Tablas Creek Vineyard Blog

July Vineyard Photo Album

After a couple of weeks of seasonably warm weather (days in the 90s or low 100s and nights in the 50s) we had a break in the heat from a cut-off low and a resulting deep marine layer.  Sunday and Monday we had fog in the morning, breezy, cool days with highs topping out in the low 70s, and chilly, breezy nights in the mid-40s.  When I got into the vineyard on Monday morning, I was struck by the crispness of the day and headed out into the vineyard to catch the last bits of fog lingering over the vineyard.

I didn't make it in time to get any good photos of the fog, but had a nice walk through the Grenache Noir, Mourvedre and Vermentino blocks on the hill behind the winery.  A few of my favorite shots are below; check out the complete photo album for more.  First, some Grenache vines silhouetted against the sky:

A Grenache Noir cluster, still a few weeks away from veraison:

Looking west over our Grenache block, you can see a block of Syrah as well as (further west) the new section of vineyard we just finished planting:

A look north-east through two Vermentino rows shows Adelaida Road and Halter Ranch in the background:

And finally,  a closeup of a Vermentino vine with the sunlight shining through it:

An excellent beginning to the growing season, strange smoky weather notwithstanding

With two big fires burning to the north of us in Monterey County over the last few weeks, including the Indians Fire that has burned nearly 60,000 acres in three weeks and the Gallery Fire (just south of Big Sur) that has burned over 13,000 acres since Saturday, we look outside on strange yellow-gray skies and hazy sun.  A photo from earlier this afternoon looks west toward the Santa Lucia Mountains:

The smoke is at its most dramatic in the evening, when sunsets have been brilliant orange.  During the day, I keep looking outside waiting for the thunderstorm to hit (I'm betraying my East Coast origins here).

The smoke actually helps keep things a little cooler around here as the sun's intensity is reduced.  After some very hot weather the second half of last week -- including three consecutive days Thursday 6/19-Saturday 6/21 where high temperatures topped 105 -- any relief is welcome.  Even better, a front passed through and the normal pattern of onshore flow has reformed, meaning that we get a sea breeze in the afternoon and temperatures are usually comfortable by dinnertime.  Lows last night actually dropped into the upper 30s.

The vineyard itself looks very healthy, with a good fruit set and no pressure from any pests except for ground squirrels.  Two photos should give you a sense of what things look like out there.  Typically, what we'd worry about at this stage is shatter (where a large percentage of flowers are unfertilized, leading to clusters with only a few scattered berries) which is most common in Grenache.  No worries on that score.  Two shots in the Grenache (left) and Grenache Blanc (right) show excellent fruit set:

And finally, a long view of the vineyard, looking from our "New Hill" section north across small plots of head-pruned Tannat and Picpoul to our main south-west and south-east facing slopes of Grenache.  Note the strange (for Paso Robles) pale blue-grey sky:

A bullet dodged: only minor vineyard damage from a serious California-wide frost event

California was badly zapped last week by a deep trough of cold air that spread south from Canada and brought freezing nights from Mendocino to Santa Barbara.  The perils presented by this frost were made more severe by the fact that it followed a week of unusually warm weather, where it neared 90 degrees at Tablas Creek and was well over 90 in downtown Paso Robles.  Nearly the whole vineyard had sprouted, in many cases 6 inches or more.

As the frost approached last weekend, forecasts looked terrifying.  On frosty nights, the weather station at Tablas Creek is typically the coldest in Paso Robles, and it is not even in the coldest spot on the property.  Forecasts were suggesting that temperatures would range from 26-33 degrees in the appellation, which we usually project to temperatures as low as 23 or 24 in our coldest spots.  When it's this cold, the frost prevention fans that we use aren't effective; the only way to save the new growth is with overhead sprinklers.  And we don't have enough water for those.

We did indeed have three cold nights in a row.  The nights of the 21st, 22nd and 23rd of April all registered lows at our weather station between 28 and 29 degrees.  But, in an unusual reversal, it was colder on the east side of town than out at Tablas Creek.  And, Paso Robles seems to have been less heavily hit than other regions; Napa, Sonoma and the Sierra Foothills all report significant damage, and even vintners I've spoken to in Santa Ynez see more damage than we do.

