"I told my husband, 'One day, I'm going to get to do this,'" says Kristina Zinna in CultureMap San Antonio's report. The former Rackspace employee spent years driving her family to the JW Marriott just to find a decent place for a drink near Bulverde. That sentence is the whole story of Twine, the wine and cigar lounge she opened at 2471 Bulverde Road last October. It's also a decent summary of what's happening across town right now, because Twine isn't the only bet being placed on Bulverde this year, and none of those bets required anyone to lose their spot at the bar.
That's the part worth sitting with if you live here. Small towns near a growing metro usually tell a familiar story: new money shows up, rents climb, and the place that's been open since your parents were dating quietly closes. Bulverde's version looks different. The wine bar is already building its sequel before its first anniversary. A 136-year-old honky-tonk just renovated instead of shutting its doors. And a Houston pizza chain finally decided the town was worth a location, more than three decades after it opened its first store. Three separate businesses, three separate timelines, and not one of them involved something else going away.
The Bar That's Older Than the Chamber of Commerce
Hoodline's report on Specht's Texas covers its history and spring relaunch. Specht's Texas has been standing north of Bulverde since it started life as an 1890 general store, and its history page still points to the rumors of a Prohibition-era speakeasy tucked into its past. That's 136 years of continuous operation, which means this bar predates paved roads to San Antonio. So when it held a ribbon-cutting this spring, the news wasn't that Bulverde got a new bar. The news is that a business old enough to have outlasted six or seven building booms decided this was the moment to reinvest in itself rather than coast.
Owner Aaron Selinkoff, who took over Specht's about 16 months before the relaunch, told MySA the overhaul was about tightening up the kitchen and leaning harder into fresh Hill Country ingredients. The changes are tangible: a new pork chop, a king ranch chicken, a chocolate chip coconut pie, and rotating pies of the day. The building crew also enclosed a new playground and widened the tap list so more beers can be served on draft, and they added a climate-controlled back patio built to handle both August heat and the first cold fronts that start rolling through the Hill Country this time of year. The live-music bookings and event calendar that made Specht's a fixture haven't changed. The kitchen just got more ambitious around them.
The Wine Bar Already Building Its Second Act
Twine's origin story is almost too tidy. Zinna and her husband, master plumber Litterio "Terry" Zinna, found a vintage Bulverde home shaded by old-growth oaks and turned it into a wine bar with an unusual split personality: the indoor dining room and cigar lounge are adults-only, while the outdoor patio comes with a playground, a playhouse, and yard games so families aren't locked out of a night at Twine. The name itself came out of a family group chat that narrowed fifteen options down to five, until Zinna spotted birds' nests woven with twine on the property and the search ended there.
What makes Twine worth watching isn't the opening. It's what came right behind it. Before Twine had served its first glass of wine, Zinna was already telling reporters she was working on Vincenzo's, a higher-end Italian restaurant planned as phase two of the same property, complete with a private dining room and a members-only lounge with wine and cigar lockers. That's a business owner committing capital to a second concept before the first one had a single quarter of sales data to lean on. Reviews through the spring and summer describe Twine as reliably busy, with a rotating menu, $10 Friday cocktail specials, and reservations recommended Thursday through Sunday. Hours run Tuesday through Sunday, closed Mondays, with the kitchen open until 9 or 10 most nights depending on the day.
A Chain That Took Its Time
As CultureMap San Antonio reported, Pepperoni's Pizza has been slicing pies in the Houston area since 1990, but it took until this year for the chain to plant a flag anywhere near San Antonio, let alone Bulverde. The signage went up in the Bulverde Crossing shopping center at 18010 Bulverde Rd #107, and a local restaurant Facebook group spotted it before the company said a word. Corporate eventually confirmed the location, though without a firm opening date. State licensing paperwork filed back in 2024 had originally targeted a December 2025 completion, a deadline that slipped, but by early 2026 the buildout was close enough that job listings for the location started appearing on hiring sites.
It's a small detail, but it matters for what it signals. National and regional chains don't pick locations on a whim. They run the math on rooftops, traffic counts, and drive times before they sign a lease. A pizza company that's had 35 years to expand and is bringing a location to Bulverde Crossing now, rather than five years ago, says something about where the town sits in that math today.
What Doesn't Get Talked About
None of these three stories is really about the food. They're about what didn't have to happen for them to occur. Specht's didn't need to close to reopen better. Twine didn't need Vincenzo's to cannibalize an existing spot to find a location. Pepperoni's didn't displace another restaurant to get its unit in Bulverde Crossing. Every one of these is addition, not replacement, and that's a different kind of growth story than most small Hill Country towns get to tell when they start showing up on a chain's radar.
If you've lived in Bulverde for a while, you already know this town has never had many places to grab a drink or a plate without driving toward New Braunfels or San Antonio. That's exactly the gap Zinna described sitting behind her own frustration with the JW Marriott drive. The gap is closing now, not by trading the town's history for its future, but by both showing up in the same calendar year.
For residents, the practical version of all this is simple. If you want a table at Twine on a Friday or Saturday, call ahead, since the wine bar's busiest nights fill up fast. If you haven't been to Specht's since before the relaunch, the new back patio and expanded tap list are worth a return trip regardless of the weather outside. And if you drive past Bulverde Crossing and notice a new storefront taking shape, there's a decent chance it's the pizza spot everyone's been asking about since that sign first went up.
None of this changes what Bulverde has always been. It just means there's more of it now, and less of it disappeared to make room.
If you're watching this corridor fill in and want to talk through what it means for property values or timing a move in or out of Bulverde, Option One Real Estate knows this stretch of Bulverde Road as well as anyone. Send us a note, we're always glad to compare notes on what's new.
