Tablas Creek Vineyard Blog

Ten Years of Vintage Grades: Paso Robles Report Card 1999-2008

I was called recently by the Wine Spectator, who wanted my review of the 2008 vintage in Paso Robles for their annual report card for the recently-concluded vintage (you can read the resulting article on the Wine Spectator's Web site).  Distilling the complexities of a vintage down to a letter grade is challenging, probably even more so than reducing a wine to a score on the 100-point scale.  A wine is a snapshot, a finished product, and can be evaluated as such.  A vintage is a collection of events whose impacts vary even across a single vineyard, and vary more greatly as you expand the area under consideration.

When I struggled with the question, the writer helped me by saying that the Wine Spectator had rated the 2006 and 2007 vintages a "B+" and that most of my fellow vintners were rating this vintage a "B".  Really?  I understand everyone's desire to cast the most recent vintage in a positive light, but I don't see how anyone could assert that 2008 was only a fractional grade less positive than 2006 and 2007.

After mumbling something to the point that if the last two vintages were "B+" then this most recent vintage was at best a "B-" I tried to make a caveat.  I've felt (and I wrote here six weeks ago) that Rhone producers in the Paso Robles have the chance to make some of the standout wines of the vintage.  We didn't have the issues with shatter and over-rapid ripening that producers of Bordeaux varieties had, we didn't get impacted by the fires that affected much of Santa Barbara, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties, and we didn't get the late-September rain that drenched the North Coast.  Plus, the April frosts that impacted much of the state were more severe in regions to our north and south than they were here.

After I finished the call and had a chance to compose my thoughts a little, I wrote a follow-up note to the Wine Spectator writer who'd called me trying to clarify what I thought about the last few vintages.  My point boiled down to that there's no way that the last two vintages should have been rated as "B+" vintages.  If there ever were a vintage that deserved an "A" grade, it was 2007 (at least if you were grading for quality; quantities were low).  And both 2005 and 2006 should have received "A-" grades, in my opinion.  In this context, a "B" or "B-" grade for 2008 seems deserved for the region (though, for Tablas Creek and other Rhone producers near us, I think that it warrants an "A-" grade, a shade below 2007 and on par with 2005 and 2006).

I included in my note my grades of the last decade's worth of vintages here in Paso Robles, and wanted to share them with all of you.  I give a few brief notes of explanation following each grade, and I have linked the vintages to our harvest reports since we began keeping them if you would like our blow-by-blow experience as the vintage has unfolded:

2008 Vintage: B-  A difficult vintage bookended by frost in the spring and freeze in early October.  Yields were low, and Bordeaux varieties and Zinfandel suffered, and an August heat spike forced many producers to pick before they wanted to.  Beautiful weather in mid- to late-October saved the vintage for producers who could afford to wait.  Rhone varieties were most successful, and produced wines with good flavors and lower than normal alcohols.
2007 Vintage: A  A fabulous vintage defined by the cold, dry winter that preceded it.  Rainfall levels just 40% of normal stressed the grapes. The summer was moderate in temperature, producing a long, slow harvest with yields down 15%-30% from 2005 and 2006. The wines were intensely flavored, dark in color, with surprisingly gentle tannins for such a powerful vintage.  A potentially classic vintage for the Paso Robles region.
2006 Vintage: A-  Above-average winter rains and a cool spring got 2006 vineyards off to a wet and late start. A moderate summer followed, and the resulting harvest was delayed but unhurried, with beautiful weather persisting into November. Winemakers reported a higher then normal crop (perhaps a shade below 2005's levels) with notable elegance, pure flavors, medium body and comparatively lower alcohol levels.
2005 Vintage: A-  2005 was a nearly ideal growing season, begun with early flowering after a wet winter.  Yields were higher than normal and combined with moderate temperatures to encouraged gradual ripening.  Harvest began about 10 days later than normal, which meant that grapes had spent nearly a month longer on the vine between flowering and harvest.  The harvest resulted in the largest crush on record in the region, but the resulting wines were nevertheless intense and balanced.
2004 Vintage: B-  2004 was the third consecutive drought year, marked by a warm spring and very early flowering. A fairly mild summer morphed into a late-August heat wave, with much of the harvest completed by mid-September.  The problems came with the early (mid-October) onset of the rainy season, and many late-ripening varieties weren't harvestable. 2004's wines showed classic flavors and moderate concentration, and tended to drink well young.
2003 Vintage: B  A second drought year marked by the warm, dry winter and spring which brought bud break in early in March. An average summer, with hot days and cool nights still resulted in an earlier-than-normal harvest and wines with somewhat higher than normal alcohols.  Wines showed good richness and substantial tannins, but only moderate complexity.
2002 Vintage: A-  2002 growing season began with a warm, dry winter with the lowest rainfall in five years. Spring remained dry and cool, while June, July and August were very warm.  Moderate temperatures returned in September and weather stayed ideal well into November.  The resulting wines (like 2007) were intense and powerful, with high tannin levels but good complexity.  Red wines have aged beautifully.  Similar overall to 2007.
2001 Vintage: C  The 2001 growing season started with moderate vigor from average rainfall and cold temperatures.  A warm March led to early budbreak, which allowed a major frost event in mid-April to inflict major damage and dramatically reduce yields.  High winds during flowering compounded erratic yields.  A protracted heat wave in the early summer accelerated ripening and set the stage for an early harvest.  Yields were very low, and ripening uneven.  Wines were lighter in body and early-maturing.  Bordeaux varieties produced the best showing.
2000 Vintage: B+  2000 saw average rainfall, with warm springtime weather, early budbreak but no significant damage from frosts.  Summer daytime temperatures were about normal while cooler than average summer nights helped extend the growing season.  Harvest began two weeks later than normal, and wines had good intensity despite slightly higher than normal yields.  Wines showed good persistence and have aged well.  Similar overall to 2005.
1999 Vintage: B+  Slightly below average winter rainfall reduced yields and ripening was further accelerated by a warm, dry spring and summer.  Harvest began in mid-August, the earliest date on record at Tablas Creek.  The wines were intense and tannic when young, with slightly elevated alcohol levels.  The wines needed some time to come into balance, but many have aged magnificently.

