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Paso Robles

A collection of 126 issues

The importance of hang time

This past weekend was Hospice du Rhone. It's always one of my favorite events of the year, where hundreds of people (maybe pushing 1000, all told) who are enthusiastic supporters of Rhone varietals get together for a weekend of seriously lighthearted consideration of all things Rhone. You get

The real differences between eastside and westside Paso Robles

I've gotten a series of questions recently, mostly from people inside the trade, asking me some variation of the question "so, you're pretty far west in Paso Robles, right? That must mean you're cooler than a lot of those big eastside wineries."

A Last Dose of Winter

I just got back from spending the weekend in San Francisco, host to the Rhone Rangers Grand Tasting and its two days of seminars, trade and consumer tastings, and fifteen-winery winemaker dinner. The events were great... well attended despite the economy, with a great vibe to them all. Those of

West Paso Robles Wind Flow, the Templeton Gap and the Adelaida Climate

As I've said before, it's great to have interesting friends. I got a question from one of them (Kelly Bobbitt of Mike Bobbitt Associates, vineyard mappers here in San Luis Obispo County) asking about a model that he'd created to show the incursions of

Fog in the Vineyard

It's not foggy out at Tablas Creek very often. Our elevation (1500 feet) and the barrier of the Santa Lucia Mountains mean that neither the Salinas Valley fog that settles in areas close to town on summer mornings nor the Pacific fog that comes through the Templeton Gap

Snow in the Vineyard

We're (finally, thankfully) in a cold, wet winter weather pattern. Over the past four days we've received about 3.5 inches of rain, and it appears that we have Pacific storms dropping down out of Alaska every other day for the next ten days or so.

A little tropical rain in January

We're worried about the rainfall we've received this winter. So far, we're under seven inches total, which is behind the pace we need to be at to get to our annual average of 28 inches. And we had a very warm, dry stretch from

Ten Years of Vintage Grades: Paso Robles Report Card 1999-2008

I was called recently by the Wine Spectator, who wanted my review of the 2008 vintage in Paso Robles for their annual report card for the recently-concluded vintage (you can read the resulting article on the Wine Spectator's Web site). Distilling the complexities of a vintage down to

A frosty winter morning (and more good weather ahead!)

We're finally in a great winter weather pattern. We've seen measurable rain each of the last four days (totaling about 2.5 inches) and a couple of very cold nights in the mid-20s. It's a terrific time of year for this, as the cold

Challenges in assessing a vintage like 2008

I had a meeting with the Paso Robles Rhone Rangers yesterday, and while we were waiting for everyone to arrive we spent some time kicking around impressions of the recently concluded harvest. The general consensus was that all we were missing from our list of calamities was a plague of