Tablas Creek Vineyard Blog

Wine Festival Etiquette

No, I'm not going to write another piece on how you're supposed to spit rather than drinking when you attend a wine festival (hint: you are).  Nor am I going to rant about perfumes and colognes that are likely to overpower the wine for you and the next dozen attendees unlucky enough to trail in behind you (hint: don't wear perfume to wine-related functions). No, this post is focused on the other side of the table.

More and more, I'm going to wine festivals where there are a handful of wineries who are intentionally bringing less wine than they need to last out the event.  And doing so, I think, is disrespectful to the attendees, to the other wineries, and to the event itself.

I'm not talking about bringing as much wine as festivals suggest.  Most festivals wildly overestimate the amount of wine you'll need to bring.  As a general rule, I calculate based on a bottle of wine total per attendee.  So, with 500 attendees and 40 wineries, if each winery brings 12 bottles of wine total, there's plenty of wine at the event.  If you know, because of the demographics of the festival, you're likely to be busier than average, you round up.  It may seem counterintuitive in this situation to bring just 4 bottles each of 3 wines, but the math works out.

(Incidentally, most festivals estimate based on each attendee being able to taste each wine.  So, with this hypothetical festival, most suggest that each winery bring 500 tastes of each wine you show.  At 20 tastes per bottle, that would suggest that each winery bring 24 bottles each, or if you're showing 3 wines, six cases total.  You don't need to do a lot of complex math to understand that this all adds up to nearly every winery bringing lots of wine home at the end.  This is not the least desirable outcome, as I'll explain, but it's inconvenient, particularly if the festival is not local, or if it's in a state where you have to order the wine from your distributor in advance and then can't return it.)

Still, what I see as the larger problem is what we've started to call the "cool kid" phenomenon.  Because real scarcity is rare, wineries are in the business of creating perceived scarcity.  One way to do this is to be sure you run out of wine early enough at an event that people will notice and make a mental note to come earlier next time.  If you've got good wine, and your ploy is not too transparent, you can even get attendees to start planning which wineries they have to hit in the first few minutes of the event.  This makes the strategy even more effective, as other attendees see the swarm around your table right at the beginning and, in true lemming fashion, squeeze in to find out what all the fuss is about.  Then, you can run out even earlier.

Sauntering around the room tasting other wineries' wines after you've run out (with the implication that the rest of you are suckers for still being pouring) is just the coup de grace.

Of course, the net effect of this phenomenon is that other wineries either hate or envy you (mostly depending on whether they feel you've brought a reasonable amount of wine to start with).  And consumers who weren't quick enough on the uptake or who didn't have the patience to wade through the scrum at the beginning are cheated of getting to try some of the hottest wines.  But, the stakeholder who should be the most upset is the event, who get the benefit of their biggest-name attendees for only a portion of the event's time.

I have started to see some events threaten that if wineries run out of wine too early, they won't be invited back. But most events are all too happy to have the hottest wineries on their Web sites and in their promotional materials to help sell tickets, and so accept behavior they probably shouldn't.

I can only hope that in the long-term, consumers understand when they're being manipulated and push back.  But I'm not holding my breath.  Meanwhile, feel free to come by the Tablas Creek booth in the last half-hour of the the next festival in your town.

Eleven-Wine Dinner in Los Angeles with Campanile (and a Los Angeles Rhone Rangers tasting)

I don't normally post information about upcoming events on the blog (we have a page for that on the Tablas Creek Web site: http://www.tablascreek.com/upcomingevents.html).  But, I have two events coming up next week in Los Angeles that I think are cool enough that they're worth a mention. 

The first is a dinner at Campanile Restaurant on Tuesday, June 3rd.  We sent eleven different wines to Campanile for them to choose from for a dinner menu, expecting them to choose 6 or 7 to go with the 6-course dinner menu that Chef Mark Peel traditionally puts together.  I was stunned when I saw the final dinner menu that they decided to use all eleven wines!  I'm pretty sure that I've never done a dinner where we showed this broad a cross-section of the wines we make, let alone at a restaurant as terrific as Campanile.  The event is co-sponsored by Domaine 547, a wine 2.0 shop whose wine blog is one of my favorites.  The dinner is $150/person (inclusive of tax and tip) which seems to me a very fair price for a dinner of this quality.  Anyone interested should call Campanile at 323.938.1447.

