Tablas Creek Vineyard Blog

Tannat, Heart Health and Longevity

Is it possible that we make the single healthiest California wine?

In the last year, we've seen a growing trickle of requests for our Tannat, often from people who are not our typical wine consumers.  The most recent of these was a request from a gentleman in Mississippi (which is unfortunately not a state to which we can ship) asking for whichever wine we make that contains the highest percentage of Tannat.

Tannat is a thick-skinned grape native to south-west France that makes wonderful dark, dense, smoky wines renowned for their ageworthiness.  We imported it to Tablas Creek in 1996 thinking it would be a good blending component.  It turned out to be too dominant to play a minor role in wines based on other varieties and as a result we pulled it out of the blends.  We have been producing a small amount of one of California's only Tannat-based wines since 2002.

Do I think that the Mississippi gentleman is a Basque transplant who has had to leave his sources of Madiran at home?  It doesn't seem likely.  Neither his nor the other requests we've received ask for wines that have the flavor profile of Tannat.  Instead, these requests appear to be driven by recent research suggesting that Tannat is the single healthiest grape to consume.

The correlation between red wine consumption and health (particularly heart health) has been recognized for some time, and burst into American consciousness following the 1991 French Paradox broadcast on 60 Minutes.  However, the mechanism by which red wine contributes to health has not been well understood, neither why red wine (and not, say, white wine or other forms of alcohol) is so beneficial, nor whether different red wines or different farming or fermentation techniques provide different levels of protection. 

In his book "The Red Wine Diet", Dr. Roger Corder (a cardiovascular expert at the William Harvey Research Institute in London) makes the case for oligomeric procyanidins (OPCs) as the source of red wine's health benefits.  Dr. Corder researches other possible sources -- the most publicized of which is resveratrol, which does exist in grapes and has been known to discourage cancer but would not be of nearly sufficient quantities in wine to be of clinical use -- before identifying OPCs as the most likely culprit.  All red grapes, particularly those with thick skins and high skin-to-pulp ratios, contain OPCs.  But, after measuring the OPC concentration of several common red wine grapes, Dr. Corder identifies Tannat as the grape with the greatest concentration.  The real-life evidence of Tannat's benefits can be seen in the surprisingly long lifespans of residents of the département of Gers in southwest France, whose local wine appellation is Madiran.  Gers contains more than double the national average of men in their nineties.  Madiran's principal grape is Tannat.  From the conclusion of an article in Nature:

"The higher OPC concentration in wines from southwest France is due to traditional wine-making, which ensures that high amounts of OPCs are extracted, and to the flavonoid-rich grape Tannat, which makes up a large proportion of grapes used to produce local wines in the Gers area but is rarely grown elsewhere."

If thicker-skinned, darker red wines contain more procyanidins, I am not surprised that Tannat should rank at the top of Dr. Corder's list.  Its skins are so tenacious that it is often difficult to de-stem, and the wines are dense, dark, spicy and tannic.  According to Dr. Corder's measurements, Tannat wines contain three to four times more procyanidins than other red wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon. 

While making one of California's only Tannats seems enough to put us in the running for healthiest wine in California, I find Dr. Corder's identification of traditional winemaking as a contributing factor to the OPC levels in French Tannats also very appealing.  If it is possible, as Dr. Corder asserts, that wines that are less processed, with longer fermentations, less or no filtering and fining, and a minimal reliance on technology exhibit higher concentrations of OPCs, then it's possible that the Tablas Creek Tannat is the single healthiest wine made in California.

We're grilling ribs tonight.  I think I'll open a bottle of Tannat to celebrate!

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.

Please DO sniff the Cork!

So, I've seen a proliferation of articles recently that promise to educate wine novices to not come across as novices.  Whether this is a good thing is debatable; wouldn't you want an expert to explain things to you if you didn't understand how they work? It's not always a great thing appearing more expert than you really are, as you miss out on lots of opportunities to educate yourself.  Still, even worse is a when advice on how to appear expert is just plain wrong.  One recommendation I see again and again that I just don't understand is that sniffing the cork of a newly-opened wine will make you look like a novice, as it tells you nothing about the wine inside.  A quick search of Google shows 302 matches for the phrase "don't sniff the cork".