Is this helpful?  Other winemakers, do these grades and descriptions seem right to you?

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 that were in barrel at the time) and have continued each year since.

Offering wines en primeur is is a time-honored French tradition most often associated with first-growth Bordeaux estates.  In outstanding vintages, valued customers are offered the opportunity to secure a limited quantity of sought-after wines at a special price in advance of bottling and subsequent general release.  As the demand for Tablas Creek's wines grow, this is a way for our best customers to ensure that they receive the wines that they want.

We have gone through several iterations of how we've set up the futures tasting.  Initially, we did it on a Saturday afternoon in our barrel room, which worked fine in 2003 the (when our tasting room just wasn't that busy).  The next year, we happened to have a big crowd in our tasting room, and the challenge of getting a hundred people through the tasting room and into the barrel room (and back) proved to be too much for us.  We felt that we'd lost control, with non-club members wandering into what was supposed to be our most exclusive event, and VINsiders strolling back and forth between tasting room and barrel room getting who-knows-how-many tastes.

So, in 2005, we moved the event to the evening and held it in both our barrel room and tasting room.  This worked fine the first year (at around 115 guests) but started to break down the following year.  By 2007, 200 guests had reserved, and the event felt more like a nice holiday cocktail party than it did like a focused exploration of young, powerful wines.  Attendees would spend their first ten minutes in our barrel room tasting the futures wines, and the next forty-five in our tasting room tasting their favorites.  it proved to be impossible to keep focus where it needed to be: on the futures wines.   Our average futures sale of attending customers had dropped for two years in a row, and we decided to rethink our format.

We decided that the best way to focus on the wines was to get people off of their feet, and to present the wines in a more leisurely, intimate setting, with restrained food designed to showcase the wines and soften their youthful exuberance.  So, we moved the event to the afternoon and created three different sessions with a maximum seated capacity of 50 people at each.  A placesetting is at right.

Neil (our winemaker, for the uninitiated) and I began by talking through the specifics that created the powerful, low-yield 2007 vintage, and we then moved to tasting the 2007 Esprit de Beaucastel and 2007 Panoplie.  Finally, we served Chef Jeff Scott's creation to feature the wines: a braised lamb over polenta with root vegetables dish (click here for the recipe) that was the perfect foil.  A panoramic photo, below, gives you a sense of the setting in our cellar:

 
The results were terrific.  The wines showed magnificently, confirming our impressions that the 2007 reds are likely the best we've ever seen.  The sales reflected this; nearly every attendee ordered futures, and the average sale per person was nearly triple what it had been last year.  The feedback we received from the members who came was that it was a wonderfully relaxed, focused exploration of the wines, and Neil and I both appreciated the chance to share impressions and answer questions with these intimate groups.  At $25 for the seminar, the tasting of these wines, and the lunch, it was a steal.  Plus the ticket price was refunded on any futures purchase, so the event ended up being free to nearly everyone.

