Harvest, weeks one and two: zero to sixty in no time flat

Most vintages, harvest starts slowly, with a few bins the first day, then a little break, then a selective pick off another block, then another break, then finally a larger picking, then another break.  Not this year.  We started on September 4th with our first lot of Viognier for the

Common-sense sustainability

I'm in New York this week, helping kick off the release of the 2010 Esprit de Beaucastel and 2010 Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc.  My hotel, like most hotels these days, has one of the signs that tells you that in order to help protect the environment, my sheets

Harvest 2012 Begins!

And, as of 1:30pm today, we're live, with the arrival of the first fruit of the 2012 harvest.  As usual in the world of Rhones, we started with Viognier, this for our Patelin de Tablas Blanc from Paso Ridge, at the warm north end of the El

Pre-Harvest Jubilation

By Chelsea Franchi We had our scale certified last week, which was just one more reminder of the ever-present fact that harvest is barreling down on us (no pun intended). Steaming barrels in the afternoon sun Harvest is what we live for (well, work for) here in the cellar.  It

An anniversary dinner of rack of lamb, roasted tomatoes and avocado salad with Esprit de Beaucastel

This is a busy week of celebrations for me. Meghan's birthday was Friday. Sebastian's birthday is Monday. And our anniversary was Saturday. As it's squeezed between other parties, we often keep it low-key, and certainly compared to Friday night's amazing dinner at

Looking forward to an El Nino winter in 2012-2013

With two weeks of near-100° weather recently in our rear view mirror, and harvest not even yet begun, it's strange to already be thinking about winter weather.  But in my email inbox today I received a special alert from the Western Weather Group, the agricultural weather specialists whose

New Marsanne and Grenache Blanc releases: data points on the unique 2011 vintage

With several of our white wines getting scarce in the tasting room, this week we decided that we would release two new varietal white wines: the 2011 Marsanne and the 2011 Grenache Blanc.  So, we opened them early in the week to write up the tasting notes for the Web

Tasting the wines in the fall 2012 VINsider club shipment

Every six months, we send out a six-bottle shipment of wines to the members of our VINsider Wine Club.  The fall shipment is the showcase for our signature wines, and is typically centered around both our Esprit de Beaucastel and our Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc.  But this year is a

A Summer Dinner in Vermont

By Robert Haas One of summer’s greatest challenges for the Vermont gardener is keeping up with the zucchini production.  So we need to find recipes in order to benefit from our garden and, of course, wines to accompany them.  Here is an old standby recipe inspired by The Victory

Veraison 2012

So far, this year's weather has been pretty much perfect.  Lots of days in the 80's and low 90's, lots of nights in the 50's.  Very few days where the highs were in the 70's, and only a few where