The Rhone Report and the appeal of wine criticism by varietal

Last week, Jeb Dunnuck published the second issue of The Rhone Report, which he describes as a newsletter "dedicated to the wines and grapes of the Rhone Valley".  Issue #2 is a tremendous undertaking, with 72 pages of articles, reviews, and tasting notes.  The bulk of the issue

Enjoying fall foliage while putting the vineyard to bed

This is a deceptively quiet time of year.  We aren't harvesting any more, but we're still pressing off some red lots in the cellar and only a few select lots have actually finished fermentation.  In the vineyard, we're doing anything we can to help

Harvest 2009 Evaluation and Recap

The 2009 harvest is done.  In the barn.  Finally.  At 64 days (beginning September 1st and ending November 3rd) it was our second-longest harvest this decade.  The only longer harvest, 2004, also saw the end of the harvest delayed by rain. The weather during harvest was challenging, to say

Note from the Cellar: Week of October 19th

[Note: We are pleased to welcome Assistant Winemaker Chelsea Magnusson who will be contributing a regular column "Notes from the Cellar" to the Tablas Creek blog.  You can follow her posts by selecting the Notes from the Cellar category from left-hand navigation bar.] Since the day the

Tablas Creek on Native Food and Wine

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon with Kevin Lynch and Amber Share of Native Food and Wine, a relatively new Web blog dedicated to food and wines of place.  Kevin and Amber describe their site as a place where they "examine how local

October 13-14 Pacific Storm Recap and Assessment

So, we're picking up the pieces at Tablas Creek after a storm that dropped an amazing 9.6 inches of rain on us in a little more than 24 hours.  To try to contextualize how unusual this storm was for us: * This is more than half the rainfall

A truly scary weather forecast

We've been fortunate with our weather during harvest for the last four years.  Each year starting with 2005, whatever the conditions during the spring and summer, we've had beautiful autumns, without serious heat spikes and without any significant rain.  That's one of the major

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