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Jason Haas

Proprietor at Tablas Creek Vineyard

A video tour of the new addition to Tablas Creek

The construction of our new cellar, office and tasting room space is proceeding nicely. We've got floors, walls (or at least framing), and a roof over much of the new addition. It's gone up fast over the last month or so, and we're starting

Harvest, weeks of October 4 and 11: What else? More crazy in 2010.

In the past two weeks since my last harvest report, we've had our two largest-ever harvest days, three days that topped out near 110, two days of rain that topped out near 60 and a week-long pause in harvesting, and the resumption of beautiful weather that

Grapes of the Rhone Valley: Syrah

Syrah, also known as Shiraz in Australia, is one of the most noble grapes of the Rhône Valley, and by far the most widely planted Rhone variety in California. It is a key component in both our Grenache-based Cotes de Tablas and Mourvedre-based Esprit de Beaucastel blends (typically

A first in-depth look at the 2009 Tablas Creek red wines

2009 was a challenging vintage, with very low yields from three years of drought and some significant April frosts. It was further complicated by a record-breaking October rainstorm that dropped a foot of rain on the vineyard and stopped harvest for three weeks while everything dried out. The net

Harvest, weeks of September 20 & 27: A warm start to fall and a slow start to the harvest

After our cool summer, the warm weather that began about a week ago has been most welcome. And although it's been extreme in parts of Southern California (113 in Los Angeles, anyone?) it's just a normal September heat wave here. We did get up to 104

Five great events for food & wine lovers

I'm currently looking out at the adobes of Santa Fe, on a beautiful fall day. I'm in town for the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta, an annual celebration of the culinary traditions of one of the best food towns in America. This is one event

A great idea by the Rhone Rangers: Pneumonia's Last Syrah

Most of you are probably aware that Syrah faces a challenging marketplace. Even articles complimentary about Syrahs (as nearly all of them are) feel compelled to begin with a story about how hard they are to sell. A recent article by Eric Asimov in the New York Times began "

Notes from the Cellar: Harvest 2010 Begins! (AKA Fruit and Football; It Must be Fall)

By Chelsea Magnusson Experts claim that the (official) first day of autumn is September 22nd. Typically, I hate to disagree with expert opinion, but my first day of fall was yesterday. Supporting evidence includes the fact that Sundays and Mondays are now spent watching football, but the primary reason for

An updated weather assessment for the 2010 vintage

In late July, I wrote the blog post Refreshingly... brisk? An assessment of the unusual weather of summer 2010 in which I looked at the accumulated weather data for the vintage up to that point, and found that it fell most similar to the 1999 and 2005 vintages, both cool

An update on construction: photos of a space taking shape

It's been wild watching a new building take shape outside our windows over the past two months. As regular readers know (my dad posted in June about our pending construction) we're adding 8,000 square feet onto our winery building, incorporating more office space, a new