Is 2010 our best vintage ever? Perhaps...

This is bottling week.  We're mostly done with putting eight different wines into bottle: the 2011 Cotes de Tablas Blanc and seven of our red varietal wines from 2010: Counoise, Grenache, Mourvedre, Syrah, our two Pinot Noirs and our first-ever Cabernet.  Most of these are small production wines,

Celebrating May 15th: the unofficial end to frost season

I've been delaying writing this post so as not to jinx our progress, but I think that we're far enough into May that I can do so safely.  So, here goes. We seem to have made it through spring without any damage from frost. This achievement

Nine lessons the Kimpton Hotel Group offers wineries

Last week, Meghan and I escaped for a night down to Santa Barbara to see David Sedaris perform.  We stayed downtown at the Canary Hotel, a few blocks away from the Arlington Theater where he would be performing. When we checked in, it was during the evening wine hour that

Photo Essay: Spring Cleaning in the Vineyard

Between winter's worries about rain and frost and summer's worries about ripening lies a busy but often overlooked spring season where we have about a month to clean up the vineyard.  This spring cleaning mostly involves making decisions about whether to mow, disk or spade our

A great dinner, an amazing restaurant, and a wine that marks the beginning of Tablas Creek

If you are familiar with Bern's Steakhouse, you know it's Mecca for wine lovers. In 2012, at Bern's for a wine dinner with Cesar Perrin, we somehow uncovered the first-ever Haas-Perrin collaboration, from 1967.

Assembling Our 2011 Vintage Blends: Done. And Wow!

By Robert Haas Thursday of last week we completed our decision-making process for the blending of our estate red wines: Panoplie, Esprit, En Gobelet, and Côtes de Tablas. This vintage we’ll also be making a varietal Mourvèdre.  We also found time to make the final decision on the Esprit

Budbreak Photos from around the Vineyard

Budbreak may be late this year, but now that it's started, it's happening in a hurry.  After last week's cool, wet weather, it's turned warm and sunny, with the last two days in the 70s and even warmer temperatures forecast for later

A welcome dose of late spring rain

It has been a dry winter.  After record low rainfall in December, we saw a brief break when one wet weekend in January dumped nearly 5 inches of rain on us.  Then we returned to a weather pattern dominated by high pressure over the eastern Pacific, and the next two

The powerful impact of our grazing herd in the vineyard

As we get to know our grazing herd out at Tablas Creek, we're becoming increasingly convinced of its effectiveness.  A photo will illustrate the impact.  It shows the border between two vineyard blocks, on the right one that had the animals in residence for the previous five days,

A farewell treat: Cesar Perrin presents a Chateau de Beaucastel vertical

We've had the pleasure of hosting Cesar Perrin here at Tablas Creek for the last year.  Cesar is Francois Perrin's youngest son, a few years out of enology school in France, and proceeding through a series of apprenticeships at notable wineries around the world while being