Tablas Creek Vineyard Blog

Some nice recognition for my Dad

A few months back, I got a phone call from Stacie Jacob, the Executive Director of the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance, letting me know that their board of directors had decided to honor my dad as their 2007 Wine Industry Person of the Year.  It was a secret, so I had to figure out how to get my parents to go to the Wine Country Alliance Gala (the sort of event that they normally avoid) without letting on why.  I eventually figured out how to do it by donating wine to the event and telling them that we needed to go and show our faces in support, and like the good sports that they always are, they got dressed up, came to the event and made a good showing.

Still, it was clear that it was a complete surprise to my dad when at the end of the event, his friend and fellow vintner Stephan Asseo (of L'Aventure Winery) got up to begin the awards speech.  Even more impressive was the short, eloquent speech my dad gave (with no advance warning) after having received the award.  The whole time, my wife Meghan was elbowing me and saying "if you ever do this to me, I'll kill you."

The evening was a wonderful acknowledgment of the contributions he's made to Paso Robles over the last two decades, against the backdrop of a career that has now spanned six decades.  It's still amazing to think that when we founded Tablas Creek in 1989, there weren't any Rhone varietals planted here, and there were less than two dozen wineries.  Now, there are nearly 200 Paso Robles wineries, and about 70% of these wineries are producing at least one Rhone.  Paso Robles is finding its voice.

It's also been fun for me to see my Dad get calls from friends and acquaintances, many of whom he hadn't spoken to in years, congratulating him on this honor he genuinely didn't expect.

You can read the complete press release on Business Wire:
Robert Haas Honored as Paso Robles 2007 Wine Industry Person of the Year

Welcome John Morris, Tasting Room Manager

We're excited to welcome John Morris as our new Tasting Room Manager. John joins us most recently from Per Bacco Cellars in San Luis Obispo, but honed his retail, wine and management skills in locally with Bonny Doon, and in Seattle, where he worked at De Laurenti Food and Wine and managed Torrefazione Italia. We're sure you'll love his low-key expertise and his passion for wine.

Please say hello to him and introduce yourself the next time you're in the tasting room!

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

Robert Haas turns 80

On April 18th, my dad will turn 80.  He doesn't look it, or act it, and I think that a big piece of what's kept him young has been his lack of sentimentality and his restlessness to figure out what the next interesting development would be.  His career in the wine industry has spanned more than 50 years, and he has made contributions as a retailer, an importer, a wholesaler, and now, with Tablas Creek, as a vintner.  I'm continually amazed by the various impacts he's had on how Americans buy, drink, and think about wine.  At the same time, he's a private person, who is not comfortable promoting himself, and has remained relatively unknown to much of the American wine-buying public.

A quick thumbnail of his career for those of you who may not be aware:

• In the mid-1950s, he launched the first ever Bordeaux futures offering through M. Lehmann, his father's store in Manhattan (the store, now Sherry Lehmann, was sold by my grandfather in the late 1960s). 
• He was an important early advocate for estate bottling in Burgundy, and introduced to the American market landmark producers such as Henri Gouges, Mongeard-Mugneret, Etienne Sauzet, and Ponsot, Dauvissat, and Louis Michel.  Knowing that a wine was a "Robert Haas Selection" was many people's introduction to fine French wines. 
• He first imported Beaucastel at a time when only 3 Châteauneuf-du-Pape producers were even estate bottling their wines. 
• He built well known brands such as Marques de Caceres, Santa Rita, La Vieille Ferme, Louis Roederer and Warre's Port through his import company Vineyard Brands. 
• He co-founded the wholesaler Winebow, which has itself expanded to also be one of America's leading importers.
• He was an early champion of California, and introduced some of California's most recognizable names to the national market.  These producers included Chappellet, Freemark Abbey, Clos du Val, Joseph Phelps, Rutherford Hill, Hanzell, Kistler, and Sonoma-Cutrer. 
• Most recently, through his partnership with the Perrin family and the current Tablas Creek project, he's had enormous influence on the growth in popularity of American Rhone varietals, organic viticulture, and the Paso Robles region.

A few years ago, Saveur and The Wine Enthusiast did retrospective pieces on his career, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of his first wine buying trip to France.  This year, I'm looking forward to articles in the San Francisco Chronicle, Wines & Vines, and the San Luis Obispo Tribune.  This has been one of my goals for the year: to get people to know a little more about my dad, and to get a somewhat broader understanding of the path that he laid down that others have followed: importers like Neil Empson, Kermit Lynch and Robert Kacher; wine-focused distributors around the country; specialty retail shops (and producers) that sell a significant portion of their production through futures offerings; producers of Rhone varietals in the Central Coast and particularly Paso Robles; and wine lovers who value wines of place.  It is this last contribution which I think is furthest-reaching: his consistent search for wines that reflect the place in which they are produced, made by winemakers whose winemaking respects that place.  I have written earlier about how important we believe estate bottling is at Tablas Creek, but this has been an important (perhaps the most important) marker of quality for my dad for more than 50 years.

I didn't grow up in a world of wine dominated by negociants who made wines from lots of regions, from grapes (or wines) bought and blended.  And I have my dad, in part, to thank for that.