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Pretty Pictures

A collection of 341 issues

Photos of the Day (Week? Summer?): Celestial Meetings

The sky put on a show last night. Not only was there a beautiful full moon, but Venus and Jupiter came together in a conjunction that takes place just once per year. And the timing worked: the moon was rising in the east at the same time that the planets

Through the glass doors: 360° views of Tablas Creek Vineyard, courtesy of Google

By Lauren Phelps When you have a limited amount of time to visit a new place for example, how do you decide where to visit? If you’re anything like me, you type the name of the location into Google and see what pops up. Well, today if you Google

Dry-Farming in California's Drought, Part 2: Looking Forward to the Past

In the first part of this 3-part series on farming in California's drought, I looked at how our climate here in California differs in crucial ways from that in the Mediterranean, and what lessons we took from these differences in how we would choose to farm. In this

Photo Essay: Spring in the Vineyard

This spring continues to be benign. After our scare in early April, we've had three weeks of beautiful weather, with lows between 36° and 45°, and highs between 57° and 82°. The average low has been 39° and the average high 70°: really perfect spring weather. We'

State of the Vineyard, mid-April Edition

Ten days ago, I was convinced that we were going to get clobbered by frost in the aftermath of a cold, wet Pacific storm. All the conditions were in place: an early budbreak, a weather pattern shift, and a powerful late-season cold front with origins in Alaska that was heading

Budbreak, 2015: Early, like 2014. Cue the frost alarms.

By the end of last week, we'd seen significant budbreak at the tops of our hills among early sprouting varieties like Viognier, Syrah, Grenache Blanc and (below) Grenache. Budbreak each year starts the clock ticking on the growing season. It typically happens between mid-March and mid-April, depending on

Photo Essay: Green, Green, Green

Normally, the sign at the edge of our head-trained Mourvedre vineyard just outside our tasting room is to protect people from a twisted ankle, should they stray off the tarmac. Now, we're worried we might lose them in the cover crop! The growth in the vineyard's

New Lambs, 2015 Vintage

It's a quiet interlude here at Tablas Creek. We're starting to slowly prune the vineyard, but with budbreak two months or (hopefully) more away, there's not great urgency. The 2014 vintage wines are nearly done fermenting, but not quite done enough to start blending.

Weekly Roundup for December 22nd: Drinking Better, Wine's Off Days, Anniversaries, and So Much Green

This week, as you've probably heard, was the last week of the holiday-buying season. Yet in between the endless lists of the right wines for holiday gift giving were some truly interesting tidbits. Our favorites of the week are below: An amazing time-lapse video of the changing weather

Weekly Roundup for December 15th: 8000 Years of Wine Storage, Months of Great Press for Paso, and a Week of Rain

This last week, it seems we've been dominated by stories about our rain. Whether it's in its pre-precipitation anticipation or its post-fall analysis, it's clear that California is excited about the unusual moisture falling from the sky and curious to know whether it makes