Huh?

Sniffing a cork may tell you nothing about whether a wine is oxidized, or tannic, or whether it smells like cherries, or whether it's ready to drink, but it does tell you a lot about whether a wine is corky.  I open thousands of bottles of wine each year, at tastings here and around the country, as well as in a more relaxed setting at the dinner table.  I always sniff the cork, not because it's a guaranteed indicator of whether a wine is corky or not, but because it's a warning flag.  Sure, it's possible that a wine whose cork is suspect might taste fine, but in my experience, at least 90% of the wines that taste corky have corks that smell corky.  And, the more I open and taste wines, the more convinced I get that even if it isn't apparent at first, wines with suspiciously musty corks usually are flawed.

Another interesting factor is that most sound corks have an appealing smell, like a fainter version of a new oak barrel.  Wines under those sweet-smelling corks are nearly always in good shape.  You do get the (very) occasional false negative, where a cork smells fine but the bottle is slightly tainted.  And, of course, there are plenty of flaws that have nothing to do with the cork (oxidation, reduction, and refermentation are probably the most common).  So, it's not a foolproof test and everyone should taste as well as sniff a newly-opened bottle.  But, I don't see what good it does consumers to be denied a fairly reliable indicator of when they should at least be suspicious their bottle of wine might be bad.

Have any readers out there had experiences where people have looked down on you for investigating the cork?  Or been fooled by a bottle (either with a nice bottle under a musty cork or a bad bottle under a sweet-smelling cork)?  If so, please share.

Tablas Creek and Beaucastel Dinner in New York

It's a good week for Tablas Creek accounts in the blogosphere!  On Tuesday, January 8th Brad Coelho, author of the wine blog unidentifiedappellation.blogspot.com, organized and hosted a Tablas Creek and Beaucastel dinner at Zoe Townhouse in Uptown Manhattan. 

The question to be addressed, in Brad's words, was:

"I didn’t know whether I’d witness a brother-sister relationship in the wines or something more akin to that of distant cousins. Nevertheless, I figured that juxtaposing wines from different areas that came from the same clones, same producer and same ideology would be an intriguing match-up. The tasting did not disappoint."

Brad has a great account of the dinner, along with full tasting notes of current and library wines from both Tablas Creek and Beaucastel, on his blog.

Tablas Creek wine dinner at Simon Pearce recapped on oenoLogic

One advantage for Tablas Creek is that my parents still spend part of the year in Vermont.  This means that, unlike a lot of California wineries, we get a chance to have a home base outside California in which to build good supporters through regular patronage.

Vermont (at least Southern Vermont, where I grew up and where my parents still spend 5 months a year) is not densely set with culinary gems.  We routinely had to drive 45 minutes to get terrific restaurant meals (which, I guess, puts us in with most of the residents of Los Angeles.  The difference: we were going 45 miles).  One of these great restaurants is Simon Pearce, in Quechee, VT.  They have an unusual combination of factory outlet store (their specialty is high-end rustic blown glass) and top restaurant.  My dad has set up dinners there each of the past three years.  This year's dinner was yesterday.

There is a great account of the dinner, with comments on the wines, by Thor Iverson on his blog oenoLogic.  Thor is a Boston-based wine writer and educator, and has a longer track record with Tablas Creek than most writers.  You can still find online an old column of his in the Boston Phoenix from the late 1990s where he discusses one of our our first efforts, as well several notes on the old wineloverspage.com bulletin boards.  Plus, he's been tasting and commenting on various Tablas Creek wines on oenoLogic for a while now.

I was particularly interested in the description of the 2000 Clos Blanc, which is a wine that has gone through many phases in its seven years of life.  I recently took the Tablas Creek tasting room staff through a vertical tasting of our wines back to 1996, and it was our impression that it's now going through it's awkward Roussanne middle age, although it's still an impressively rich wine.

In any case, if you missed Thor's great (and speedy) recap, check it out.

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!

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.