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Winery & Winemaking

A collection of 228 posts

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.

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

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

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

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&

The sun sets on the 2011 Harvest, light in yields but intense in character

OK, I guess I didn't mean that literally, though that was the last two bins of our estate Mourvedre coming in from the vineyard under the setting sun and rising moon yesterday evening. But our last grapes are coming in today, both off our estate (where we'

Happy Halloween from the Tablas Creek harvest zombies!

This was such a fun photo staged by our cellar crew that we had to share. Bonus points for anyone who can describe how it was done!

A Day in the Life of a Limousin Oak Fermenter

By Robert Haas When you enter our new tasting room you can see our Séguin-Moreau 1600 gallon Limousin oak cuves in the background: We really love them. But they are much more than a mise en scène for our visitors. They are valuable because of their flexibility. With the