Grayson College rededicates T.V. Munson vineyard as Texas A&M works to verify its grapes

Grayson College has rededicated its T.V. Munson Memorial Vineyard, and Texas A&M is partnering with the college to preserve Munson's grape collection and verify the identities of its varieties. The aim is to study the vines for traits tied to drought, heat and disease resilience.

Grayson says the vineyard was established in 1974 in Munson's memory with support from the W.B. Munson Foundation, which puts its history past 50 years. The college's 2025–2026 catalog describes a three-acre teaching vineyard holding more than 60 original Munson varieties alongside other grapes, backed by a wine laboratory and an instructional winery. Courses combine online instruction with weekend meetings.

Amit Dhingra, who heads Texas A&M's horticultural sciences department, wrote in November 2025 that his team would give Grayson identified plant material, DNA data and repository access. He describes the Munson Legacy Project as a search for genetic traits associated with drought, heat and disease resilience. Plans call for publicly accessible genetic information and authenticated plants to support research, breeding and teaching.

A Texas A&M research abstract for 2025–2026 reported that 90 of Munson's 300 released cultivars were known to survive. According to the abstract, researchers collected material from Grayson's vineyard and federal repositories, established tissue cultures, and extracted and sequenced DNA from four cultivars.

The host of This Is Texas Wine reported attending the rededication in a first-person account published Sept. 2, 2026. The partnership with Texas A&M predates the ceremony.

Cooke County sits within the regional wine-growing geography. A 2005 federal rule describes the Texoma viticultural area as about 2.3 million acres across portions of Montague, Cooke, Grayson and Fannin counties.

Texas A&M credits Munson with identifying phylloxera-resistant Texas grape rootstocks, and says grafting European varieties onto those roots helped protect European wine production.

The search for Munson's vines began decades ago. A 1990 scientific paper records that Roy Renfro and colleagues began locating Munson cultivars in private vineyards in the early 1970s, and that 65 cultivars were growing at Grayson County College's memorial vineyard by publication.

In October 2024, Grayson announced four visiting faculty members, including Texas A&M specialists Justin Scheiner, Daniel Hillin and Michael Cook. Scheiner directed Grayson's viticulture and enology program from 2011 through 2014. Grayson reported in May 2026 that Scheiner supplied replacement varieties, Cook introduced Japanese eating grapes and German PIWI hybrids, and Munson family members planted a Ponroy vine developed by Munson.

In August 2026, Grayson reported hosting Italian CREA scientists who collected grapevine wood for a nationwide Pierce's disease study. Grayson was the first of seven vineyard stops on their Texas visit.

Grayson distributes vineyard cuttings to growers and breeders across the United States. Its published procedure sets Nov. 15 as the request deadline, December for taking cuttings and February for fulfillment, subject to limited supplies.