The Houston Rodeo’s International Wine Competition is a massive production.
For Houstonians and travelers alike, the Houston Rodeo is but a brief moment in the year, filled with mutton bustin’, concerts, endless quirky foods, and carnival rides. But there’s much more that goes on behind the scenes long before the gates open. This includes the Houston Rodeo’s International Wine Competition.
Held each November ahead of the official Rodeo season, this competition highlights the importance of agricultural aspects of wine production in Texas while raising scholarship funds. In its 23rd year, the event received more than 3,000 entries from various winemakers—around a third of them outside the US. This year’s competition introduced a nonalcoholic category, inspired by recent sober-curious trends and an uptick in nonalcoholic wine entries.
“It truly does show how impactful this is, and the amount of wineries that are entering in and want to be part of this competition is [a] really great thing,” says Leif Graham, chair of the Rodeo’s winery relations committee. “They trust that we execute this at a very high level.”
It’s a fairly new part of the Rodeo, which dates back nearly a century. The late Charles “Bear” Dalton, a fine wine buyer for the liquor store chain Spec’s, founded the committee in 2003 after realizing that the Houston Rodeo lacked a formal wine program.
Blake Beyer, the current chair of the wine competition committee, says the initiative began with fewer than 200 people and operated like a livestock auction, during which entries are judged, then auctioned off.
Today, the committee comprises five specialized sectors and includes more than 2,000 people. “Wine has been on a steady increase over the past 25 years, and as the consumer demands increased for wine, the wine program here at Rodeo evolved to meet the consumer demand,” Graham says.
Starting in the summer, Kevin Hames, the vice chairman of entries, leads a team responsible for building a call-to-entry with distributors and wineries. The team talks with companies, encouraging participation to support Texas youth, since all funds raised go toward scholarships, Graham says.
Entry opens in August. Each winery or distributor must submit five bottles, which are stored in a refrigerated warehouse. Why so many? In case a bottle breaks or if there are any issues with the wine itself, Graham says, noting that agricultural products such as wine are prone to natural flaws, including cork taint, spoilage from Brettanomyces (yeast), oxidation, and volatile acidity. If such an issue is found before a pour or during judging, additional bottles can be opened to ensure each wine performs at its absolute peak.
Two ounces of wine are poured into each glass at the competition.
The committee members’ next task is verifying that the application materials and paperwork match the wine bottles. “If you think about 3,000 entries, it’s 15,000 bottles, right? It’s a lot. It’s pallets and pallets of wine,” says Beyer, who estimates that each year, the committee interacts with and “touches” these wines at least 188,000 times in total.
Just before the November competition begins, bottles are transferred to the NRG Center, where they are stored in five separate back rooms at approximately 65 degrees or lower in order to maintain flavor profiles. Then comes the real fun: competition weekend.
The 2026 competition took place over three days in November 2025, with around 400 volunteers working more than 5,000 hours to execute the event. The wine competition itself is just as intricate and precise as the lead-up, with “neutral zones”—backroom areas off-limits to judges to prevent bias—and bottles numbered with special IDs to ensure the competition is completely blind and free of backroom deals. Before the wine reaches the judging panel, bottles are chilled in a bucket of ice for about five to six minutes. Two ounces of each wine are poured into specially designed glasses with the Rodeo’s signature “Howdy” symbol (the markings double as pour lines) and thinner sides that allow more of the wine to reach the sipper’s palate.
The wine will eventually make its way to the judging zone, an area with about 20 panels of around five people each, depending on the number of wines entered. But not before the judges themselves are tested.
Panelists must complete an hourlong training, which often includes mock scenarios and a prejudging exercise requiring participants to taste, evaluate, and compare wines from the previous year. Sometimes, the challenge is taken to the next level, with Rodeo officials giving judges a flawed wine just to see how they’ll react. Amy Gross, vice chairman of judging, says the training helps people better understand the competition and gives returning judges a chance to offer tips and tricks for newbies.
The judging process itself can be surprisingly tiresome. One panel can go through around 80 wines a day, so spitting is required to avoid getting drunk on the job. Snacks such as cheese, roast beef, crackers, and celery sticks are on hand, and drinks like sparkling water and beer are offered to help prevent sensory fatigue.
Judges swirl the wine before they sip and spit.
Wines are awarded a gold, silver, or bronze title. (Wines awarded gold by all panel judges are given a “Double Gold,” the competition’s highest ranking). Then, a wine has an opportunity to advance to the semifinals, and then to a “super” panel, before it’s given a definitive title.
Finally, the wine list. Once tastings are complete, the committee puts in another 120 hours to prepare the list of winners to release to the public. This year, the 2026 Grand Champion Best of Show went to a 2022 cabernet sauvignon from Chimney Rock Winery in California’s Napa Valley. Houston-based Nice Winery was named Top All-Around Winery, and Thirsty Mule Winery of Liberty Hill took home the title of Top Texas Winery.
The recognition of Texas wineries at the Rodeo’s competition has been a boon to the state’s wine industry. Carl Chargois, superintendent of the wine competition, says the annual event has helped put the Lone Star State’s grapes on the map for the international wine community; Texas wines, he says, can now keep up with some of the best, despite being a much newer player on the scene.
The push for wine in Texas started out west with Sainte Genevieve Winery. First planted in 1981, the vineyard began as an experiment. It was part of the larger American-French partnership, supported by the University of Texas System and the University Lands. It subsequently launched Texas’s infancy phase for wine, Chargois says.
Since then, the Texas wine scene has matured, moving beyond what Chargois calls an “adolescent” phase, and state wineries are now invited to the table as experts to discuss best practices, soil, and how to grow under certain conditions. “I would put Texas as one of the top [wine] places to look out for,” he says.
As for how our wine performs in competition, Chargois says “very well,” but ultimately it depends on the grape variety. Texas wineries that produce the white wine grape variety viognier have consistently won multiple awards for it in competitions worldwide. So, if there’s a Texan who hasn’t tried this wine yet, Chargois says they should strongly consider it. “You’re consuming hard work, independence, growing conditions, farming,” he says. “You’re supporting all that and appreciate it for what it is.”
Houstonians curious about comparing Texas wines can do their own taste testing when the official Rodeo festivities begin. The annual Champion Wine Garden welcomes Rodeogoers to try more than 75 award-winning wines from the International Wine Competition this March.
