Chronicling a Year in the Southern Rhone

In January I had the pleasure of sitting in on Marc Perrin's presentation of the wines of Beaucastel, Domaines Perrin, and La Vieille Ferme to the Vineyard Brands sales team at their annual sales meeting.  (I followed with a presentation of Tablas Creek).  The wines were beautiful, and

Our New Tasting Room is Ready!

We're thrilled that our months-long expansion is in its final stages.  The building is done.  The furniture in the new tasting room is complete, and that in our semi-private tasting rooms is nearly done.  We've got most of our landscaping in the ground, with the last

A Tasting of the Wines in the Spring 2011 VINsider Wine 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 in many ways the showcase for our signature wines, and typically includes both our Esprit de Beaucastel and our Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc.  The spring shipment is

Green, Green, Green

We're in an intermediate sunny period between two winter storm systems, which is exactly what we want at this time of year.  We've been worried about how advanced the local flora was, so having alternating rain and cold serves the twin purposes of continuing to replenish

Our crazy Paso Robles microclimates

As was forecast, we've had a wet week.  After yesterday's 1.72 inches, we're up around 3.5 for the week, with the largest dose of rain forecast for today.  And the weather pattern is supposed to stay unsettled, although we'll get

A (major) change in the weather for Paso Robles

Photos are probably the most dramatic.  In just a couple of days we've gone from: To: And it's just the beginning. We've gotten nearly a half an inch this morning, and we're expecting storms on Tuesday, Friday, next Monday and next  Thursday.

Olive Relocation Project

We're nearing the end of the construction that will eventually provide us with two new rooms for our cellar, nearly double our office space and -- most visibly -- a new tasting room.  I wrote last week about the efforts we're making to have the environment

Telling the Tablas Creek story... without words

As regular readers of the blog (or anyone who's visited Tablas Creek in the last six months) will know, we're in the final stages of expanding our winery and building a new tasting room.  The building is done, and we're working on landscaping the

Rhone Rangers and the value of communal marketing

On Tuesday, I handed off the presidency of the board of the Rhone Rangers to Josh Bendick of Holly's Hill Vineyards in the Sierra Foothills after a two-year term.  I've served on the organization's board for seven years now, a long time in the

Full Moon and Violet Skies at Tablas Creek

Winters bring a different sort of beauty to Paso Robles.  The hillsides turn softly green, the earth turns a deep brown, and the black oaks lose their leaves, exposing mistletoe and Spanish moss, and contrasting with the live oaks with which they share their wooded hillsides.  A little later in