@Jay Hinrichs, to sum it up succinctly, Texas is where Napa was in the 1960's. Lots of farmers experimenting for many years and a few folks getting really serious.
In Texas the are four main growing regions and each has vastly unique climates and soils, and in addition each vineyard may have it's own training/trellising method that lends itself to different varieties. The regions, generally, are the High Plains (my area, from Midland up north to Amarillo), the Trans Pecos/High Desert area (Ft. Stockton, Ft. Davis, Marfa), North Texas (north of DFW), and the Hill Country (central TX). Each has their difficulties and differences, but generally the easiest area to grow is the High Plains (deep sandy loam soil with calcareous base, hot days/cool nights, flat topography, low humidity, good groundwater and rainfall). The most popular varieties tend to be those from hot growing regions of the world and include Tempranillo, Mourvedre, Sangiovese, Viognier, Malbec, Primitivo/Sangiovese, and your usual suspects (Merlot, Cab Sauv, Sauv Blanc, Pinot Noir) due to market preferences more than climate suitability.
On flavors, like I said above, Texas is a wildly varied state, like CA, in climate, soils, and methods, so basically everything from traditional whites/reds you might find in CA to crazy native grape/hybrid variety wines!
There are two main reasons you've probably never seen a Texas wine on the shelves. One is that we are constantly operating at a fruit deficit. Winery permits have grown enormously in the state, but vineyards can take a long time to catch up with fruit demand. We only have around 5k bearing acres currently (I'm working on that!). On great years we can only provide half of the fruit needed to produce the Texas-made wines consumed just within Texas by Texans. The second is that essentially all wine made in Texas is consumed in Texas and never makes it out, much is still direct-to-consumer, largely because the wineries don't need to get into distribution!
The deficit of fruit/juice/bulk wine is shipped in from California. The same is true for other wineries east of the Rockies. Our goal is to provide the raw materials not just for Texas, but for every winery needing fruit this side of the Rockies. That will mean getting Texas well over the 10k acre mark.
On mechanized vineyards, there will always be a space to find a "niche" in all businesses as you do in real estate (multifamily, flips, BRRRR, vacant land, wholesaling, etc). This is one problem in Texas, almost everyone does exactly the same methods and tries to compete in all the price-point niches of wine. We need to dial things in and find our niches here. There is certainly a market for hand-managed vineyard wines, and they have to command a price commensurate to the labor costs to make them worthwhile for the grower ($40+ per bottle). Margins are tight in the high-end space, like you mentioned in Oregon. Mechanized vineyards can produce the same, or better, quality fruit as traditional vineyards with margins several multiples higher than traditional vineyards. This puts you into a more logical (for me) market of targeting those $7-$40 "everyday" wines. It's like syndicating large multifamily properties vs. buying class-A SFR's with traditional financing and self-managing one at a time. Mechanized vineyards are a niche in the industry. Most of the profitable big-wine players are/are heading the mechanized route (EJ Gallo, Constellation brands, etc). The "pie" of consumers is larger, end product quality is great, and the margins are much better. We still have traditional hand-managed VSP trellised vineyard, and I expect we will plant more, but I don't anticipate it being our bread-and-butter niche as the market is significantly smaller at that price point.
