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Winery & Winemaking

A collection of 221 issues

Introducing the new Patelin de Tablas Rosé

We love our Rosé. It shows the charms of Mourvedre when made into a pink wine by being rich yet refreshing, complex yet appealing, and worthy of pairing with substantial food. But it's always been a bit of an outlier in the world of rosés, somewhat darker than

Harvest, weeks one and two: zero to sixty in no time flat

Most vintages, harvest starts slowly, with a few bins the first day, then a little break, then a selective pick off another block, then another break, then finally a larger picking, then another break. Not this year. We started on September 4th with our first lot of Viognier for the

Harvest 2012 Begins!

And, as of 1:30pm today, we're live, with the arrival of the first fruit of the 2012 harvest. As usual in the world of Rhones, we started with Viognier, this for our Patelin de Tablas Blanc from Paso Ridge, at the warm north end of the El

Pre-Harvest Jubilation

By Chelsea Franchi We had our scale certified last week, which was just one more reminder of the ever-present fact that harvest is barreling down on us (no pun intended). Steaming barrels in the afternoon sun Harvest is what we live for (well, work for) here in the cellar. It

Is 2010 our best vintage ever? Perhaps...

This is bottling week. We're mostly done with putting eight different wines into bottle: the 2011 Cotes de Tablas Blanc and seven of our red varietal wines from 2010: Counoise, Grenache, Mourvedre, Syrah, our two Pinot Noirs and our first-ever Cabernet. Most of these are small production wines,

Assembling Our 2011 Vintage Blends: Done. And Wow!

By Robert Haas Thursday of last week we completed our decision-making process for the blending of our estate red wines: Panoplie, Esprit, En Gobelet, and Côtes de Tablas. This vintage we’ll also be making a varietal Mourvèdre. We also found time to make the final decision on the Esprit

Another detour along the road to American organic wine

About three months ago, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) made a ruling that didn't get a lot of press, but is likely to produce a remarkable trifecta of negative results, discouraging organic viticulture and ensuring that the reputation of American organic wine remains dubious, all while putting

Tannat: the Perfect Grape for Paso Robles?

[Editor's Note May 2021: With the announcement of the 2017 Tannat as our featured wine for the second half of the month, we have updated this blog to include information about this wine.] Although we specialize in Rhône varietals, we continue to experiment with other grapes that we

Getting to know the newly-finalized 2010 red varietals and blends

This week, Francois Perrin made one of his semi-annual visits to Tablas Creek. We always like to see Francois after harvest; it gives us our first outside perspective on the most recent vintage, and gives us a chance to bounce the ideas we had during crush off of someone whose

Harvest 2011 Recap and Assessment: Yields Down 15% vs. Normal and Quality High

Harvest 2011 finished on November 9th with a flurry of activity, including at one point 62 different bins of grapes scattered around the winery and on the crushpad, waiting to be destemmed. My favorite part of the photo (blow it up to see it) is the bemused look on Ryan&