Family Business: Generations

This essay is the next in an occasional series of articles by Robert Haas. In my career as a wine buyer, I have been fortunate to find models to admire and mentors willing to share their knowledge and experience in the business of producing fine wine. One such was Jacques

Harvest, Week of September 28th: A Change in the Weather and Worries about Yields

If you've been following our 2009 harvest report, you'll know that we'd been hoping that the vintage would turn out to be a little more plentiful than the last two drought-reduced crops.  Perhaps this was wishful thinking, given our third-consecutive below-average

How cool... Tablas sells ad space!

I was amazed (and thrilled) to have a clipping from the San Francisco Chronicle sent to me.  It's not editorial coverage, though we've been fortunate enough to get some good editorial coverage in the Chronicle in the last year.  It was a Chronicle ad soliciting advertising

Harvest, Week of September 21st

The weather did indeed heat up.  It has topped out around 102 most of this week, and is forecast to stay hot through the weekend (and then cool down).  This heat wave has been a touch gentler than the forecasts were predicting, which is a good thing.  And this late

Fall in Vermont

This essay, sent in from Vermont, is the next in an occasional series of articles by Robert Haas. After a rainy Vermont summer (was that summer?), fall has arrived with the leaves just beginning to turn color, apples ready to pick and the garden mostly put away for the winter

Harvest, Week of September 14th

We've (finally!) started harvesting our reds.  We are bringing in Syrah today, and expecting about 10 tons.  The fruit looks tremendous: low pH (around 3.35), good sugars (around 25 Brix) and excellent flavors.  It seems to me that the grapes have lots of texture and solids rather

A first look at the 2008 reds

When we have writers come and visit us at the winery, we try when possible to look both at what is current and what is coming up.  Some years, we don't have a lot of ability to look forward, because the blends aren't finished, or at

Harvest 2009 Begins... Slowly

It's clear at this point that it's going to be a long harvest.  We picked our first grapes early last week (September 1st): Viognier from the top of the tallest hill on the property -- typically the first part of the vineyard we harvest -- and Roussanne for

The importance of multi-channel marketing (AKA yes, print will be seen by more eyes than email)

This month, we launched the VINsider Wine Club Collector’s Edition, which gives its members access to library vintages of Esprit de Beaucastel and Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc that we’ve aged in our cellars.  As we have held back only a limited quantity of our older wines, we announced

Andalusian Gazpacho Recipe

There is no food that is more evocative of summer than gazpacho.  In the late summer, when local tomatoes are plentiful around most of the country, it's one of the easiest, most impressive ways to begin a summer meal.  With the richness of the pureed bread, it can