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Pretty Pictures

A collection of 346 posts

Photos of each Rhone grape variety as harvest nears

Harvest is beginning to feel imminent. We haven't brought in any fruit yet, but we've prepared our log books, washed out all our tanks and equipment, put our harvest cellar team together and we're ready. We're expecting our first fruit from a

Veraison 2011: a Time to Assess Progress (Late) and Yield (Light)

After spending about an hour out in the vineyard this afternoon and finding scattered but significant veraison in Mourvedre and Syrah, just the first hints of color in a few top-of-hill Grenache clusters, and no coloring at all in Counoise, I think we can safely say that things are late

The Serenity of Foudres (Sometimes)

By Chelsea Magnusson The addition of the new tasting room and foudre rooms has been a bit of a challenge for those of us in the cellar. Where before, we could do most of our work on the foudres in private, it now feels as though we are on display

A family stay in Vinsobres

By Robert Haas Where? Well, Vinsobres is in the Drôme, the next département north of the Vaucluse: kind of the northern limit of the southern Vallée du Rhône. We were in the outskirts of Les Cornuds, a village -- patelin, if you will -- of about four houses just east

Photo of the day: A green sea of vines under a blue sky

Early June, when I wrote about how cold our spring had been, seems like a lot longer ago than one month. When I returned from a two-week trip to the Rhone (during which it was consistently in the 90s here in Paso Robles) the vineyard had grown so much that

Flowering (Finally)

It's no secret that this spring has been cold. Our average high temperature since April first is just 69.7 degrees. We've broken 80 just six times, and not recently: our last day over 80 was May 12th. We haven't hit 90 yet. Those

Foudres, Demi Muids, Puncheons, and Wood Fermenters: The Appeal of Large Oak

Foudre- (Food’r)- French term for a large cask of indefinite size1 At Tablas Creek we follow the Châteauneuf-du-Pape tradition of maturing our red wines in 1200 gallon (4500 liter) French oak foudres rather than in the more familiar 60 gallon (225 liter) oak barrels. These smaller barrels – known

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

Every year, there's one day where all of a sudden it feels like spring. This year, that day is today. After a week of storms, and a month and a half of cloudy, wet, cool and often cold weather, today the sun is out, the air is soft

A welcome wet start to Spring

In an ideal world, we wouldn't receive five inches of rain on one of our three busiest tasting room weekends of the year. But we're not complaining. We're now up over 31 inches of rain for the winter, topping last year's total

Chronicling a Year in the Southern Rhone

In January I had the pleasure of sitting in on Marc Perrin's presentation of the wines of Beaucastel, Domaines Perrin, and La Vieille Ferme to the Vineyard Brands sales team at their annual sales meeting. (I followed with a presentation of Tablas Creek). The wines were beautiful, and