Texas Hill Nation Faces Growing Tourism — and Charges of Public Intoxication and DWIs

Famed for its German heritage and rolling hills, Texas Hill Nation is finest recognized for its wine. Thought-about the area’s crown jewel, Fredericksburg began with simply three wineries within the Seventies and has since blossomed, experiencing considered one of its most vital booms in tourism over the past 5 years, says Brady Closson, the CEO of Fredericksburg Conference and Customer Bureau. Right now, the town has greater than 80 wineries and generates the second-highest income in wine tourism {dollars} within the nation, falling simply behind California’s Napa Valley, Closson provides. However with greater than 3 million folks visiting every year and its designation because the second-most visited wine vacation spot within the U.S., residents are feeling the results. Locals say some guests are ingesting slightly an excessive amount of whereas visiting wine nation.

Round 60 p.c of Fredericksburg’s arrests every year are resulting from public intoxication and DWI, or driving whereas intoxicated, in keeping with the Fredericksburg Police Division, which has tracked a gentle rise in alcohol-related arrests since 2019. Police now rank these offenses as their high precedence, and even the Fredericksburg Metropolis Council is trying to tackle among the points tied to the town’s alcohol-fueled tourism increase, Fredericksburg Commonplace-Radio Publish studies.

The police division is working with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Fee (TABC) to rein in problematic ingesting at native institutions. Throughout an hour-long public dialogue on Monday, Might 12, greater than a dozen residents, together with enterprise homeowners, mentioned points with alcohol consumption — issues that folks have been overserved, drugged, and assaulted at bars. Residents made options, together with limiting open containers on Foremost Road, shortening bar hours, growing police presence, implementing stricter TABC legal guidelines, and providing extra meals choices alongside Freeway 290, the close by stretch of freeway residence to most of the bigger wineries. “Loads of these younger ladies will hop on the buses, they usually go all day — vineyard to vineyard — they usually don’t eat something,” says Melissa Humphries, who owns two wine-focused bars on the town.

Kaity Cox

Humphries, who co-owns Foremost Road’s Champagne bar Six Twists and wine and chocolate bar Ocotillo, together with her husband Bobby, says Fredericksburg skilled a noticeable shift in the kind of vacationers it attracted beginning in 2020, following the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of Texas shut down and suffered the results, placing many companies at a standstill, however Fredericksburg, a rural city recognized for its mattress and breakfast inns, thrived, Closson and Humphries say. Vacationers from close by areas like Austin and Houston used Fredericksburg as a getaway, some staying a weekend to some days, whereas others stayed for weeks on finish to flee the monotony of their houses whereas social distancing.

As tourism climbed, so did incidents of public intoxication, which fearful enterprise homeowners, attempting to uphold a sure decorum that exudes extra Napa Valley, much less Austin’s Sixth Road, Closson says. “A few instances we’ve gone out within the morning, and like, yeah, there’s blood on the sidewalk. The place did that come from?” Humphries says, and it’s not shocking to see good automobiles parked on the aspect of the highway. “You understand they didn’t break down,” a resident says. “They received arrested.”

Brooke’s Bubble Bar, a hard-to-miss wine tour firm on Fredericksburg’s historic Foremost Road, has earned a status for its droves of brilliant pink limos, through which it packs in glittery bands of bachelorettes and teams of vacationers. Some enterprise homeowners and staff, like John Martin, the manager supervisor of gross sales at Augusta Vin, say that touring occasion buses or excursions typically have interaction in behaviors which might be inappropriate for an upscale vineyard. “There are specific wineries that don’t need that. This isn’t a celebration ambiance. That is extra of an environment to find out about wine, methods to odor and sip, and savor it,” says Martin. “We simply don’t condone that. We’ve got higher-end wines, and we’re right here for the wine expertise greater than the occasion.”

Brooke Rogan, who owns Brooke’s Bubble Bar, offered a press release to Eater on Friday. “With 17 limos [and] occasion busses [and] a booming champagne bar, we offer a secure and enjoyable ambiance. We’re not attempting to be one thing we’re not. We’re not in Napa Valley or Aspen. We’re in Fredericksburg,” Rogan’s assertion reads partially. “Being a local native, I took one thing I used to be enthusiastic about and turned it into my profession.”

With high-end inns getting ready to plant their flags downtown, nonetheless, some residents worry unchecked tourism might undermine the small-town attraction rooted in German traditions and entrepreneurial spirit. These residents need to curb the habits earlier than the following wave of improvement reshapes Fredericksburg: Kimpton Inns and Houston-based DC Companions, the corporate behind Thompson inns in Houston and San Antonio, plan to open a 210-room luxurious lodge in the midst of Fredericksburg in 2027. The Waldorf Astoria Inns & Resorts additionally plans to open its Hill Nation location in 2027, which is able to characteristic 60 lodge rooms, 37 multi-bedroom resort villas, 50 non-public residences, an 11,000-square-foot spa, two swimming pools, and 5 eating institutions, in keeping with a launch.

Nonetheless, Humphries says residents need to keep Fredericksburg’s hospitable, inviting tradition with out shedding the values of its residents and enterprise homeowners. “I believe it’s simply possibly some rising pains. We’re discovering our identification,” Humphries says, noting that many publications have tried to quantify Fredericksburg’s development, tradition, and ambiance. In February 2020, only a month earlier than COVID-19’s notorious shutdown, Texas Month-to-month deemed Fredericksburg “the brand new Aspen.” Some locals took the moniker with satisfaction. Others cringed. “Now, they’re like, ‘I believe we’d quite be Aspen than Nashville.’”

Although wineries are a distinguished driver of tourism, Closson says there’s hope for Fredericksburg to be extra intentional about its message, so it’s not perceived that the one factor guests can do there may be drink. It’s not as a result of they don’t need tasting rooms or alternatives to drink within the historic district of Downtown Fredericksburg. “However would you like three or 4 blocks of simply tasting rooms, or is it, we agree {that a} combine might be finest for all events?” he says.

Jared Broach, co-owner of Charleston Taylor Property, a vineyard in close by Johnson Metropolis, says some companies are fueling the issue by being too lenient and giving in to gimmicks to draw vacationers. “The wine trade is so economy-based that it ebbs and flows, so what occurs is a few of these wineries get too determined,” Broach says. “They’ll welcome in teams, supply large reductions on tastings, and then you definitely’ll have folks throwing up in bogs, and points the place in Napa Valley, [tourists] can be in jail.” Most wineries are attempting to supply a extra upscale, instructional, but welcoming ambiance for wine fans and newcomers whereas additionally preventing the dangerous stereotype that “Texans drink shitty wine and beer.”

“We’re attempting to maneuver that wine journey to a Napa stage,” he says.

Replace: Might 23, 2025, 4:00 p.m. CST: This story has been up to date to raised replicate the general impact that wine tour corporations have on the Fredericksburg group and embrace remark from native enterprise proprietor Brooke Rogan.