Wineries Near Cedar Creek Lake: Find Your Kind of Evening

Ridge Creek Ranch Winery opened its doors in Mabank in June 2026, one of several independently owned wineries now operating within a short drive of the lake. Tony and Lisa Alexander spent more than two decades visiting wine regions in France, Italy, Napa, Sonoma, and Temecula before their niece married the winemaker behind Noisy Water Winery in Ruidoso, New Mexico. That family connection is still doing the work: Ridge Creek's wines are currently made at Noisy Water and brought back to Texas, while the Alexanders build out their own estate on the edge of a private lake in Mabank. By fall, they plan to have an outdoor stage finished just off the patio for live music.

These four spots draw residents off the main roads and onto county lanes between Trinidad, Mabank, and Athens: Ridge Creek, Triple N Ranch Winery, Tara Vineyard & Winery, and 3 P's in a Vine, which runs its own grill nights nearby in Athens. None of them share a website, a map, or a joint ticket. Nobody has printed a brochure calling this a wine trail. What exists instead is a set of unrelated tasting rooms that happen to sit close enough together to string into a weekend, each one built around a different night and a different reason to show up.

The One With the Longhorns and the Trivia Night

Triple N Ranch Winery in Trinidad started as a working cattle operation before it was anything else. The ranch is named for three generations of women in one family: matriarch Nan Creel, who began raising purebred Texas Longhorns at her Henderson County ranch in the 1980s, her daughter Nan Michelle Anderson, and Michelle's daughter Nan Christina. The winery itself traces back to 2018, when Nan's husband Ed was diagnosed with a progressive illness. Wanting to make sure Nan could stay on the property with her herd, Ed and Michelle converted a hay barn into a tasting room. Michelle enrolled in Grayson College's Viticulture and Enology program in 2019 to learn the trade, and the winery opened in 2020.

Roughly 600 vines of Camminare Noir and Paseante Noir, both disease-resistant red varietals bred for Texas conditions, now grow across the road from a herd of 70 longhorns that still graze the ranch. The tasting room runs Thursday through Sunday: Thursdays from 4 to 7:30 p.m., Fridays from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m., Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., and Sundays from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m., closed Monday through Wednesday. Thursday nights bring Music Bingo & Trivia hosted by Seth Thomas. A separate Wine & Book Club meets on its own schedule. NanPoli's Pizzeria runs the kitchen, and the winery leans into the outdoor space with bocce, cornhole, and croquet set up for anyone who wants a reason to stay past the last pour.

The Newest Arrival, Still Finding Its Footing

Ridge Creek Ranch is the youngest of the group, having opened in June 2026. The tasting room is open Friday through Sunday. The Alexanders have described the fall stage project as the next phase, meant to host live entertainment with their private lake as the backdrop. Until that's finished, the draw is the setting itself and a food menu built to complement rather than compete with the wine: charcuterie boards, wood-fired pizzas, and a wine-and-chocolate pairing for guests who want something beyond a standard tasting flight.

Ridge Creek's wines are made at Noisy Water Winery in Ruidoso, so a pour here carries the Alexanders' New Mexico family connection into a Mabank setting. With Friday-through-Sunday hours and a fall stage project on the way, the winery's own website is the best place to confirm details before a visit.

The One With the Mansion and the Pool Pass

Tara Vineyard & Winery sits further out in Athens, on County Road 3914, and operates on a different scale entirely. The vineyard was planted in 2006 and the winery opened in 2007, built around the historic Murchison mansion and centered on Blanc Du Bois, a varietal the winery has built its identity around cultivating and educating visitors about. A 2019 Mourvedre from Tara won the 2023 Lone Star International Wine Competition.

Tara's tasting room runs Wednesday through Sunday, with hours that stretch later into the evening than either Triple N or Ridge Creek: Wednesday and Thursday from 3:15 to 8 p.m., Friday from 2 to 9 p.m., Saturday from noon to 9 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. In 2023 the property added a 50-foot pool with an activity fee, turning a wine visit into something closer to a day pass. The Inn on-site has four guest rooms in the old mansion, and Hipcamp lists tent and RV camping directly on the vineyard grounds. Tara also owns Athens Brewing Company downtown, giving the same operation a second outlet in town for anyone who wants the beer side without the drive out to the vines.

A short distance away, 3 P's in a Vine runs its own signature event: Bring Your Own Meat night, where guests bring their own steak or shrimp and grill it themselves while the winery handles the baked potato, salad, and sides. It's a different kind of evening than a formal tasting, closer to a backyard cookout that happens to be surrounded by rows of grapes.

What This Actually Looks Like on a Calendar

None of these four spots coordinate with each other. There's no shared pass, no combined map, no single phone number to call for all four. What that means practically is that the choice isn't which order to visit them in, it's which night matches what you're in the mood for.

A curated wine trail usually exists because someone built it that way on purpose, with a printed route designed to move visitors from stop to stop in a single afternoon. What's forming around Cedar Creek Lake didn't start from a marketing plan. Triple N grew out of a family trying to keep a ranch intact. Tara grew out of a historic mansion someone decided to turn into a vineyard two decades ago. Ridge Creek grew out of a family wedding that happened to connect two winemaking households a thousand miles apart. The result is four places with almost nothing in common except geography, which means the only person who can turn them into a trail is whoever decides to drive between them.

If Thursday trivia at Triple N or a fall stage debut at Ridge Creek sounds like something worth building an evening around, that's exactly the kind of local detail Debbie French Real Estate Group tracks for our Living the Lifestyle at Cedar Creek Lake readers, because we're out here checking the hours too.