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Jason Haas

Happy New Year from the Tablas Creek Team

As we finish up with 2010, we wanted to take a moment to enumerate a few of the things we're feeling thankful for. We're thankful for the rain we got last winter, which gave us the healthiest vineyard we've ever seen this year. We&

Holiday Wine Suggestions from the Tablas Creek Team

The idea that there is one perfect holiday wine is silly. There is no one single holiday meal, and no one single holiday group. But at the same time, it's fun to peek into other worlds and see what people are planning. I asked several key members of

Recap and Photos from a Deliciously Wet Weekend

Since Thursday night, we've had nearly seven inches of rain at Tablas Creek. We're up over 11 inches for the year, and ahead of what we'd expect on our average 28-inches-per-year pace. Even better, this rain has been spread over four days, giving it

A vertical tasting of Tablas Creek flagship red wines, from 1997 Rouge to 2009 Esprit de Beaucastel

Last week, we had the pleasure of one of Francois Perrin's semi-annual visits to Tabas Creek. In this immediate post-harvest time, we tasted through the cellar, did our best to evaluate the 2010 components, and took one last look at the 2009 reds before they start to go

A post-harvest round table discussion with Tablas Creek's winemakers

Late last week, with harvest concluded and the winemaking team rested up after a long, grueling harvest, national sales manager Tommy Oldre caught up with them to talk about their 2010 harvest experience. In the video, you'll see winemakers Neil Collins, Ryan Hebert, and Chelsea Franchi each give

Putting the Vineyard to Bed for Winter

We're enjoying the warm weather after our first winter storm passed through last night. It dropped about an inch of rain on the vineyard, and the wind completed the defoliation of the vines begun by the two weeks of frosty nights in late November. This is a quiet

Biodynamics and dry-farming: repairing the failings of "modern" viticulture

Week before last, I had the privilege of representing Tablas Creek at the Yosemite Vintners' Holidays. This event (which I wrote about a few months back in my post 5 great events for food&wine lovers) was as usual a treat, with unexpectedly warm weather, about 175 attendees

Harvest 2010 Recap and Assessment: Low Sugars, Good Yields and Great Flavors

Harvest 2010 is in the barn. Done. Finally. It was a late harvest all-around, about 3 weeks late at the beginning and 2 weeks at the end. We began harvest with a little Vermentino on September 16th, but didn't really get into significant picking until October. The 47

Winemaker Ryan Hebert discusses the end of the 2010 Harvest

With the arrival this past weekend of our last significant Mourvedre block, harvest 2010 is more or less in the books. We have been going through the vineyard this week and cleaning up odd bits here and there in a leisurely fashion, but we can at last be confident we&

Vin de Paille: A Dessert Wine Making Technique for the Obsessed

We're making Vin de Paille this year for the first time since 2007. For those of you who don't know (we don't make much of the Vin de Paille, and it generally doesn't make it into distribution) Vin de Paille is a