The next day, I'll be joining 42 other Rhone Rangers wineries for the second annual Rhone Rangers Southern California tasting at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood.  There is a trade tasting (free to qualified trade and media) in the afternoon and a consumer tasting (tickets $60) in the evening.  I'm looking forward to the location, which is an active television studio, where Ugly Betty, The Closer, and Private Practice are currently in production.  I'm not sure what the interaction will be, but apparently the Rhone Rangers is arranging that the stars of the shows who might be interested have entrance into the tasting.  There's more information on how to reserve space on the Rhone Rangers Web site.

Paso Robles Wine Festival 2008 Musings and Photos

The 2008 Paso Robles Wine Festival is in the books.  I've poured at the last seven festivals, and this one was one of the hottest.  Both Saturday and Sunday topped 100 degrees (an unwelcome change from the past few years, which were beautiful) and I think it deterred some of the local crowd.  In the four hours of the event, we poured about 7 cases of wine, two fewer than last year.  We still felt busy, but it was the kind of busy where you're always talking to new people, but you do have time to talk.  In some past years, it was all we could do to pour wine into the outstretched glasses in front of us.  The slight decline in audience was not unwelcome.

There were still some wineries pouring appallingly warm -- even hot -- red wines.   One friend (who's not in the wine industry) questioned this and was told that this was the temperature that it was supposed to be served at.  I can't fathom this.  The event gives you ice for free.  Why wouldn't you make sure that your wines were served at an appropriate temperature?  We were icing even our red wines, and serving the whites and the Rosé very chilled.  This is your opportunity to make an impression on hundreds of potential new customers.  I can't think of much that's more unappealing than sipping hot red wine on a 100 degree day.

Overall, there was a typical mix of more established and newer wineries at the park.  There were a few big names missing; Justin again chose to pass on the event and, most notably, Tobin James elected to sit this year out.  I think they, more than any other winery in Paso Robles, are associated with the party atmosphere that the park has cultivated over the years, and I imagine that some of the efforts that the PRWCA has been making to make the event more upscale are probably unwelcome.  For us, the net effect is probably good.  Over the weekend, we saw about 100 fewer people at the tasting room (from about 600 last year to about 500 this year).  But, those 500 people who came bought the same amount of wine as the 600 did in 2007.  Pouring less wine but selling the same amount must be a good thing!  Plus, while still small compared to an event like the Hospice du Rhone, there was notably better trade and media presence at this year's event than in years past.

On Sunday morning of the event, we again welcomed Chef Jeffrey Scott out to Tablas Creek for a cured salmon tasting and the official launch of the 2007 Rosé.  A photo from this year's event, with Chef Scott in the foreground serving a fresh sheep's milk ricotta cheese he found to go with the salmon (definitely more elegant than cream cheese):

Our goal is to get people out to the vineyard in the morning: effectively, to encourage them to start their day as far from town as possible and work their way back in.  This helps us even out our traffic on what's usually our busiest single day of the year, and get more people out to us when their palates are fresh and their trunks empty.

Plus, it's always a good time, with delicious food.

I thought it might be fun to share some family photos from this year's Sunday event.  It's one of the events each year to which we always bring the kids, as it's in the morning, outside, and very low-key and relaxed.  First, me with Eli (age 3, in front) and Sebastian (age 9 months) on my back:

Eli spent most of his time making sure there was enough ice in the chillers that we were using for the Rosé:

A nice photo of Meghan with Sebastian:

Hospice du Rhone!

Last weekend was the 2008 Hospice du Rhone.  As always, it was a terrific show, with a great mix of producers, distributors, restaurateurs, retailers, distributors and consumers.  It's one of the few events I do where the trade and consumers interact so much, and on such equal footing.

I think that one of the secrets of why the event works so well is that it doesn't take itself too seriously.  It presents terrific speakers, consistently some of the most important, relevant names in the wide world of Rhone varietals, but it does it without ceremony. The informal (but delicious) lunches  are outside.  The setting at the Paso Robles Event Center (home of the Mid-State Fair) is rustic, old-west, and a little bit goofy.  The serious events are punctuated by skits including a "top 10" list read annually by Mat Garretson, and the whole event comes across as light-hearted yet substantive.  This approach is typified by the pseudo-film-noir themes that they choose for their posters.  The 2008 poster spoofing James Bond (at right) is a great example.

