Tract Home Guerrilla Winemaking

By Darren Delmore Delmore Estate Roussanne, Pismo Beach, California In June 2007 I bought a Tablas Creek Roussanne vine from the tasting room and planted it in my mom’s backyard in Pismo Beach. Her house is in a gated community a block from the chilly Pacific Ocean (Bakersfield Beach

State of the Vineyard, mid-April Edition

Ten days ago, I was convinced that we were going to get clobbered by frost in the aftermath of a cold, wet Pacific storm.  All the conditions were in place: an early budbreak, a weather pattern shift, and a powerful late-season cold front with origins in Alaska that was

The Rare Time When a Rainy Forecast is Unwelcome

Overall, we've had a warm spring.  In an environment where winter freezes are normal perhaps one third of the nights between December and February, we saw just four below-freezing lows in January and three in February.  March saw only one night drop below freezing at our weather

Is Facebook Even Worth It Anymore?

In late 2013, I wrote a blog piece titled What Facebook's News Feed Changes Mean for the Wine Community.  In it, I shared Facebook's warning to the owners of their pages that they were going to be reducing posts' organic reach, in order to prioritize

Budbreak, 2015: Early, like 2014. Cue the frost alarms.

By the end of last week, we'd seen significant budbreak at the tops of our hills among early sprouting varieties like Viognier, Syrah, Grenache Blanc and (below) Grenache. Budbreak each year starts the clock ticking on the growing season. It typically happens between mid-March and mid-April,

A first look at the 2014 white blends, and a vintage assessment

This week, we put together our white blends for 2014: Typically, our blending weeks follow a consistent pattern. We start by tasting each lot, variety by variety, and giving them grades. [For an overview of our grading system, see this post by my dad from 2012.] This initial phase gives

Celebrating a Recent Burst of Progress on Direct Shipping

It seems like progress in direct shipping goes in waves. There's a small flurry of movement, in states widely separated in geography and culture, and then a period when nothing much happens.  Then, for whatever reason, progress starts back up. About six weeks ago I wrote a post

Photo Essay: Green, Green, Green

Normally, the sign at the edge of our head-trained Mourvedre vineyard just outside our tasting room is to protect people from a twisted ankle, should they stray off the tarmac. Now, we're worried we might lose them in the cover crop! The growth in the vineyard'

Tasting the wines in the spring 2015 VINsider Wine Club shipments

Each spring and fall, we send out a selection of six wines to the members of our VINsider Wine Club.  In many cases, these are wines that only go out to our club.  In others, the club gets a first look at a wine that may see a later national

Another way in which Paso Robles is cooler than you think

This week, fresh on the heels of the wonderful storms that blew through last weekend, headlines from around California have made a quick about-face to resume talking about what has been so far a warm, dry 2015 overall. The LA Times warned of powerful winds and record high temperatures