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Winery & Winemaking

A collection of 225 posts

Harvest 2012: The End of the Beginning

By Chelsea Franchi And so it appears, just like that, harvest is over and it is time for a season-end wrap up. While I wish I could tell you there was a wonderful celebration as the last cluster was ceremoniously placed in the last tank, I can't. Because

Harvest 2012 concludes, and we couldn't be happier

We finished the 2012 harvest yesterday, with the last "clean-up" pick, where we go back through the late-ripening blocks where we left the clusters that weren't quite ready on our previous time through. Typically, these pickings are a little ugly, with fruit not in the best

Harvest continues under ideal conditions, with high quality and above-average yields

The first half of October is typically our busiest stretch of harvest, and 2012 was no exception. Between October 1st and 15th, we brought in 107 tons off of our estate and another 60 tons of purchased fruit for the Patelin de Tablas line. That's something like 30%

Harvest update: perfect ripening conditions dominate late September, but we see signs of fall

The second half of September continued to point our way toward a productive, top-notch harvest. Asking for cool (but not cold) nights and warm (but not hot) days, and ample sunshine, is almost a cliche in wine country, but that's exactly what we got, providing excellent ripening conditions

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