Houston Couple Bottling Poetry in Mendoza

The Houston Chronicle raises a fine malbec and toasts the love story of Jerry Ward, a local Oracle software consultant and, Sandra Beltran, a female marketing executive from El Salvador. They first met in 2001 at Ikal, a coastal resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Today they are married, and a passion for great wine eventually led them to Argentina where they are bottling a line of wines in Mendoza’s Valle de Uco called Ikal 1150. (“Ikal” is Mayan for poetry, and 1,150 refers to the vineyard’s elevation.) The Chronicle notes, “They appear to be the only Texans producing wine in Mendoza, where, a half-century on, the high-altitude vineyards may well be considered the world’s best.” To launch the venture, the couple joined forces with Argentine Daniel Silva: a wise move considering the logistics and paperwork involved in importing wine into the U.S. But fear not, this love story has a happy ending, according to The Chronicle: “The Ikal wines have been warmly embraced in Houston.”