We had worried that we would find it difficult filling a 75-minute seminar with discussion about only two wines, but instead found that each session ran nearly 100 minutes and could have lasted longer if we hadn't had to reset for the next group.

Now, we just need to find out why more people didn't come.  From 200 reservations in 2007, we dropped down to just under 100 this year, and only the first (11:00am) session sold out.  We'll just have to work on communicating just how nice the event was to everyone before 2009's edition!

Any VINsiders who are reading this should note that Wednesday, December 10th is our deadline for futures orders for the 2007 reds.  An PDF (faxable) order form is available; click here to view details and prices.

The challenges of running out of wine

We're not running out of wine.  Yet.  But, for the first time ever, I can see it looming. 

It's not a familiar position for me.  When we started, we made some mistakes in our marketing, the largest of which was neglecting to create a marketing plan.  We assumed that because we were associated with Chateau de Beaucastel, and we had confidence in our capabilities of making wine, our wines would sell out without us having to work at it.

Based on this assumption, we planted most of our vineyard fairly fast.  60 acres went into the ground between 1994 and 1997.  Another 20 acres went into the ground in 2000.  That meant that we grew from producing nothing in 1996 to about 4000 cases in the 1999 vintage to about 12,000 cases in the 2003 vintage.  Our marketing plan, such as it was, was to sell all this wine through wholesale without having to spend money to support the wines in the market through the traditional methods of market visits, wine festivals, distributor incentives, etc. 

We bottomed out in 2002, selling just 4000 cases wholesale while we watched inventory levels rise and knew that our production was growing rapidly.  Over the course of that year, we reinvented how we marketed Tablas Creek.  We opened our tasting room.  We launched our VINsider wine club.  And we started supporting the wines in the marketplace, visiting and working with dozens of distributors each year and participating in many more wine festivals around the country. 

And, little by little, we pulled ourselves out of the hole we'd dug.  Our total sales (wholesale and direct) rose to 5500 cases in 2003, 8000 in 2004, 11,000 in 2005, 15,000 in 2006 and 18,000 last year.  The growth was divided among the different outlets we had: tasting room, wine club, domestic wholesale and export.  Since we'd had the dubious luxury of having extra inventory of our wines from library vintages, we had lots of options for special features in our tasting room and could make selections for our wine club without having to worry that we were shorting our wholesalers of what they wanted.

Our production from 2004-2006 was a fairly consistent 16,000 cases per year, with 2004 a little below that and 2005 and 2006 a little above due to ample winter rainfall and favorable growing seasons.

Enter 2007.  The 2007 harvest was very light, and fooled us.  It followed a cold, dry winter and two years of higher-than-normal yields, and the result was a perfect formula for low production.   Our yields were less than 2.5 tons/acre, and we produced less than 13,500 cases of wine.  The wine is really good, very intense and focused (a little like 2002 was for us) but there's just not much of it.  And, the fact that we've worked through most of our back inventory in the past few years means that we're at the point that we're not going to have the wine to satisfy everyone who wants it.  With the natural growth of our wine club (we're netting about 500 new club members each year), the fact that our tasting room is up compared to last year, and the growth in demand for exports with the weak dollar, I don't see how we sell much less than 20,000 cases this year even with our moderate expectations for the domestic wholesale market in a challenging economy.  That's a lot more cases than we produced last year.

We're going to do what we can to stretch the 2006 vintage as long as we can, and release the 2008's (please, let yields be good!) a little earlier.  But, the simple fact is that we're having to make some difficult choices, particularly in whites (which were down more than reds, and which are released sooner).  Our fall 2008 wine club shipment will have 4 reds and only 2 whites for the first time ever.  We're going to hope that we can complete the fermentation of the 2008 Rosé in time to include it in our Spring '09 shipment with 2 whites and 3 reds.