While the tastings always offer an impressive number of top-quality Rhone wines from around the world, the lunches are the most fun parts of the event for me.  You sit at picnic-style tables without assigned seats, and may find yourself, as I did, next to Patrick Comiskey from Wine & Spirits Magazine, Rhone Ranger legend Bob Lindquist from Qupe, two distributor managers from Florida, and two pairs of consumers from Santa Fe.  These informal interactions are a great way to demystify the people in the world of wine, and I always come away from the lunches with new ideas about how to enjoy, promote, and think about Rhone wines.

My final thought is how lucky we are to have this world-class event in Paso Robles every year.  Yes, Paso Robles is becoming known as a hotbed for Rhone production in the United States (as evidenced by the recent creation of the Rhone Rangers Paso Robles chapter), but the Hospice du Rhone is still the one time each year when we can count on having many of the wine world's largest players come to us.

For someone like me used who has clear memories of presenting our wines to people in the industry who didn't know that Paso Robles wasn't a part of Napa, this is probably the sweetest result of all.

Paso Robles Rhone Rangers Experience

Back in January, we helped organize the Paso Robles Rhone producers into a regional chapter of the Rhone Rangers.  I wrote about the importance of Rhones in Paso Robles an few months back, and it's been gratifying to see how the member wineries have jumped in to contribute.

We're coming up on our first big event: the Paso Robles Rhone Rangers Experience on October 6th.  This is designed as an immersion into Rhones and into Paso Robles.  It includes seminars in the morning, held at Cass and at Tablas Creek, a Paso Robles classic tri-tip barbeque lunch at Eberle (cooked by Gary Eberle, the first person to plant Syrah in California), a walk-around tasting featuring the wines of the 20+ Paso Rhone rangers members, and a gala 5-course dinner at the beautiful new Calcareous facility in the heart of the Adelaida hills west of town featuring rare and library wines from the member wineries.  We're providing transportation for the entire day, and feel that it should be a wonderful experience.  It's not cheap ($215/person, or $195 for Rhone Rangers sidekick members) but it should be really content-rich and lots of fun.

I'm interested... is this the sort of thing that you would want to come to?  Or are educational opportunities on wine so easily available in California these days that the price is prohibitive?

We have full details on the event here.

I hope to see many of you there!

Outstanding in the Field Dinner - Tablas Creek, Coleman Farms, Sage Restaurant

Every now and then, you come across an event that is so perfectly suited to what you'd like to communicate about your wines that it seems impossible that someone else should have come up with the idea.  The Outstanding in the Field dinner series is this sort of event. 

 
Outstanding in the Field pairs chefs who focus on local, organic ingredients with the farms and farmers who produce these raw materials.  Then, they bring in wineries who also share these commitments.   So far, this is admirable but not unusual.  Then, they take it one step further, by holding the dinners in the fields where the produce is grown, and serving everything at one long table, family style, where the attendees, chefs, farmers and vintners eat together (most of them on their own plates, which frequent attendees bring from home and reuse at each dinner).

These dinners are held all over the country (the upcoming dinner schedule lists events in such diverse places as Half Moon Bay, Nantucket, Chicago, New York City and Hollywood) and we have even hosted one here at Tablas Creek back in 2004.

A few months back, we were approached to partner with a dinner that is scheduled for this Sunday (July 22nd) in Carpinteria, California.  The location is Coleman Farms, while the chef is Richard Mead of Sage and Sage on the Coast Restaurants of Newport Beach.  The menu has not quite been finalized (Chef Mead is waiting to see what is particularly enticing from the farm this weekend) but it will be a 6-course meal, each paired with a different Tablas Creek wine, and is slated to include dishes like local white bass crusted with citrus zest and steamed with Coleman Farms vegetables (paired with the 2005 Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc), braised grass-fed beef shortribs (paired with the 2004 Esprit de Beaucastel) and an orchard peach tart, paired with our 2004 Vin de Paille.

These dinners are a wonderful experience, and provide a wonderful camaraderie as you sit with farmers, chefs, and winemakers all committed to the production of food and wines that show a sense of place.  If you are not already, join their mailing list, save your pennies (the dinners aren't cheap, but neither is the experience) and get ready to feel yourself reconnect with your food.  Outstanding indeed!