In driving around the vineyard this afternoon with my dad, we'd estimate maybe 5% of new growth has been damaged by this frost.  A typical section is below, with some vines at the very bottom of a swale showing browning, but the vast majority of the vineyard looking fine:

As always, the frost damage is curiously selective, with damaged shoots just inches away from others that are fine.  Still, given how scary things looked a week ago, we're counting ourselves very lucky.

We hope that we're largely out of the danger zone now; it hit 90 degrees here both days this weekend.  And we always figure that once we get into May we're pretty much safe.  And we're ready for a break.  We ran our frost fans seventeen nights this spring, nearly double our annual average.

Frost Damage

As I'd feared when I posted about the early budbreak a week or so ago, we got a frost Sunday night.  And not a little one, either.  It got down to 27 degrees at the weather station in the center of the vineyard, which means that the coldest spots were a couple of degrees colder than that.  Fortunately, much of the vineyard wasn't out yet, but we did see some damage in all the sections of the vineyard that had sprouted.  Even the tops of the hills, which normally avoid our radiation frosts, saw some damage.  A photo of some Grenache vines shows the quirky nature of frost damage.  One sprout can be frozen while another a few inches away is fine:

Overall, we'd classify this as having a mild to moderate impact.  We'll see some effects from this throughout the growing season, but it doesn't look like it will seriously cut down either on production or on the quality of the growing season this year.

Of course, we still have over a month to go before we can relax... but we look pretty safe this week, with rain forecast for tomorrow and then a warming trend for the rest of the week.

Budbreak is terrifying (but hopeful)

With the recent warm weather, we're starting to see budbreak in our earlier-sprouting varietals, particularly Viognier and Grenache.  A Grenache vine pushes, below:

As usual, we're seeing earlier budbread at the tops of the hills, which are less often frosted because the cold air slumps down the hillsides and settles in low-lying areas.  Many mornings, the temperature difference between the hilltops and the valleys is as much as 8 degrees.  Our hilltops tend to receive their last frosts in early April, while our valleys are prone to frosts all the way into May.  In fact, one morning last June, Neil Collins (our winemaker, who lives on the property with his family, in one of the lowest, coldest spots near the creek) emerged to find ice on his car.

Budbreak is a touch early this year; normally, we don't see it until the first or second week of April.  And this early start is plenty scary.  We normally get a few limited frosts in the second half of April, and are at real risk of a killing freeze in early April.  Neil doesn't really relax until Wine Festival, the third weekend of May.

One element we have in our defense against frosts is our frost-protection fan system, with which we blow cold air that has pooled in a low-lying area up a chimney, allowing it to be replaced by the warmer air that may be just a few feet above.  One of these octagonal fans is visible in the background of the photo below:

Budbreak does not hit the entire vineyard evenly.  Not only do the tops of the hills push first, but younger vines push earlier.  (As if we needed another reason to appreciate older vines!)  Below, a replanted vine is several inches out while the older vines on either side have barely sprouted:

At the same time, budbreak is hopeful -- a symbol of renewal.  Each year, you have the chance to make something you've never made before, and with the vineyard a year older than it's ever been, every expectation that your ceiling is higher than it's ever been.  So, you hold your breath and know that each cold night you avoid a major frost, the Northern Hemisphere tilts slightly more toward the sun, the days get a few minutes longer and you're one day closer to not having to worry through those cold nights.  Finally, two more photos, both of which (for me) catch the hopefulness of the season:

Cut-off low: My new favorite phrase

This winter, we've already had two occurrences of storms caused by cut-off low pressure systems, where an area of low pressure becomes detached from the Jet Stream and meanders around, often for several days, spinning and (when moisture is available) sending multiple bands of clouds and precipitation onto shore.  Forecasters have a hard time predicting the creation and behavior of these cut-off lows, as weather forecasting models often produce conflicting results (as they do with other self-contained weather events, like hurricanes).

