My husband I were camping at Blanco State Park in our 5x10 squaredrop camper (a bed on wheels,…read morebasically) last Thursday when the weather turned cold and wet. We wanted a place to hang out for the day in warmth, and Tenuta Bianco was perfect.
When we walked in, the woman behind the bar (an owner, I think) broke away from the lively conversation in progress among the people at the bar, came around from the bar and welcomed us. She explained about their wide selection of wines. When we said we felt more like beer, she showed us the beer cooler, which had everything from Boerne Brewery's Old Courthouse ale (which I love but have a hard time finding) to Birra Moretti to several types of Real Ale. You name it, they had at least a few bottles. They also had several beers from the nearby Rough Diamond Brewery on tap. After discussing beers with our host, she said that we could sit anywhere and gestured around at the tables, sofa, and bar, but then she said we could also sit out back.
She then took us through handmade swinging saloon doors and showed us to the back of the place where it's been decorated with a western-style bar and lots of interesting prints and memorabilia and a pressed tin ceiling, explaining that at 5:00 they would have live music. It was very cozy and inviting, but no one was back there. I was thinking that we'd probably be comfortable on the sofa in the front room and that they'd not want us to sit in the back because of the extra walk to wait on us, but she encouraged us to sit back there, describing with obvious pride how they'd tried to recreate a saloon from a spaghetti western.
We spotted a little room off to the side, about 10 feet square, that had a sofa and a large ottoman. Since we were in search of a place we could stay for several hours and the wooden chairs back there didn't look like they'd be comfortable for that long, we asked if we could sit there. She encouraged us to make ourselves at home. We went back to the front to make our beer selections, which she carried back for us with icy pint glasses when we returned to the back to settle on the leather sofa.
We'd brought dice to play Farkle and/or Yahtzee (the Yahtzee score card app is great!), so we talked, played a game, sipped, and relaxed. A man, another owner?, brought us a dish with two small silver bowls on it: one held pecans and the other spiced almonds. He asked if we needed anything else. He kept popping back in, rearranging the chairs in the outer back room which had mostly been pushed off to one side when we arrived. He kept up a light and unobtrusive conversation whenever he'd come back, talking to us through the doorway or the serving window/bar on one wall of the little room about beer, the game we were playing, and camping at the state park, etc. The little room had a bookshelf filled with several travel guides (Italy, Spain, etc.). Among them I spotted Italian and Spanish phrase books and browsed them, entertaining myself quite a while with trying to pronounce phrases in both languages. My husband was reading a novel on his phone, but he had to stop because it was running low on battery. The man heard my husband say this and said to feel free to charge his phone. My husband didn't have his charger, but the man asked what kind of phone he had (Google Pixel), and asked to see the charging port on it. He went away and came back with a charger, which he plugged in for my husband (the plug was in an out of the way spot). When we'd go to the front to select another beer, he'd follow us back with cold glasses and take away the empties. Although the front room filled up, we remained the only customers in the back room the entire time we were there.
In short, we ended up feeling thoroughly at ease, welcomed and well-served as we hung out in the little room for about four hours. We drank about six beers between us, each one different, each in an icy pint glass. We don't normally snack, but since the gentleman was so kind as to bring us the pecans and almonds, we tried one of each and ended up eating almost all of them because they were perfect with the beer. Even with a 20% tip, we spent under $30.
My husband's uncle married an Italian woman and they brought her mother over from Italy to live with them after her husband passed. When we would visit, Nona waited on us hand and foot, even washing our clothes as soon as we changed out of them, and was so happy to do it all for us. She made us feel so special. This cold rainy afternoon at Tenuta Bianco had that feeling: we were honored guests and much cared for. The owners (?) clearly love what they're doing and have created a wonderful place to hang out.