Rhone Rangers in Seattle... and Paso Robles

I'm making plans to head up to Seattle in a couple of weeks to go to the Pacific Northwest tasting of the Rhone Rangers organization.  We've been involved (as a winery) for several years, back from when we were the only winery pouring a Rose at the San Francisco grand tasting in 1999.  For the last four years, I've served on the organization's board, and have watched it grow from a regional group dominated by North Coast wineries into a truly national (well, West Coastal, at least) organization, with the annual trade and consumer tasting in San Francisco as well as trade-only tastings in Los Angeles and Seattle.

Even more exciting, we recently started a Paso Robles chapter of the Rhone Rangers.  This is just the second regional chapter in the group's history, and a recognition of the growing role that Paso Robles is playing in the California Rhone movement.  It's also an important recognition of how important Rhones wines are to Paso Robles wineries; there are more wineries here producing a Syrah than any other varietal... even more than Zinfandel, the traditional "heritage grape" of the area, or Cabernet, which is the most widely planted:

If you haven't done this recently, and are interested in statistics like I am, it's worth playing with the useful "Wine Directory" tool on the Web site of the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance that allows you to look at all the different varietals produced by the 120+ members of the wine alliance. 

The principal varieties (as measured by the numbers of wineries producing the wine) paints a significantly different picture than looking at planted acreage (displayed to the right, courtesy of the PRWCA's "Varietals Grown" page).  Much of the planted acreage of Bordeaux varietals (particularly Cabernet Sauvignon) is shipped out of the county to make California appellation wines.  Most of the Rhone varietals stay here, and are made into boutique wines that bear the Paso Robles appellation.

I expect this trend to continue, as some of the lesser-known Rhone varietals (like Mourvedre, Grenache, Roussanne, and Grenache Blanc) make into wider circulation.  Come back to Paso Robles in 10 years, and I think that the pie chart to the right will look quite different!

Beaucastel Tasting at Tablas Creek

This past Sunday, we managed to put on a Tablas Creek and Beaucastel tasting that, I felt, balanced the educational aspect, the entertainment, and the degree of participation into something that clicked.  It was intended for (and marketed to) our wine club, but open to all.

When he was over here in February, we broached the idea of a joint Tablas Creek and Beaucastel tasting with Francois Perrin.  He thought it was a great idea, and generously agreed to send over 6 different Beaucastel wines, three whites and three reds.  We also pulled three different whites and three different reds from our own stocks and library, and tasted the wines in two flights: whites first, then reds.  The menu, and some brief notes:

• Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape Blanc 2004: Young and relatively tight, with Roussanne aromas of honey and spice, and mineral present.  But, we all felt that this would be much better in a few years as it fleshed out.
• Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape Blanc Roussanne "Vieilles Vignes" 2002: Just delicious.  My favorite white of the day.  Lush yet light on its feet, and really seamless.
• Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape Blanc Roussanne "Vieilles Vignes" 1986: A treat for everyone.  The weight of this wine had dropped off with time, leaving a vibrant expression of terroir: mineral and spice highlighted by bright acids.  Some sense of age, but no darkening of color, and remarkably lively.
• Tablas Creek Vineyard Paso Robles Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc 2005: Interesting after the Beaucastels.  More spiky and assertive; more floral, brighter acids, and very lush.  Still quite primary, but with terrific depth.  A really bright future ahead for it.
• Tablas Creek Vineyard Paso Robles Roussanne 2002: Very Roussanne in character, with more noticeable new oak than the other Tablas wines.  Slightly cedary.  Still quite young, with room to grow into its considerable structure.
• Tablas Creek Vineyard Paso Robles Clos Blanc 2000: Very interesting, with the Viognier component showing, but clearly on the same continuum as the older Beaucastels.  The wine, which was fat and relatively low in acid in its youth, appears to be picking up acidity and vibrancy.  Fascinating.

And flight 2:

• Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape 2001: Gorgeous.  Lots of Mourvedre meat and spice, but still very clean flavors.  Relatively tight when poured, but had really fleshed out by the end of the event.
• Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape 1990: Also gorgeous.  Smelled notably older than the 2001 (which it was) with leather and truffles, but in the mouth was still very youthful.  Nice acids, firm tannins, lots of fruit and earth.
• Tablas Creek Vineyard Paso Robles Esprit de Beaucastel 2005: An interesting comparison, since we used more Grenache (26%) than ever before for an Esprit.  Bottled 3 weeks ago.  Very primary, very fat and lush, with lots of fruit and mineral.  Explosive, even recently bottled.  It will clearly get more complex over time as it loses baby fat.
• Tablas Creek Vineyard Paso Robles Reserve Cuvee 1999: From a very structured vintage.  Has softened in recent years to show game and spice flavors, good acids, and surprising depth.  Still has a few years to go.