I guess I should be happy about this.  Doesn't every business want to sell out of their product?  The simple solution of raising prices calls (and we will be doing that, slightly, with the next releases of our Cotes de Tablas and Cotes de Tablas Blanc).  But I have always felt that we make wines for people to drink and enjoy, not to be intimidated by because of their price or their scarcity.  And, I'm convinced that part of the reason for our success is that overall, the wines that we make provide excellent value for the people who buy them.  I'm not going to disrupt that.

But, I originally moved out here to be Director of Marketing.  How do you market when you don't have wine to sell?  What do I tell our National Sales Manager to do when any sales that he creates cause new headaches?  Or say to key restaurants or retailers who call and ask for a wine that we've sold out of except for what we've allocated to our wine club?  It will be a challenging year as we navigate this new situation of having to limit our sales to our current production and balance the demands from our different markets.

I don't yet know how this will play out.  We're going to be pulling back some of our wholesale market work, cutting down on wine festivals and letting some of our underperforming distributors slide in ways we wouldn't have tolerated in past years.  We'll protect our wine club for sure.  We aren't going to disappear from the wine scene; even wineries who are perpetually out of stock continue to show their faces and their wines periodically to maintain their fan base. 

But, I'm guessing I'll have many more opportunities to get better at telling people "sorry, we're out".  I guess that's what happens when a business grows up.

Winemaker Neil Collins Discusses Harvest 2007 with winerychannel.tv

If you haven't checked out winerychannel.tv yet, you should.  It's online television, dedicated to the world of wine.  Like many members of the new media, they're fans of what's going on in the Central Coast, and we welcomed them up here a month or so back for a discussion of the 2007 harvest.  Winemaker Neil Collins spent an afternoon with their crew walking them through what was going on in the cellar and talking about what 2007 was like for us.  Check it out (click on "The Source" Episode 26: Harvest Report when you get there).

End of 2007 Harvest!

With the completion of the "Mount Mourvedre" block behind the winery, we're officially done with the 2007 harvest.  Like each year, it's had its own challenges, this time at 65 days the longest extent between the beginning of harvest (August 27th) and the end of harvest (October 31st) that we've ever seen.  (By contrast, in 2006, harvest lasted 50 days.)

Our yields were down; the 252 tons of fruit that we brought in is down 20% from the 315 tons we saw in 2006 (or the 319 tons we saw in 2005).  At our normal conversion rates, we're looking at between 14,000 and 15,000 cases of wine in 2007.  Our field crew, led by Vineyard Manager David Maduena (center, with dark jacket and tan baseball cap) poses behind the last bin of Mourvedre:

The quality of the fruit looks tremendous.  Berry sizes are small, but skins are thick and we're seeing tremendous color extraction early in fermentation.  I hope that the California wine press recognizes that this year may be excellent for Paso Robles even though the early rain has been problematic in Napa and Sonoma.

Finally, I leave you with a good example of why you should be cautious leaving the winery camera in the hands of the winemakers.  Here's a shot they took of the last Mourvedre cluster of harvest, poised on the edge of the destemmer machine looking terrified.  Winery sense of humor...

Grenache Harvest Photos

As we'd hoped, the rain from the end of last week was followed by cool, sunny and breezy weather, and the half-inch of rain that we got didn't have any negative impact on the hanging fruit.  This week, we're bringing in the rest of the Grenache and getting a start on the Mourvedre.  The crystal clear, sunny morning yesterday allowed for some nice photos.  First, Grenache in a picking bin, waiting for destemming.  Note the very slight deflation of some of the berries, an important physiological sign that the fruit is ripe:

Next, a great shot of Neil Collins and Ryan Hebert (our Winemaker and Assistant Winemaker) pushing Grenache clusters through the destemming machine.  I love how this photo expresses the constant motion of harvest:

Finally, a nice semi-panoramic shot of Mourvedre hanging on the vines behind the winery (at the bottom of the hill we call "Mount Mourvedre") with the incredibly deep blue Paso Robles sky behind them.  Like all the photos on the site, click on the photo for a full-size rendition:

Harvest rain in Paso Robles

After several big harvest days this week (mostly Grenache, as well as the rest of the Syrah and the beginnings of the Mourvedre) we're taking a break for the first significant rain of the year to pass through.  As of Friday afternoon, we'd already received about 0.4" at the vineyard and it shows no signs of stopping.  A look out south from the winery this afternoon, with the wind whipping the olive trees and the clouds obscuring the ridgetops just a few hundred feet overhead:

The forecast for the weekend is good (sunny and warmer) and, as always the key is what it's like after the rain.  If the weather is dry and breezy, a moderate amount of rain is not a problem even during harvest.  It's when it stays still and humid that you worry.

