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Reviews, Awards, and Press

A collection of 77 issues

Every now and then you get a particularly meaningful compliment...

The wine business is hard. It may not get talked about a lot, but it is. There are huge start-up costs, an ever-growing number of wineries which crowd the marketplace and compete for your existing customers, and a shrinking number of distributors that combine with a relentless stream of wines

Congratulations to Neil Collins - 2013 San Luis Obispo County Winemaker of the Year

It was with great pleasure that we received the news that our winemaker Neil Collins was voted by his peers the 2013 Winemaker of the Year for San Luis Obispo County. You can read the full press release here. With one exception -- the 1997 vintage, for which Neil was

Tablas Creek is a finalist for 2013 Best Winery Blog!

We are proud to have been named a finalist for "Best Winery Blog" at the 2013 Wine Blog Awards. This is the sixth consecutive year we've been honored as a finalist, and we've taken home the trophy twice, in 2008 and 2011. We'

Lyricism and the Power of a Great Wine Review

The wine review is a bit of a hoary tradition, much ridiculed among the new generation of wine writers. And I get some of that. Describing which red fruit (Is it raspberry? Currant? Huckleberry?) or what herb (Thyme? Savory? Chervil?) is most evident in a wine can get esoteric, arbitrary,

Is the bloom off the user review site rose?

Last March, I wrote the post Has TripAdvisor overtaken Yelp for winery visitors, suggesting that of the two major user-review Web sites, TripAdvisor seemed to be replacing Yelp as the preferred forum for people writing user reviews of Paso Robles wineries. The graphic I included in that post showed a

Reflecting on a decade of Esprit de Beaucastel

This week we're bottling the 2010 Esprit de Beaucastel. About 2000 cases are going into national distribution. Another 1000 will go out to our wine club. 1500 will be allocated to our tasting room. 500 will go into our long-term library for later release. Some of the cases,

Has TripAdvisor overtaken Yelp for winery visitors?

I keep a regular eye on Tablas Creek's reviews on TripAdvisor and on Yelp. Reading these reviews helps me keep an eye out for potential problems, and also gives me a good overall sense of what people are thinking about the experience they have when they visit Tablas

Reflections on Tablas Creek's 2011 Best Winery Blog award

On Saturday, at the 2011 Wine Bloggers Conference in Charlottesville, VA, the winners of the 2011 Wine Blog Awards were announced. One of them was us! Thank you to everyone who voted; the award was 50% determined by votes from the public. The other 50% was determined by the votes

The Tablas Creek Blog is a finalist at the 2011 Wine Blog Awards!

We are proud that, for the fourth year in a row, the very Tablas Creek blog that you're reading has been named one of five finalists for "Best Winery Blog" in the 2011 Wine Blog Awards. We won the award in 2008 (the inaugural year of

The Remarkable Rise of Paso Robles

In the course of my work with Tablas Creek, I work closely with winery associations like Rhone Rangers and Family Winemakers of California that bring me into contact with winemakers and winery principals from other American wine producing regions. One refrain I've been hearing for the last few