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THE TEXAS HILL COUNTRY 2021
Pandemic Valentines Day Ice Storm

Barbara Lecuona
For years, she worked in tandem with Doug Reed in the Hawk‘s
Shadow cellar. Barbara is a classy winemaker and together
with her husband,she is a co-founder of Siboney Cellars, Texas
Hill Country, located on Wine Road 290 near Johnson City.
The winery will open in 2021. Do you still remember one of
the most beautiful images, a double page with a psychedelic
landscape in this book? The author is Barbara‘s husband
Miguel Lecuona, a Texas photographer with a remarkable
talent for seeing ordinary things through different eyes.

February is the shortest month, and the Country was beset with a Winter Storm unlike
quietest month of winter before spring. And any other.
yet for our personal calendars, it is filled with All wine regions in the world have unique
the most celebration dates. Valentines Day of weather challenges to navigate. In Texas, we
course is February 14. Our wedding anniversa- are usually coping with late Spring freezes,
ry is February 15 - Lucky Thirteen this year! Bar- hail, intense heat, and thunderstorms during
bara’s birthday is February 25. And numerous harvest, with flooding rains possible in May or
winery events push everyone to move forward September depending on the whims of the
into the New Year. So to prepare for this annu- Hurricane season (remind me again why we
al run of beautiful events, we are always sure to do this?). The winter of 2020-21 was running a
stock up on plenty of food and wine. Because good program of many cold days and enough
the three words you never want to tell your moisture to replenish the water tables and kill
spouse in February: “NO MORE CHAMPAGNE!” the pests while discouraging early bud break.
And, for our winery, Siboney Cellars, February And as you look at the graph in Figure 1 you
is also an important month — electrical power can see the first 10 days of February a warming
will be brought to the 52 acre site by the uti- trend beginning to develop, more or less typi-
lity company; concrete will be poured for the cal of our patterns.
10,000 square foot facility; the irrigation wells
and water tanks will be installed to prepare for Birds of a Feather
spring planting of the 4 acre Merlot vineyard; We were elated at the winery when the lo-
and tastings will begin for customers. cal Power Company pushed ahead with the
Mother Nature has an amazing sense of installation of the power lines to connect us
humor… just make plans and you are sure to the grid (the testing would be two weeks
to be challenged. And so it was against this later but the infrastructure was now in place).
backdrop of celebratory and industry prepa- Then, on February 11, things took a dramatic
ration – all during the continuing Pandemic downturn. Temperatures remained below
as the wine industry, and of course the world, freezing for a solid 10 days, plunging to a low
shifts to a plan for Covid Vaccines and hope for of 4° Fahrenheit (-16°C!). And a few nights of
a better year than 2020 -- that the Texas Hill windy conditions took the feel of those tem-
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