In defense of expensive rosé

A few years ago, I was out to dinner at Villa Creek with friends.  Dining at Villa Creek is always a treat because not only is the food terrific, but owner Cris Cherry and GM Erick Cadena always put together a great and reasonably priced wine list that showcases not

An outstanding Outstanding in the Field dinner

In the last decade, the farm to table movement has gone from avant-garde to squarely in the mainstream. (Cue the spoof by Portlandia.) And of course, there are excesses that deserve to be pointed out, and pretense that deserves puncturing.  But, at its heart, it's about wanting

Flowering 2012

Now six weeks into the growing season, it's clear that 2012 is going to follow a different path than 2010 or 2011.  As opposed to being en route to a harvest roughly a month behind normal, as we were last year, we're on a normal track.

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

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

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