And, of course, when the choice is to bring in fruit that you know isn't ripe, or to wait in the hope that the weather turns back around and you get it ripe later, you realize that you really don't have much choice.  So, fingers crossed.  At least we aren't getting the downpours that the North Coast (and even Monterey County) are forecast for over the next few days.

For those keeping track: we are approximately 60% through with harvest, and it looks like overall quality has been very high, with yields down an average of about 20%.

Harvest, Week of September 24th

The weather in Paso Robles warmed up last week, and we started harvesting in earnest.  We've brought in most of our Syrah, the first big chunk of Grenache, and are finishing up Grenache Blanc.  Viognier and Marsanne are in.  I'd estimate that last week, we brought in between 10% and 15% of our annual harvest, mostly Grenache and Syrah.  Happily, it looks like the production of our reds is not off nearly as much as our whites.  We're now estimating white yields down about 30%, but red yields down just 5% to 10%.  A photo from our front entrance, looking at the newly-harvested Syrah "C" vines:



This week, we're looking at more of the same weather, sunny and days in the 80s, with nights in the low 40s.  We're expecting most of our Grenache and our first significant blocks of Roussanne.

In the cellar, we're starting the assembly of our Rose by bleeding off some of our Grenache.  We've decided to make the Grenache component just a little bit lighter this year.  Each year, our Rose has gotten a little darker, and we feel it's time to back off just a little.  Below are two photos from the saignee of Grenache: on the left draining the juice from a tank harvested yesterday, and on the right spraying the juice into a new tank to ferment as rose.

Harvest, Weeks of September 10th and 17th

2007's harvest got off to an early start, driven by a dry winter and resulting low yields, and spurred by the warmest stretch of the summer in mid-August.  Since we've hit mid-September, though, it's cooled off here, with daytime highs in the 70s, marine layer in the mornings, and nights in the 40s. This has meant that after our first rush of Viognier and Chardonnay we've had a leisurely time of it.  Over the past two weeks, we did make our first pickings of Grenache Blanc and Syrah, and a few stray parcels of Roussanne and Vermentino, but the bulk (75%) of the harvest is still out on the vines, like this head-pruned Tannat vine below:

We did get a little early-season rain last Friday, but less than five-hundredths of an inch, not enough to do anything more than wash a little dust off the vines.  The strange squall was the culmination of an odd cut-off low pressure system that stalled off the coast of Santa Barbara, but wasn't warm enough to pull in much moisture from the Pacific.  We weren't particularly worried (Ryan Hebert, our Assistant Winemaker and Vineyard Manager was actually hoping for a quarter-inch or so of rain to keep the dust down) but we're looking forward to the scheduled warm, dry weather of this week.  It looks like we'll get our first lot of Grenache in tomorrow.  One more photo, before I sign off: a couple of bins of Roussanne from last week, on the back of the tractor on what we call the "new hill".

Syrah/Roussanne Harvest and Co-Fermentation

Each year, one of our favorite Syrah lots in the cellar is one that we co-ferment with Roussanne.  We typically blend about 10% Roussanne into Syrah, de-stem the two grapes, and then ferment them together in an open-top tank.  The lushness of the mid-palate of Roussanne helps round out the Syrah (which can be fairly angular on its own).

This year, we encountered an unexpected problem, as the Roussanne refused to be de-stemmed.  We've never had a problem with this before, but with particularly tight clusters in 2007 and the overall small berry sizes, it seems that the berries just won't give up their grips on the stems.  So, we're having to press the Roussanne and add it to the fermenting Syrah as juice.  A close-up of the Roussanne is below:

We've consistently had better luck co-fermenting Syrah with Roussanne than we have with Viognier.  Although it's commonly done in the Northern Rhone (and has been copied by California producers) we've never found it to do the trick.  For us, Syrah is very aromatic and long, with its only flaw being a bit hollow on the mid-palate when it's young.  Viognier further emphasizes the aromatic character, but if anything the resulting wine is more notable (perhaps because of the explosive aromatics) for its relatively underdeveloped mid-palate.

Oh, well.  We're still learning.  Every year brings something we haven't seen before.  This year, it's Roussanne that refuses to be de-stemmed.  Next year, who knows!