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Winery & Winemaking

A collection of 225 posts

Harvest 2009 Begins... Slowly

It's clear at this point that it's going to be a long harvest. We picked our first grapes early last week (September 1st): Viognier from the top of the tallest hill on the property -- typically the first part of the vineyard we harvest -- and

Corks and Screwcaps Revisited: Results from a Blind Tasting

About two years ago, I wrote a post called “Corks and Screwcaps: Not an open and shut case” that got a nice nod from Eric Asimov in the New York Times and brought a slew of new readers to the Tablas Creek blog. In it, I made a case that

A great blue heron visits the Tablas Creek wetlands

Several of us were sitting on our patio having lunch when a blue heron sailed over the vineyard before coming to rest in the Tablas Creek wetlands that border Adelaida road, just downhill from our entrance. I got one decent shot (right) before I scared it off by getting too

Why bother with single-varietal wines if blends are better?

I got a great question recently from Tablas Creek VINsider Wine Club member and blogger Steven Stumpf, whose blog www.thebestofwines.com is one of my must-reads each week. He asked, in essence (and much more diplomatically than I'm rephrasing it) why we make single varietal wines if

A vertical tasting of Tablas Creek Esprit de Beaucastel 2000-2007 and Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc 2001-2008

This week, Francois Perrin joined us at Tablas Creek for one of his semi-annual visits. Francois' visits are always a pleasure. He gives us someone with decades of experience off of whom we can bounce ideas or with whom we can search for solutions to problems that have been

The importance of hang time

This past weekend was Hospice du Rhone. It's always one of my favorite events of the year, where hundreds of people (maybe pushing 1000, all told) who are enthusiastic supporters of Rhone varietals get together for a weekend of seriously lighthearted consideration of all things Rhone. You get

A first look at the surprisingly lush 2008 whites

This afternoon, we got together to taste our first preliminary blends of the 2008 whites. Up until this point, we've been tasting through different lots, but nothing systematic. My impression going into the tasting was that 2008, after all its challenges, would be a vintage more like the

Creating a new wine: En Gobelet

Our model at Tablas Creek is pretty consistent from year to year. We make our Esprit de Beaucastel (red and white) and Cotes de Tablas (red and white). We make our Rosé. We make somewhere between six and nine single varietal wines depending on what's compelling when we&

Bottle Variation, Very Old Wines and the Cork/Screwcap Dilemma

For Christmas dinner this year, we cooked a standing rib roast with Bearnaise sauce, Yorkshire pudding, broccoli, and rice. The dinner was wonderful, capped off by an absolutely delicious mature Burgundy: the 1985 Corton Clos du Roi from Prince de Merode. We chose the wine because we thought it would

Thoughts on our Annual Futures Tasting and En Primeur Offering

Each December, we offer our VINsider Wine Club members the chance to taste the upcoming release of our two top red wines, before bottling, and reserve these wines at a futures-only 30% discount off of expected release price. We began this program back in 2003 (offering futures on the 2002s