Tablas Creek 101: Why (and How) We Use So Many Grapes

By Robert Haas Last night a long-time friend and wine lover asked why we planted and utilized so many different varieties of Rhône grapes in our Tablas Creek wines and what their individual contributions are to our six different blends, or assemblages as they are known in France. Well, there

The Serenity of Foudres (Sometimes)

By Chelsea Magnusson The addition of the new tasting room and foudre rooms has been a bit of a challenge for those of us in the cellar.  Where before, we could do most of our work on the foudres in private, it now feels as though we are on display

Tasting a decade of Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc: 2001-2010

I got a question from my brother about a wine dinner we'll be doing together in Washington, DC this fall. (At Brasserie Beck, September 27th; should be amazing; more information here.)  He wanted to include an older vintage of Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc in the menu and had

Reflections on Tablas Creek's 2011 Best Winery Blog award

On Saturday, at the 2011 Wine Bloggers Conference in Charlottesville, VA, the winners of the 2011 Wine Blog Awards were announced.  One of them was us!   Thank you to everyone who voted; the award was 50% determined by votes  from the public.  The other 50% was determined by the votes

What does it mean when a wine is in a "closed" phase? Think teenager...

I recently got a question from a friend who had been looking at the vintage chart that we keep on our Web site (a shot of the most current one is to the right; click on it to get a larger picture or on the link above for the PDF

Other Wines We Love: 2009 Bishop's Peak Pinot Noir

The next in an occasional series of our non-Tablas Creek wine discoveries. I greatly admire Brian Talley and his team at Talley Vineyards.  They make great Chardonnay and Pinot Noir year in and year out, both their vineyard-designates (Rosemary's, Oliver's, and Rincon) and their estate wines.

Introducing Viticulturist Levi Glenn, who explains shoot thinning

We've had the same vineyard team here at Tablas Creek for the last fifteen years.  Neil Collins has overseen both the vineyard and the winemaking since 1998.  He is assisted by Winemaker Ryan Hebert and Vineyard Manager David Maduena, both of whom have been here since our 1997

A family stay in Vinsobres

By Robert Haas Where?  Well, Vinsobres is in the Drôme, the next département north of the Vaucluse: kind of the northern limit of the southern Vallée du Rhône. We were in the outskirts of Les Cornuds, a village -- patelin, if you will -- of about four houses just east

Photo of the day: A green sea of vines under a blue sky

Early June, when I wrote about how cold our spring had been, seems like a lot longer ago than one month.  When I returned from a two-week trip to the Rhone (during which it was consistently in the 90s here in Paso Robles) the vineyard had grown so much that

Three new wines for a Fourth of July cookout

Ok, so it was really the 3rd of July yesterday, but it was still a 4th of July cookout, complete with lots of friends and their kids, burgers and dogs on the grill, deviled eggs, potato salad, and a lemon cake decorated like an American flag.  Sure, there were a