The current cut-off low was not forecast at all as recently as late last week, and over the weekend it was predicted to bring showers on Tuesday (under a quarter of an inch) and slightly heavier rain (up to half an inch) today.  In fact, we've received over three inches so far from this storm, with no sign of letup.  Now, the forecast suggests that we'll see bands of precipitation all week, and then maybe a substantial storm as we get to early next week.  It's been wonderful, gentle rain so far, with hardly any wind and a moderate pace that has allowed it all to soak in.  In a sign that we're finally replenishing our ground water, Tablas Creek is running noisily away.

A good shot of the current conditions, showing the band of north-south precipitation that has been flowing north over the Paso Robles area for the last 36 hours, from the National Weather Service:

Pacific Storm Recap & Photos: Saturday, January 5th

Happily, we've emerged largely without damage, but with a welcome replenishing of groundwater.  The one-day rainfall totals at Tablas Creek were a whopping 6.02 inches, the most we've ever measured in one day since we installed the weather station seven years ago.  The damaging winds didn't develop (perhaps because we're on the eastern-facing slopes of the Santa Lucia mountains) but it was still windy, with gusts topping out at 43 miles per hour.  We took a drive out to the winery to see what things looked like, and snapped some photos for everyone.

The roads were fine, although there was some dirt- and gravel-cover from washed-out driveways, and the typical California tree detritus.  Below is a shot on Vineyard Drive, just south of Tablas Creek:

The day was pretty, with sun struggling to break through the clouds and the occasional lingering shower.  Driving around the vineyard, the damage was limited to some minor erosion on the roads and at the bottoms of some of the steeper hills:

The cover crops have been late in sprouting this year, as we haven't had any sustained wet periods.  Still, they'd gotten enough of a head start from December's rain to hold the soil in place.  Two good shots of the sprouting cover crop, the first looking south through the Roussanne, and the second looking north through the old Grenache section:

The ground was very thirsty, as evidenced by how little water was running in Tablas Creek just 12 hours after having received over 6 inches of rain. 

This is the clearest indication of how much more rain we need.  Even with this last storm, we're at just over 11 inches for the year so far, only about 40% of our average annual total.  Finally, I wanted to leave you with a photo from the top of the vineyard, looking south across the Grenache and Counoise, that gives a great feel for the morning's weather:

We're forecast to get two much smaller storms in the aftermath of this one, one coming through tomorrow and another on Tuesday.  Neither is supposed to give us much more than half an inch of rain, but we'll happily take what we can get.

Pacific Storm Update: Friday evening

As of 5:00pm, we'd already received 4.94 inches of rain out at the weather station in the middle of the vineyard.  The forecast suggests it's supposed to continue raining hard through tonight, so the estimates we'd had of nearly 10 inches now sound conservative.  This afternoon, it has been raining at about 0.75 inches per hour.  It has not been quite as windy as we'd been expecting, with wind speeds consistently around 25-30 m.p.h and the largest gust topping out at 43 m.p.h just after 3:00 p.m.  The most recent satellite photo (again from the National Weather Service):

So far, so good.  We're looking forward to hearing water running in Tablas Creek after this.

For anyone thinking of coming out, tomorrow is supposed to be a lot less blustery (and less wet, too) so we're planning to open the tasting room as normal.

Weather permitting, I'll post some photos tomorrow.

Pacific storm update: Friday mid-day

We're in the early stages of one of the strongest storms to hit Paso Robles in decades.  We're expecting between 6-12 inches of rain at Tablas Creek, with winds upwards of 60 miles per hour.  We're closing the offices and tasting room at 1PM today, and sending everyone home.  I'll keep updating on what we're seeing here over the next few days.  A satellite image (courtesy of the National Weather Service):

The warnings from weather.com are perhaps even more impressive:

The strongest in a series of storm systems is plowing into the West with its impacts spreading far inland to the Rockies this weekend.

Already, the wind and heavy rains have hit the southern Oregon and the northern half of California. Winds in the coastal mountains either side of the Oregon-California border gusted over 150 mph during the morning. Winds gusted to near 90 mph in the San Francisco Bay Area causing a great deal of tree and power line damage. Winds gusted to just over 100 mph on the hill tops around Oakland. Winds have also gusted to between 60 and 70 mph in the Redding and Sacramento areas.

