Silver Dollar Winery

Wine kits before the cellar

Richard Bowen sets sweet and dry bottles into the same conversation as winemaker at Silver Dollar Winery in Johnson City. At the bench-side of this small Hill Country winery, Richard Bowen works from a beginning that was domestic before it was commercial: in 2008-2009, while he and his wife were on the 290 wine trail, she told him they could do this, then began ordering wine kits. The habit took hold. Bowen later trained at Grayson College, a practical step in 2015 that sharpened the work he was already pulling toward. His earlier career had its own discipline, from 1995 to 2016 as a driver at XPO Logistics Supply Chain Corporate Services, Inc., a life of routes, repetition and keeping the load moving. Since 2015, he has been CEO and winemaker here, carrying that same hands-on steadiness into a maker-led program rather than a showpiece cellar. The house works at small scale and conventional philosophy, with Bowen’s name attached to both the cellar decisions and the business itself. That double station matters. The person who sets the range also answers for the place.

High Plains fruit in a broad register

The program reaches across more than over 20 sweet and dry wines, drawing on fruit from the Texas High Plains AVA and Washington. That breadth is the point of the cellar rather than a side note: Riesling, Viognier and Marsanne sit alongside Malbec, Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Sangiovese, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Blanc du Bois, with still reds, still whites, rosé, fortified bottles and dessert wines all inside the house language. Bowen’s signature bottlings include Silver Dollar Johnson Muscat, IM’Peached, Ike’s Red and Liberty Cabernet Sauvignon, names that keep the work close to the counter instead of hiding it behind abstraction. The method published by the house does not go into fermentation temperatures, barrel regimes or vineyard blocks, so the clearest craft fact is the range itself: a winemaker building a portfolio broad enough for Muscat sweetness, Texas red structure and bistro-table drinking without pretending they are the same task. The discipline is in holding those lanes apart.

A tasting room with dust on its boots

The room reads rustic before it reads polished. Eclectic pieces gather around a down-to-earth tasting room, staff keep the pace friendly, and winery dogs move through the property as part of the daily texture rather than a staged amenity. Outside, string lights mark the seating, fire pits hold the evening in place, and the garden opens toward the Hill Country view. Silver Dollar sits on a 25-acre property, with farm animals and outdoor space giving the visit a working-property cadence. The wine happens in the glass, but the place does not ask the glass to do all the speaking. There is the counter, the tasting room, the air outside, the dogs, the quiet. Bowen’s range meets a room built for staying with a pour long enough to notice what changes in Liberty Cabernet Sauvignon.