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Pretty Pictures

A collection of 349 posts

Photo Essay: Spring Cleaning in the Vineyard

Between winter's worries about rain and frost and summer's worries about ripening lies a busy but often overlooked spring season where we have about a month to clean up the vineyard. This spring cleaning mostly involves making decisions about whether to mow, disk or spade our

Budbreak Photos from around the Vineyard

Budbreak may be late this year, but now that it's started, it's happening in a hurry. After last week's cool, wet weather, it's turned warm and sunny, with the last two days in the 70s and even warmer temperatures forecast for later

The powerful impact of our grazing herd in the vineyard

As we get to know our grazing herd out at Tablas Creek, we're becoming increasingly convinced of its effectiveness. A photo will illustrate the impact. It shows the border between two vineyard blocks, on the right one that had the animals in residence for the previous five days,

New Lambs at Tablas Creek

As we've mentioned, we're moving forward with our Biodynamic program throughout the property, including additional work with compost, cover crops, and Biodynamic preparations. One of the keys to Biodynamics is biodiversity in flora, fauna and (consequently) microbes, and it is the additions to the fauna that

Photo Essay - Winter in the Vineyard

I love this time of year. With the winter's rain, everything is deep green in the vineyard. The days when it's not raining (which is most of the time) the sun is bright and the air crystal clear. The sun angle is low, which lends a

Mapping out the future of Tablas Creek

It's been a busy couple of years for us. We built an expansion to our winery that increased our square footage by 70%. We launched two new wines (the Patelin de Tablas and Patelin de Tablas Blanc) that have been a success both here at the winery and

A Dry (but Picturesque) Beginning to the 2011-2012 Winter

In the post The unwelcome implications of another la nina winter for Paso Robles vineyards from early December, I worried that our winter would be cold and perhaps dry, neither of which are desirable for the 2012 vintage. It appears that, at least so far, it has been even drier,

Photo Essay - Autumn in the Vineyards

November is a beautiful time of year in Paso Robles wine country. The grapevines erupt into fall colors, each variety different in its timing and its shade. We've usually received our first rainfall, which means that the cover crops start to grow and the hillsides slowly turn from

Harvest, Weeks of October 10th and 17th: Full Speed Ahead as Frosty Weather Looms

We've made an amazing amount of progress over the last couple of weeks. The conditions have been perfect, with an average high temperature of 83 (range 72-91) and an average low temperature of 50 (range 44-55). We've had ample sun every day. These conditions

Harvest, Weeks of September 26th and October 3rd: Things Ramp Up and then Pause for Rain

After a slow start to harvest, the accumulation of warm days produced a rush at the end of September. Between September 26th and October 4th, we harvested 112 tons of fruit, including most of what will go into our Patelin Blanc (mostly Viognier and Grenache Blanc) and perhaps half of