State of the Vineyard, Mid-Summer Edition

This has been an unusual summer.  We had the warmest late-winter/early-spring anyone can remember. This was followed by the coolest May in 20 years. Then June was hot.  July, so far, has been cool, and we've even had (very unusual for summer in Paso Robles) a couple

Photos of the Day (Week? Summer?): Celestial Meetings

The sky put on a show last night.  Not only was there a beautiful full moon, but Venus and Jupiter came together in a conjunction that takes place just once per year.  And the timing worked: the moon was rising in the east at the same time that the planets

Through the glass doors: 360° views of Tablas Creek Vineyard, courtesy of Google

By Lauren Phelps When you have a limited amount of time to visit a new place for example, how do you decide where to visit?  If you’re anything like me, you type the name of the location into Google and see what pops up.  Well, today if you Google

On the Road: a Rhone Pilgrimage

By Darren Delmore I had the distinct pleasure of tagging along last week on a trade visit to the Perrin family's holdings in the Rhone Valley.  Our odyssey began with our thirsty quintet of wine professionals packed into an undersized rental car like foie gras terrine as we

Tablas Creek is a 2015 Wine Blog Awards Finalist!

I was excited to learn today that we are a finalist for the 2015 Wine Blog Awards.  These awards were created in 2007 (Thank you, Tom Wark!) to honor the growing number and quality of wine bloggers, and have been awarded each year since.  I'm even prouder that

Shatter explained: A perfect flower, but not a perfect bloom

By Levi Glenn Every year there is a one- to two-week period when the vineyard smells wonderful. That's when you know bloom has arrived. It's not the unbelievably effusive smell of an orange grove in full blossom. Or the sweetly intoxicating blue bush lupine, a beautiful

Introducing the wines for the 2015 Collector's Edition shipment

Each June, I have the pleasure of tasting through library vintages of our Esprit de Beaucastel and Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc to choose the wines for the upcoming VINsider Wine Club Collector's Edition shipment.  [for the origin story of the Collector's Edition, from 2009, click here.

Customer Disservice: Nine Lessons from a Terrible Hertz Experience

No one, as far as I can tell, likes the customer experience much when they rent cars. Between the waiting around at the end of a travel day when you're already tired and the relentless upselling, I have to figure that renting a car must be among the

What We're Doing Now: Shoot Thinning

This time of year in the vineyard is a combination of catch-up and get-ahead.  Catch-up because we're still getting the last of the cover crops tilled into the soil, and there are stray blocks, where the work hasn't been completed, whose wildflowers and tall grasses look

Notes from the Cellar: Blending the 2014 Vintage

By Chelsea Franchi Here at Tablas Creek, when we sit down to decide on blends for the year, it's a big event.  At this point, a lot of work has been put into these wines and it's critical we bring our best to the blending table