And finally, a pair of wines from the same vintage served unidentified:

• Tablas Creek Vineyard Paso Robles Esprit de Beaucastel 2004
• Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape 2004

The most remarkable conclusion that we found was how much of a family resemblance there was among the wines, whether made here in Paso Robles or in Chateauneuf du Pape.  Even after tasting examples from both places, fully half the room guessed wrongly in the challenge to identify which 2004 came from which estate.

The Tablas Creek Web site maintains an up-to-date list our upcoming events.

Paso Robles Wine Festival

Each year in the third weekend of May, Paso Robles holds our annual Wine Festival.  The central event is a tasting in the Paso Robles downtown park on Saturday afternoon, and individual wineries build other events (dinners, seminars, barbecues, barrel tastings, etc) around this over the rest of the weekend.  Estimates for 2007 are that over 6500 people tasted wines from 80+ wineries in the park.

The Sunday of Wine Festival weekend, when people who have tried your wines in the park the day before go out to buy wines to take home, is traditionally the largest sales day of the year for Paso Robles wineries.  So, a big piece of the puzzle is always coming up with the right event to entice customers out to your winery, rather than to the other 140 wineries in town, all of whom are also competing to hold appealing events.

Those of you who have visited us know that we're pretty far out west of town.  We've found that, left to their own devices, comsumers tend to start their tasting day close to where they're staying, and gradually work further afield, ending their day with their furthest stop.  We often hear that people meant to get out to taste at Tablas Creek, but that they just ran out of time.

So, we've decided the past few years to hold an event in the morning, hoping to encourage people to realign their day, starting with us (about as far out as it's possible to get) and work their way back into town.  There are lots of reasons why this is a good idea.  We'd rather get people while their palates and brains are fresh, where they are more receptive to the education on Rhone varietals and blends that we feel is essential.  Plus, people's trunks are empty, which (particularly with groups traveling together) means that they're more likely to be able to take the wines they like home with them.  And finally, this means that people have shorter drives at the end of their day. 

This year, we again hosted a cured salmon tasting with Chef Jeff Scott, and started it when our gates opened at 10:00am.  As in the past few years, we used this event as the formal launch of our 2006 Rosé.  Chef Scott cured several sides of salmon, and presented it with a warm new potato and olive salad, fresh cheeses, and bread.  It was a treat, and lasted until about 11:30am.  We welcomed just over 200 people for the salmon and rosé tasting.

We felt that the park itself was very manageable this year.  The weather cooperated (sunny and in the 80s) and the changes that the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance made to the event helped encourage more serious wine consumers to come.  Everyone was having a good time, but it wasn't a party atmosphere as it had been some earlier years.

As for the traffic out at the winery, we saw traffic somewhat higher than last year (when it rained on Wine Festival Sunday) but not dramatically.  With the festival more or less maxed out in attendance, and those attendees shared between an ever-growing number of wineries, the crowds on Sunday weren't much more than a normal weekend's Saturday.  But that's OK... as the region grows in popularity, it makes sense that normal weekends will be busier, and the festival weekends will seem less extraordinary.

Bob Haas - 80th Birthday Accolades

It was gratifying to me to see a handful of articles on my dad's career, timed to coincide with his 80th birthday.  I wrote a few weeks back about my dad's amazing career, so I won't repeat myself, but I encourage you to read Jon Bonne's thoughtful, thorough feature from the San Francisco Chronicle as well as Janis Switzer's very nice article in the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

We are also looking forward to a piece in the May issue of Wines & Vines, written by Laurie Daniel.

Out at the vineyard, we had a really nice celebration of his life in wine, with friends and family assembling from all over the country and all over the world.  A few photos from the event are below.

                              The family: Danny, Janet, Robert, Jason, and Rebecca Haas

              Bob Haas with Charlie Falk            Laurent Grangien of Bistro Laurent with Jean-Pierre Perrin

                 My brother Danny and my dad                                       Me with my mom Barbara

Jean Pierre Perrin with Stephan Asseo of L'Aventure                              Chef Jeremiah Tower

                                    The next generation: Eli Haas, age 2, and Sophie Sands, age 1