But Mandola Estate Winery and Trattoria Lisina in Driftwood offer both on the same Hill Country parcel. Hill Country gastronomy didn’t go much beyond barbecue in the old days. Today, the Texas Hill Country is its own American Viticultural Area—a recognized, official wine region like Napa Valley or Sonoma County, several wineries make up a wine trail that runs through it. Driftwood, a hamlet less than 45 minutes southwest of Austin, offers tastes of Hill Country cuisine, wine and, yes, even barbecue.

The name Mandola is familiar to central Texans, too. Houston-native Damian Mandola is well-known for his pursuits with his nephew, Johnny Carrabba. Together, they founded Carrabba’s restaurants in 1986 and hosted three cooking shows on PBS. They’ve written three cookbooks together, too, starting with Ciao Y’all—a book that, in title alone, belies the Texas-meets-Italy sensibility that Mandola brings to all of his ventures. In 2007,  Mandola and his wife, Trina, teamed up with friends and fellow Houstonians Stan and Lisa Duchman to build a winery, then a restaurant they named “Lisina,” which combines both wives’ names.

Explore The Area
Begin a foray to Driftwood with a reservation at one of several bed-and-breakfasts in the area. The Inn at Onion Creek, in Kyle, offers rooms, suites and cottages, as well as a spa on a hundred-acre tract threaded with hiking trails. At the Blair House Inn in Wimberley, guests can partake in cooking classes and visit an on-site art gallery, as well. Or at Wimberley’s Mountain View Lodge, overlook the Blanco River valley from on-high and follow a nature trail through native Hill Country flora.

To get a taste of the region’s heritage, you might start your visit with some lunchtime barbecue at the Salt Lick, Driftwood’s venerable open-pit institution. Bring your own adult beverage, if you’d like to drink one, as local law prohibits the sale of it by the proprietors here. Or, if you’re up for a drive on a clear Hill Country day, another old-school gem of a restaurant lies in Johnson City, where highways 290 and 281 meet. The Silver K Café serves up fried chicken and pimento-cheese sandwiches, among other traditional fare, and has one of the best Texas wine lists around.

If it’s wine direct from a winery you’re after, your options are many. In tiny Driftwood, alone, Mandola Estate Winery is neighbored by Driftwood Vineyards and its adjacent winery, which has racked up awards since beginning operations in 2002. Still more wineries are located in and around the surrounding towns of Johnson City, Comfort and New Braunfels.

On a visit to Mandola Estate, you can get to know the winery a few different ways. First, take the winery tour. It’s free and begins on the hour between noon and 7 p.m. on the weekends. The tour, written by the winemaking team to include details about the wine-making process, follows a path through the winery’s grand hallway, lined with windows to the rooms where the wine is made and bottled, and lasts between 20 and 30 minutes.

Savvy staffers will pour tastes and offer insight when you belly-up to the winery’s tasting-room bar. The wines, made from grapes grown in Texas, exclusively, are made in Italian styles. A wine made from zinfandel grapes, for instance, won’t taste like a California zinfandel, but rather like its Italian kin, called primitivo.

Sampling The Menu
A short walk from the winery along a path landscaped in native plants, Trattoria Lisina serves up Italian cuisine and wine from a list comprising some hundred labels—including, of course, Mandola Estate. It’s hard to say whether the ambiance or the food is the bigger draw, here. The scene is festive bordering on grandiose, yet at the same time casual and inviting.

Stained concrete floors, an expansive marble counter and dark wood benches set the tone in the restaurant’s foyer, and inside the dining room, walls of windows frame a view of the vineyard with a Hill Country backdrop, making this a lovely space to spend an afternoon or evening.

The menu tempts diners to approach a meal as an Italian would: in courses, starting with antipasti, moving along to pizza, then pasta and soup before finally tasting a main dish, then dessert. If you saved room.
Room is one thing that isn’t lacking at Mandola Estate, which started at 18,000 square feet and is expanding still. A new, 4,000-square-foot, native-stone event pavilion features a fireplace, another kitchen, and windows into the winery’s barrel room. Designed to accommodate large private parties, and perhaps cooking classes someday, it’s the latest improvement to the tiny—but growing—town of Driftwood.