We had full intentions with it.

And so it actually became pretty decent beer we thought.

But anyway, that's kind of how it all came about.

I've always been into craft beer and I knew Midland needed something like this that families can come enjoy.

And Midland is, I always thing Midland's about five years behind other locations.

And so it's actually progressing into getting more local.

So, that's helped a lot.

- What is craft beer?

- Craft beer is, technically it's within a certain barrelage.

If you produce over a certain amount of beer per year, in barrels it's not considered craft anymore.

Obviously, we're not quite to that point.

So, that's what considers you craft.

- So it's.

- It's on a small scale.

- Yeah, okay beer produced on a small scale.

So you talked about how you learned how to brew it yourself but then you hired someone to do it for you.

What is he called and what does he do?

- His name is Jack Sparks.

And he's a brew master.

He's been doing it 25 years professionally.

He's from Dallas.

He's worked everywhere.

When I mean everywhere, I mean Alaska, Maryland, California, Oklahoma.

He started the highest elevated brewery in the world in La Paz, Bolivia.

Worked in Miami.

We got him out of Miami.

He left when the hurricane hit.

We hit him at the right time.

And he wanted to get back to Texas.

He's from Allen, Texas outside of Dallas and he wanted to get back to Texas.

We caught him at the right time.

It just kinda worked out.

He moved here.

He loves it here.

Just has his dog and his dog's always up here with him.

And he's fit in really well.

He's made a lot of good friends.

So, it's actually worked out really well with him.

- I've noticed that you all have lots of creatively named beers.

Can you tell me how those names came about?

- We didn't really want to necessarily go into that oil and gas theme.

That's been played out before.

We want people to know Midland for different things.

So, for example our flagship beer is Five Hour Drive.

In Midland you're five hours from anywhere.

We say we're in the middle of everywhere, not the middle of nowhere.

Just five hours, just down the street.

You know, from Midland five hours is nothing.

You go to Dallas for a day trip.

- So Five Hour Drive, that's one.

- Five Hour Drive, Haboob Hefeweizen.

Haboob is the big sandstorms we get.

That was a catchy name rather than, you know, dust devil Hefeweizen, Haboob and you get different playful variations off that.

I'm sure you can imagine.

We get our Amber's called 2 Degrees of Separation.

Because in Midland you're two degrees between anybody.

I didn't know if you if you came in but you know my folks, so it's just, it's a conversation starter for sure.

We have Bird Lady American Pale Ale because of the well know bird lady that lived across the street that gave us our only forest view in Midland.

There's a ton of stories about her, Midge Urskin.

Oh, my all time favorite's the brown ale, it's called Rio Wadley because when it rains Wadley becomes a river.

And the beer is a brown ale so it kind of looks like the water that's flowing down Wadley when it rains.

- Well a minute ago you said that Midland is sometimes behind trends.

When you all first opened, were people adventurous in ordering Five Hour Drive, or?

- If you weren't from Midland, yes.

Because they knew what to expect.

If you were from Midland then typically we'd see them wanting something on the lighter end.

And what would happen is you would kind of give them the Five Hour Drive honey blonde and explain what's in it.

They'll drink it, they'll love it and that's all they'll drink or they'll trust you and move unto a new beer.

A big selling point we always did like with our stout was like, do you like coffee?

And they'll say yeah, I love coffee.

Okay, well this is a very dark roasted coffee flavor.

It's very light, it looks heavy but it's not.

And they'll try it and they'll love it.

And then that's all they'll drink.

So, you get some adventurous.

There's been a lot of, there's been some education going on that we've had to do.

But people are very receptive and sometimes people come in and asked for mixed drinks.

And we have to explain we're a brewery and its our own beer and all that types of stuff.

So, I mean it brings 'em in and we're happy to have 'em.

- What have been some of the maybe a surprising thing that's happened since you opened the brewery?

- Honestly, the reception.

We thought this would be a popular place.

We didn't realize how popular it would be.

