Tablas Creek Vineyard Blog

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.

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!

New Tasting Room at Tablas Creek

When we built the Tablas Creek winery and office building in 1997, we were under the belief that we would be purely a production facility, and leave the marketing and sales of our wine entirely to other people.  So, when we designed the building, we did not include a tasting room.  When we would entertain VIPs, we would taste with them in the cellar or in our conference room.  And, we developed our tour, which took interested visitors down through our grapevine nursery, organic vineyard, and winery.

                            From old...                                                                 to new!

We found that people who had the chance to see the property in action came away like disciples, spreading the news about Tablas Creek to their circle of acquaintances.  And, we realized just how difficult it is to get your story out in what is a more and more crowded wine marketplace. 

So, in September of 2002, we converted what had been the lobby of our office into a tasting room. Since then, we've welcomed nearly 40,000 people through this 440-square-foot room.  It wasn't ideal, but we made it work, bringing in a hand-made stone tasting bar (made from limestone from our vineyard), another custom cabinet made from two of our old barrels, and whatever other pieces of furniture we could make work.

Pam Blakeman, Tablas Creek's Tasting Room Manager

This room worked for us well in 2002 and 2003, and adequately in 2004.  However, by 2005, we were cramped on weekends, and positively overwhelmed on festivals.   So, we made a decision to expand the tasting room early in 2006.  We sacrificed our conference room (which also served as my dad's office) and reconfigured the tasting room space to include three new tasting bars, new lighting, new inventory display space, and a new color scheme.

The two parts of the tasting room now total 980 square feet (effectively doubling our capacity) and we can now pour from five different bars when we need to.  We dedicate one room on weekends to our VINsider Wine Club members, and we can also close off the new room for private groups.  Plus, we can be much more flexible about the sorts of winery events we can hold, including our recent VINsider shipment tasting party.

We moved into this space in mid-February, and it has been an absolute pleasure.  We encourage you to come out and see it for yourselves.  If you are interested in setting up a visit and tour, either for yourself or for a group, please contact us!  Some photos of the conversion are below: