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Winery & Winemaking

A collection of 225 posts

Harvest, weeks of October 4 and 11: What else? More crazy in 2010.

In the past two weeks since my last harvest report, we've had our two largest-ever harvest days, three days that topped out near 110, two days of rain that topped out near 60 and a week-long pause in harvesting, and the resumption of beautiful weather that suggests that

Grapes of the Rhone Valley: Syrah

Syrah, also known as Shiraz in Australia, is one of the most noble grapes of the Rhône Valley, and by far the most widely planted Rhone variety in California. It is a key component in both our Grenache-based Cotes de Tablas and Mourvedre-based Esprit de Beaucastel blends (typically 20-35% of

A first in-depth look at the 2009 Tablas Creek red wines

2009 was a challenging vintage, with very low yields from three years of drought and some significant April frosts. It was further complicated by a record-breaking October rainstorm that dropped a foot of rain on the vineyard and stopped harvest for three weeks while everything dried out. The net result

Harvest, weeks of September 20 & 27: A warm start to fall and a slow start to the harvest

After our cool summer, the warm weather that began about a week ago has been most welcome. And although it's been extreme in parts of Southern California (113 in Los Angeles, anyone?) it's just a normal September heat wave here. We did get up to 104

Notes from the Cellar: Harvest 2010 Begins! (AKA Fruit and Football; It Must be Fall)

By Chelsea Magnusson Experts claim that the (official) first day of autumn is September 22nd. Typically, I hate to disagree with expert opinion, but my first day of fall was yesterday. Supporting evidence includes the fact that Sundays and Mondays are now spent watching football, but the primary reason for

An update on construction: photos of a space taking shape

It's been wild watching a new building take shape outside our windows over the past two months. As regular readers know (my dad posted in June about our pending construction) we're adding 8,000 square feet onto our winery building, incorporating more office space, a new

Notes from the Cellar: Assembling the 2009 reds, and getting ready for harvest 2010...

By Chelsea Magnusson The cellar has been an absolute mess this week. And for good reason - veraison has begun in the vineyard, and we are slowly wrapping our heads around the fact that another harvest season is right around the corner. It looks like a disaster, but I promise,

Grapes of the Rhone Valley: Marsanne

Marsanne produces wines with distinctive melon and mineral flavors, rich mouthfeel, and a characteristic nuttiness with age. When blended, its relative restraint and minerality complement more aromatic varietals like Viognier. And in its ancestral home of Hermitage and in other cool climates, Marsanne can make some of the world'

Introducing a Greener Wine Bottle

Early this year, I wrote the blog post In Search of a Green(er) Wine Bottle, which details our quest for a wine bottle that both appealed to our aesthetics and didn't weigh more than the wine inside it. We had, before our 2008 bottling (which included the

Photos from the early days at Tablas Creek

My dad was cleaning out his desk in Vermont and came across a photo collage that predates the construction of the Tablas Creek winery in 1997. In the three previous years, we'd rented space at Adelaida Cellars in which we made the wines from the test vineyard we