I didn't fully understand how ready Midland was for this.

Midland and Odessa and surrounding areas.

But people were ready to have something different.

Have something where they can take their kids, enjoy themselves with the beer, have a burger, things like that.

There just really isn't anywhere in Midland that has this type of atmosphere.

- What's interesting that you've said several times, bring your kids.

- Mm-hm, absolutely.

- And people don't usually think of a bar as a place that you would bring your children.

- Yeah.

- So talk to me a little bit about that.

- We're very, very careful that we don't call ourselves a bar.

Because there's a negative connotation with that in terms of bringing families in.

I have three kids, so I wanted something.

I wanted them to be able to come up here and feel safe and all that type of stuff.

So, that's kind of the atmosphere we've created.

At first it wasn't as much like that but we've tried to promote that.

And people see other families here.

So they feel, you know, confident that everything's okay with families in here.

And we don't serve liquor.

It's just beer.

And very careful not to over serve and things like that.

- Interesting.

- And we close, the latest we open, or the latest we close is 10 o'clock.

So, we don't wanna go too late.

That's kind of when we see people turning.

About nine or 10 o'clock.

So we wanna make sure that it's a safe environment.

- And a minute ago you were talking about convincing people to try something different.

Talk about sort of your taster menu.

Is there an opportunity for somebody to try lots of different kinds of beer?

- Yes, yeah.

We have what we call a flight.

Now, we'll give little samples if someone wants to try something.

We have some people that ask, they wanna try like six or seven different beers.

Like listen, you can try a flight.

It's four five ounce tasters.

You can pick any four you want.

Or you know, what we say, dealer's choice.

If they want us to chose for them we'll do a wider range of whatever they want.

And so we'll just, yeah.

And then we'll label and tell 'em kind of about each beer.

And then, you know.

Then they'll come back and say, I really liked that one.

And so then they'll get a full pint of it, so.

- All right, so.

- So that's our Five Hour Drive Honey Blonde.

It's a light, 5.5% beer.

Nothing too crazy.

But we add 90 pounds of Burleson's Honey, Texas honey out of Waxahachie.

- Really honey?

- Yup, so there's a slight sweetness at the end.

So it kind of takes away any bitterness from a beer.

So that's a good gateway to craft beer is what we call it.

- Mm-hm.

- Yeah, so that's-- - That's really good.

Sometimes you go to a cocktail party in Midland and they'll say, do you want Miller Light or Bud Light?

- Oh yeah.

- And I was like, I don't want any of that.

- No, I know.

And we're trying to create a craft beer culture here where people go straight to craft and you know, not do the whole light beer thing, you know.

So that's the Bird Lady.

And that's gonna be, give it a sniff.

It's gonna be real piney, real floral.

The hops come from the northwest so you get that piney notes from it.

It's some of the craft beer lovers most favorite beer of all time, that one.

And it's piney so it makes sense.

You've got pine trees at the bird lady's lot.

- It is!

- And so that hits your palate or it doesn't.

- Mm-hm.

- People that like that beer, that's all they'll drink.

That's our brew master, that's everyone in the back's favorite beer.

Most of our servers favorite beer.

That's the hazy IPA.

Give that another sniff.

That's more mango, tangerine, some pineapple, some orange.

- And are you putting those flavors in?

- No, it's part of the hops.

The hop profile gives it that flavor.

- Huh.

- And that is the beauty.

You smell hops it just, it's the greatest thing in the world.

- Yeah, this would be what I would order.

- Yeah.

- For sure.

- Yeah, that's a top seller of ours.

- This is great.

Have I drank enough?

(chuckling) - We can keep going.

Hey, I got 12 more beers.

- This one is good.

I'm gonna remember Haze Y'all.

- Yeah, Haze Y'all.

That's become a really popular one.

We released that last summer.

- Do y'all also can and distribute beer?

- We do.

We can our Five Hour Drive honey blonde and our Haboob Hefeweizen.

And that's, we just started distribution of that I think January 11th was our launch date.

HEB, Market Street, Cant Quick, Jacks.

So those places like that is where those cans are.

And we intend on bringing out possibly one more style this year.

Not to be announced yet.

- And there's more Basin beer brewing in a manual system in south Midland.

Partners Jamie Ehl and Aaron Pachlhofer produce a brand called Eccentric.

- I don't remember really craft beer becoming a thing until maybe the mid 1990s.

Past that point, craft beer took a dip.

And then it came back up.

From 2004 when I started brewing, I don't think I've really seen craft beer ebb.

It's just kept increasing.

Craft beer is a beer that somebody has taken the time to craft and make an excellent product.

So larger breweries that have huge volumes are still craft beer because they make excellent products.

They extreme care.

These are extremely large operations and they're still craft beer.

Beer names are very situational.

So a lot of times when I name a beer its either seasonally related or something that's happening in my life.

So I made a beer for both my kids.

Animals who have passed away.

In 2007 I went, I brewed this beer.

Didn't have a name, it was a brand new recipe.

I used a new hop that was available at the time.

And a couple days later I went on a pig hunt that was extraordinarily successful.

And I came back as the pig slayer.

This for me is a seven day a week job.

It's my night job and my weekend job.

And various other times too.

I've had to get up and be here in the middle of the night sometimes because you know, you wake up and realize you left a valve open.

Or maybe you didn't open a valve.

Or you know, someone's been up here and says, hey man, something's making a mess.

I don't know what it is.

And now you're up here with a mop.

I brewed at home I think for 14 years.

And you know, I did pretty good at it.

I think, I like to tell most home brewers that I talk to, you know, if you're making good beer that people say, man this tastes like something I could have bought at the store.

Then you know, maybe you could do this.

My business partner Jamie and I got together and were discussing it in my garage one night.

We entered the entrepreneurial challenge and they gave us a substantial grant.

And that was really what we needed to fund the brewery.

The brewery now sustains itself.

We're in 25 places between Midland and Odessa.

And one lone outpost in Fort Stockton.

- Besides beer and wine, the basin boasts an abundance of folks in the business of spirits.

Including local investors in the production of tequila, vodka, and hard seltzer.

Our painting today is a work by Ismael Gonzalez De La Serna.

He studied at the academy of fine arts in Grenada, Spain.

While at school he became close to the famous poet, Fredrico Garcia Lorca, who's first book he illustrated.

De la Serna was considered to have more free artistic style.

He move dot Paris as a member of the avant garde group.

And he was influenced by the cubist artist George Brock and fellow Spaniard Pablo Picasso.

It is claimed by the art critic Taryad that Picasso declared of De La Serna, at last a true painter.

As grand as Juan Gris.

He exhibited widely in the 1920s with much success.

A renown Parisian art dealer, Paul Gionne, of Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse arranged for an exhibition of 50 of De La Serna's works.

This led to an exhibition at the renown gallery in Paris in 1936, the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition in 1937, and later an individual exhibition at the gallery Flechtheim in Berlin.

Which was sold out.

In his later years in 1956, De La Serna had a retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts in Mexico.

Which was followed by another retrospective at the Tate Gallery in London in 1963.

Later in his career he became more of a cubist painter.

His use of form, color, and emotion reflect the influence of Cezanne and Pissarro.

After a long battle with cerebral palsy, De La Serna became wheelchair bound and from this point rarely ventured back home to Spain.

Before his death in 1968.

In 1974 the Museum of Modern Art in Paris held an exhibition in homage to this great artist.

This work comes from Midland's Baker Schorr Fine Art Gallery.

Finally, thank you for joining us for "One Question."

We'll be back each Saturday at 4:30 where we will ask questions you want to know of the people who know.

There are lots of ways to watch "One Question" including Basin PBS Facebook, Passport, and YouTube.

If you have a question send it to us at OneQuestion at BasinPBS.org.

I'm Becky Ferguson, goodnight.

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