Texas Mystery Wine Tour: A Fistful of Merlot

Meet your fellow mystery travellers in Fredericksburg where the adventure begins with a mission of enormous importance: finding a cowboy hat that makes you look like you own several cattle. You’ll have a strictly limited amount of time to choose your headwear and explain its emotional significance. We’ll try for Stetsons, depending on what the shop has in stock. If no hat speaks to you, a belt is an acceptable alternative. Every group needs someone who looks prepared to secure their trousers during a dramatic escape. Points will be awarded for style, commitment and saying “howdy” without sounding as if you learned it from a television advert. Hats and belts are at your own expense. This is a mystery tour, not a hat-based protection racket.

After checking into the hotel, we’ll visit our first mystery winery for a welcome tasting. Then it’s time to meet the gang, choose an outlaw name and open your first sealed clue. Suggestions include The Chardonnay Kid, Billy the Sip and The Belt Buckle Bandit.

For dinner we will visit a legendary little settlement where the population is tiny, the cowboy hats are enormous and the unofficial municipal policy appears to involve country music and cold beer. Explore the historic saloon, meet the bikers and musicians and discover a dance hall that's been entertaining Texans for generations.

Today we follow a trail of clues through Texas wine country visiting three mystery wineries. Expect vineyard scenery, generous pours and at least one person in your group saying, “I’m getting notes of…” before naming a fruit they’ve just seen on the breakfast table.

One stop may include a behind-the-scenes look at how the wine is made, possibly involving vineyards, barrels or a vehicle that makes the word “tram” sound unexpectedly glamorous.

Between tastings, there’ll be time for lunch and the Highly Unofficial Wine Detective Challenge. Your team must choose a favourite without saying “the red one,” “the white one” or “the one with the nice label.” There’s no exam but there may be a certificate for anyone who can describe a wine without using the word “smooth.”

Tonight we travel to the Cowboy Capital of the World for an encounter with authentic Western culture. Think ranch experiences, saloons, cowboy hats and the possibility of a proper rodeo. Woohoo!

This morning’s mission has four/five legs. We’ll head out for a guided horseback ride through the Hill Country with an introduction for beginners and time to get acquainted with your horse. The horse may be calm, majestic and perfectly happy to follow instructions. Or it may look at your chosen direction and decide it has better ideas. Either way, there’ll be scenic views, fresh air and photographs that make you look as though you’ve been riding horses all your life.

After lunch, we visit our fifth mystery winery for another tasting and another clue. You can practise your serious wine-tasting face, compare notes and avoid describing everything as “cowboy juice” unless you’re ready to defend the phrase.

Then comes Friday night’s secret country-dancing mission. We’ll join a dance lesson before the live music. The objective is to master enough of the two-step to avoid colliding with your partner, the floor and anyone who has been doing this since childhood. Rhythm is optional. Confidence is not. Please don't ask your Tipple Tours host for dancing advice, he has two left feet.

Today we set off to investigate a very unexpected landmark. It’s big, strange and has the kind of confidence usually reserved for people who order dessert before looking at the menu. We won’t name it in advance. You’ll have to follow the clues, take in the surprise and decide whether the people responsible were inspired, eccentric or simply had access to a lot of building materials. There’ll be time for photographs, debate and at least one group member to say, “I didn’t expect to find this here.” That is, in fact, the correct response.

After lunch, we visit our sixth winery and continue the investigation over a tasting.

Tonight, we’ll step inside Texas's oldest continuously operating dance hall, dating back to 1878. Country music, wooden floors and an opportunity to discover whether two-stepping requires coordination or simply tremendous confidence. We will also present the Golden Boot Awards, including Best Hat Purchase, Most Persuasive Tasting Note and Most Likely to Have Bought a Belt Because It Was on Sale during a celebration of music, local drinks and sausages. Your team’s challenge will be revealed on the day.

Our final day brings an outdoor adventure surrounded by the sort of enormous Texas scenery that makes your phone camera work very hard. Choose a walk that suits your legs; nobody needs to climb anything in cowboy boots to prove a point to a stranger.

Then it’s time for our seventh and final winery visit or tasting-room stop. We’ll raise one last glass, open the final clue and reveal how the pieces of the mystery fit together. Your team must nominate the bottle that best represents the trip: The One We Liked, The One the Horse Approved or The One We Can Still Fit in the Suitcase.

We say goodbye in Fredericksburg with new friends, excellent memories and a hat b- or belt - that somehow now feels emotionally significant.

Mission complete. Seven wineries investigated. Two-step attempted. Hat acquired. Mystery solved…mostly.