The Turtle Receives Wine Enthusiast Ward Of Distiction.

Well it's not officially out yet. The Turtle Restaurant in Brownwood, Texas received "One of the nation's most wine friendly restaurants for 2009! Award of Distinction" Mary Stanley, owner explained, "we submitted our menus and our wine list, described our restaurant including our staff training, wine glassware and service, and posted our web page and blog. The Judges based their decision on those submissions. What is exciting is being listed in their database and in the magazine." Stanley hopes that this will lead to more publicity.

The Turtle Restaurant is located in the middle of rural Texas, a small town called Brownwood. Her goal is to become a destination restaurant. The Turtle is only two and a half hours from Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio so it;s more than a casual drive. "We've been working with the Way Out Winery group, the tourism office at The Brownwood Chamber of Commerce, Veldhuizen Cheese, and Star of Texas Bed and Breakfast to attract food and wine tourists from there to Bluff Dale, Dublin, Comanche and Brownwood Texas" It takes more than one restaurant or winery to create a food tourist destination. There needs to be synergy between all the folks making wine, cheese, food to create the buzz necessary to become a dynamic destination. Brownwood and central Texas has a lot to offer and all of the wineries and real food restaurants, organic farmers, cheese makers in the area are "unexpected finds" for those travelers who love food and wine.


Awards such as the one given by Wine Enthusiast help us get the word out. The Award of Distinction is Wine Enthusiast Magazine's lowest level award but this is The Turtle Restaurant Enoteca's first year and the staff needs more training. Our wine collection is new and not very deep so those things worked against us but never-the less there were only 25 restaurants in Texas last year which earned this award. The owners, Mary and David Stanley, are very pleased and excited. They don't know who or how many won this year - they won't until January 12, 2010 when the entire list is released. The Stanleys expect that the list will be much longer this year on account of the explosive growth of Texan wine bars. In any event last year all but one of the restaurants awarded in Texas were outside Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, or Dallas-Fort Worth area so this gives The Turtle a very unique and special standing within central Texas.