Barking Rocks Winery / Tiberia Revisited

Barking Rocks Winery Blends Jeans and Genes (Plus Grapes) to Make Memorable Wines

By Morgan Christensen

Texan News Service

The old rock cattle barn once belonged to the Helen Knox Ranch between Granbury and Thorp Spring. Abandoned and rotting, the ramshackle building had been taken over by weeds and brush, hay and manure. Even the tin roof had caved in. The place looked like a disaster.

But to Larry Tiberia, it looked like the perfect spot to make the transition from a career in the corporate world to life as a professional winemaker. Even though he found the barn in shambles, Tiberia also found it charming.

After working 25 years for Texas Utilities, Tiberia decided to go to work for himself and in May 2002 took a buyout from the company. He and his wife, Sissy, purchased the old barn, gutted it, and poured lots of concrete, work and love into the place.

“It’s been a work in progress,” Tiberia said of the large, open space that now houses Barking Rocks Winery. He used wood from old barns in Granbury and Comanche in the renovation and all the original materials from the barn. The ceiling is constructed of metal from the old roof. The main room looks like an art gallery, where local artists’ paintings of Johnny Cash, bluebonnets and old cowboys hang on the barnwood walls.

“We tried to retain the charm and eliminate the manure,” Tiberia said.

The Barking Rocks name came from the rocks placed into the mortar on the outside of the barn that reads “HK” for Helen Knox Ranch. Tiberia wanted a traditional and meaningful name for the place. For two years he racked his brain, exhausting every “H” and “K” word in the alphabet.

Then one evening a few years ago while sharing Barking Rocks wine among friends, the creative juices flowed as the group brainstormed about a name for the winery. They would only entertain ideas outside the alphabet letters.

“Hieroglyphically, if you saw that figure on the wall of a cave, it would look like an animal. The ‘H’ with the legs and the ‘K’ with the mouth, and it looked like they were barking. So I said, ‘Barking Rocks!”” Tiberia recalled.

A native Texan and the son of Italian immigrants, Tiberia combines “jeans and genes,” as he put it, to put Texas grapes on a path to becoming great wine.

“Growing up, wine was always around,” Tiberia said, sitting on the long covered porch, sipping a mug of hot green tea. He gazed across the grassy field at his dog, appropriately named Cellar, and a neighbor’s dog, T.J., playing in the tall grass. “That’s where the seed for my passion really started.”

Interested in making wine as a hobby, Tiberia attended various events and conferences to learn more. He felt drawn towards people he met in the wine business and enjoyed their intelligent company and their passion for wine. 

In the mid 1990s, the one-time hobby became a full-scale project when Tiberia and a friend decided if they were going to make wine, they might as well grow grapes. The project was fruitful until 2000, when the crop became tainted by Pierce’s disease, which basically chokes from the plant from getting water. As the vines begin to mature around mid-summer, a bacterium from insects known as “sharpshooters” that live inside the water-conducting vessels of grapevines cause the plant to die from the outside in. 

After attending the T.V. Munson Viticulture & Enology program in Grayson County to learn more, Tiberia felt he gained a wealth of knowledge about winemaking, especially in the chemistry behind it. Tastebuds play a significant role, too.

“It’s nice to know that chemically your wine needs acid, but I make the adjustments from my mouth,” he said.

Tiberia developed lasting relationships with new colleagues at T.V. Munson. When he opened Barking Rocks Winery, his plan was to make wine, friends and events such as tastings and talks about wine happen.

As a hobbyist, Tiberia began buying grapes in Plains, southwest of Lubbock, from grower Peggy Welch. The high plains are cool at night, making growing conditions similar to the Mediterranean, which some say produces better quality grapes. Tiberia believes good wines are grown, not made.

“I told Peggy that someday I was going to turn this hobby into a business, and I’m going to buy all the grapes you grow,” he said. “I mean, a Welch growing grapes…there’s got to be something right about that!” he joked. In 2002, he and Welch partnered and have worked together since.

“Actually her vineyard is my vineyard,” Tiberia explained.

Welch has grown Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, Orange Muscat, Sangiovese and red blends for Tiberia. He also has a relatively small grape plot that holds 150 Black Spanish Leniore plants for a port wine he’s expecting will be ready sometime in 2010.

“It’s not a business for a man without patience,” Tiberia said.

The grapes are harvested at night in the fall. Tiberia drives from Plains to Granbury, arriving before dawn, so the grapes remain cool. The fruit then is crushed and de-stemmed within six hours of its arrival and begins its long journey toward becoming a Barking Rocks wine. For the next two weeks of extracting flavor, Tiberia rarely diverts his attention from the grapes.

“I don’t want to say 24/7, but there are very few nights that I’m not checking something out,” he said.

For red wines, after fermentation is nearly complete and the color and flavor is extracted from the must, or skin and pulps, Tiberia presses the juice off the must. The liquid remaining presents the beginning of wine. The juice is put into tanks to settle, and then moved to toasted oak barrels, imported from Cuba, Mo., by another comrade in the industry, Leroy McGinnis. 

“Seems like my West Texas fruit and his Missouri toasted oak barrels go well together,” Tiberia noted. “Most of the business, I’ve built on relationships.”

Each year, Tiberia tries to create a wine that represents the best blend of grapes he harvested that year. In Texas, if a wine is not 75 percent or more a grape variety, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, it cannot be called Cabernet Sauvignon. Trying to find a personality and name that fits a particular blend of wine is very important, Tiberia said. Barking Rocks Casena, a 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Sangiovese blend, was named after his wife’s grandmother.

“Once we saw the wine through, it took on the name Casena, a beautiful word that sounded like wine and just had to be,” Tiberia said. “We want to do this every year if we can.”

Little Red Wine in Hood, a 2003 Syrah and Blanc Du Bois blend, also developed a personality as a light-bodied – or “little” -- red wine. 

Barking Rocks wine is available locally at Fiddle Creek Steakhouse, Line Camp Steakhouse between Granbury and Tolar and Rough Creek Lodge between Stephenville and Glen Rose.

Meanwhile, the Barking Rocks cellar will be waiting for wine lovers. And so will Cellar.

Barking Rocks Winery, 1919 Allen Court north of downtown Granbury off Loop 567. Open Sat. 1 to 6 p.m. or by appointment. For more information, call 817-579-0007 or visit the website at www.barkingrockswine.com.

The Texan News Service is a project of Tarleton State University’s journalism program.