Heavy rain totals in the coastal mountains north of San Francisco have reached 8 inches.

Heavy rain is gradually shifting southward from northern California into central California and finally into Southern California. Rain totals will range from 2 to 5 inches in the valleys and along the coast to as much as 1 foot in the coastal mountains. Flash flooding is likely along the entire California coast and will not be confined to burn areas.

Snow levels will plummet in the northern California mountains and the Sierra now through Saturday morning with levels reaching valley floors over northern California.

A foot or two of snow will fall in parts of the Cascades of Washington and Oregon. In the mountains of California, hourly snowfall rates could reach 6 to 8 inches. Snow accumulations between 2 feet (valley floors) and locally 12 feet (ridge tops) will bury the Sierra by the end of the weekend. White-out, blizzard conditions will make any travel through the Siskiyou and Sierra Mountains deadly.

Damagingly strong wind gusts will continue over California especially in the vicinity of a strong cold front, ranging from between 50 and 70 mph at the lowest elevations to as high as between 150 and 200 mph at the ridge tops of the Sierra. Strong and damaging winds will also impact western Washington and most of Oregon, where winds could gust over 60 mph.

Swells along the Washington, Oregon and northern California coasts will peak between 30 and 35 feet overnight and high surf warnings have been issued. Snow and damaging winds will increase through interior parts of the West this weekend, impacting Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and the Colorado Rockies. Several feet of snow could fall at the higher elevations with wind gusts to over 80 mph.

Heavy rain may reach into the Desert Southwest this weekend, including the Las Vegas area and the lower Colorado River Valley. Rain and mountain snow will also increase over parts of Arizona and New Mexico.

We need the rain, so this is welcome... and the vineyard's cover crop is growing nicely, so we hope to avoid too much erosion.  Still, a historic storm like this provides some nail-biting moments.  I'll keep updating as I have information.

Rainfall microclimates in Paso Robles

Appellations are by nature generalizations.  You do your best in defining one to understand macro-level differences in soils, climate and rainfall (the three components which together give a place its signature).  And, practically speaking, you won't ever be able to delineate an area that is absolutely uniform.  Even within our vineyard at Tablas Creek, there are areas that are warmer and cooler, and have different amounts of topsoil above the high-calcium limestone-derived bedrock.

All this is a long-winded leadup to my point, which is that the Paso Robles AVA is essentially defined by climate.  And, the appellation does have broad climatic similarities (probably the most important of  the three variables) that make the AVA a meaningful designation.  Still, there are over 40 different soil types within the AVA, and rainfall varies from an average of about 7 inches in the high plateaus east of town (think Creston, or Shandon) to nearly 40 inches in the extreme western reaches of the AVA.  So, the proposal to subdivide the Paso Robles AVA has some good scientific reasoning behind it.

This last rainstorm that we received yesterday, which dumped 3.15 inches at Tablas Creek, is a good illustration of the diversity of rainfall amounts around the AVA.  I've pasted in below the readings from the other weather stations in the region:

You can see how much more rain we get at Tablas than the other weather stations: nearly double what they get in the Templeton gap, and nearly triple the reading from the most easterly weather station in Shandon.  And there's good logic for this; at Tablas, we're only about 10 miles from the Pacific, and in the rain shadow of the Santa Lucia mountains.  Pacific storms get pushed up into cooler air by the mountain range, and drop their rainfall over us.  By the time the storms get into town or further east, they've lost much of their moisture.  This is why the Adelaida area was known until the middle of the 20th century as the breadbasket of the Paso Robles area.  It's warm enough to ripen crops consistently, but wet enough to farm without irrigation.

And this is one of the characteristics we were looking for in founding Tablas Creek: enough rainfall to dry farm.  At 28 inches average annual rainfall, we can do it most years.  The Adelaida District area of Paso Robles is one of the only parts of California warm enough to ripen Rhone varietals and still with enough rainfall to farm without irrigation.  No wonder this is becoming known as the center of California's Rhone movement!