Note from the Cellar: Week of October 19th

[Note: We are pleased to welcome Assistant Winemaker Chelsea Magnusson who will be contributing a regular column "Notes from the Cellar" to the Tablas Creek blog.  You can follow her posts by selecting the Notes from the Cellar category from left-hand navigation bar.]

Since the day the Central Coast was slammed with the monster rain storm, it had been quite difficult to venture out into the vineyard.  The vineyard experienced far less erosion than anticipated, primarily because the soil was so incredibly parched it just soaked up all the water we received.   However, that absorption made trips into the vineyard a bit challenging to say the least.

What a difference a rain makes!  New growth in the vineyard.

For the most part, we have had pretty nice weather following the storm, so the grapes (along with the soil)  have had a chance to dry out and continue the ripening process.  Neil, Ryan and David (our Vineyard Manager) have been cruising out into the vineyard regularly to pull samples on our fruit that’s still hanging out there.  Approximately 90% of our fruit has been processed already, but everything on-vine seems to be taking its sweet time.  As illustrated by the photo of Syrah below, you can see that there is indeed fruit worth waiting for.

While we remain optimistic about most areas of the vineyard, there are other areas that were a bit concerning.  Numbers weren't moving, and there was fear that the fruit would either rot on the vine or we would be forced to bring in fruit coming in at a paltry 18°Brix.  So, rather than shrugging their shoulders and admitting defeat by bringing in fruit that was less than stellar, Winemakers Ryan and Neil made the decision to lay the fruit on beds of straw in one of our greenhouses, a la our Vin de Paille program.  The fruit that was selected for this process was a block of Roussanne that was far behind its counterparts and an area of Counoise that was especially stubborn in its ripening (or lack thereof).

A view from the door of the greenhouse

Counoise and Roussanne, side by side

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Vin de Paille process, we lay the fruit on beds of straw to allow it to dry, thus concentrating the sugars.  The straw underneath absorbs moisture and allows air flow under the fruit in an effort to avoid any mildew or rot.  This method is preferred because we are able to concentrate the sugars without affecting the pH and acid as much as would be the case if we allowed the fruit to dry on-vine.  It's also safer: the fruit is kept in a controlled environment with fans keeping it dry and happy.

After the fruit had reached a number that we were happy with, our vineyard crew pulled in 4.5 bins of Roussanne, weighing in at 2.45 tons.  At this point in the year (especially considering what the vineyard has been through), it’s absolutely thrilling to see sugar numbers coming in at 25.3°Brix, no matter the method used to get it there.  And I, for one was elated to hear “Bring it in!” once again.  It had been a few weeks since we last brought in a crop of whites, so it felt pretty good to fire up the white press today.  White press days are among my favorites - the juice in the pan smells very similar to fresh pressed apple cider (and tastes like it, too!) and cleaning the white press is quite fun (if you're into that sort of thing).  It’s one of the more quiet places in the cellar as far as external noise is concerned, and the acoustics are great.  For those of you who can belt it out in the shower, I would say the white press is the next step for vocal styling.

On the days we’re not bringing fruit in from the vineyard, we throw ourselves into activities involving the fruit that has already been brought in.  We’re continuing to pump over and punch down the reds that are just beginning to ferment or in the process of fermenting, and pressing off the reds that have slowed in their fermentations.  After they’ve been pressed, the wines have been barreled down and tucked away for storage and aging in cellar conditions conducive to primary fermentation completion.  In a short while, we’ll start checking on the secondary fermentation (malolactic fermentation).  As far as the whites are concerned, we have topped up our Marsanne, Viognier and Vermentino that we have in the cellar.  The whites get topped after fermentation has slowed to protect them from oxidation (when the fermentation is rolling, the carbon dioxide blankets the wine and protects it).

As long as the weather reports bring good news of sunshine and warmth, we’ll continue to check the numbers on the fruit in the vineyard, allowing it the time that it needs to ripen properly.  Until then, we’ve got plenty to keep us occupied here in the cellar!

Tablas Creek on Native Food and Wine

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon with Kevin Lynch and Amber Share of Native Food and Wine, a relatively new Web blog dedicated to food and wines of place.  Kevin and Amber describe their site as a place where they "examine how local and regional ingredients define a place and how people around the world respond, sustain and enjoy themselves in their respective environments".

The site is beautiful, with gorgeous photography and detailed articles on topics as diverse as Cultiva Coffee, the Santa Monica Farmer's Market, tamales, and about wine grapes.  They don't try to post daily, but their more-or-less weekly articles tackle topics in greater depth than a typical blog, and are researched and supported with rigor more typical of old-media newsletters (think an Art of Eating article that comes every week or so, for free).

They recently posted the article California's Rhone on their Tablas Creek visit.  In addition to a detailed foray into the history of the idea of terroir, a thoughtful comparison of California and France, and a dozen gorgeous photographs, they posted the below video that is assembled from our conversations.  But don't just watch this here... go read the article, and subscribe to their RSS feed.

October 13-14 Pacific Storm Recap and Assessment

So, we're picking up the pieces at Tablas Creek after a storm that dropped an amazing 9.6 inches of rain on us in a little more than 24 hours.  To try to contextualize how unusual this storm was for us:

• This is more than half the rainfall we received all of last winter.
• We've never received more than 6 inches in a day since our weather station was installed a decade ago, and we're pretty sure that this is the most rainfall in a day since we bought the property in 1989.
• On our 120-acre property, we received roughly 4,181,760 cubic feet of rainwater.  That's more than 31 million gallons of water... enough to fill more than 52 olympic swimming pools.
• For a stretch of about 12 hours on Tuesday afternoon and evening, we were receiving about 3/4 inch of rainfall each hour.
• Winds were strong, consistently in the 25-35mph range, with the top gust topping out at 39mph.

Fortunately, the storm was very well forecast.  Working through the previous weekend, we were able to bring in about 80% of what was still out, including most of our Mourvedre, Roussanne, Grenache and Counoise.  We were comparatively fortunate that the hot spell in September got most of the vineyard near ripeness.  If we'd had the leisure to do so, we might have left some things out for another week or ten days to get a little added concentration, but most of the vineyard was essentially ripe.

Of course, not everything came in.  The blocks of Mourvedre, Grenache and Roussanne that just weren't ripe enough for us to want to use we left out.  There isn't any point in bringing grapes in that you wouldn't want to make wine out of; better to take the chance of leaving the grapes out and hoping that they come through the rain OK, we get some warm sunny weather, and they reconcentrate.  As I mentioned in my post last weekend, this happened for us in 2004.   There are between 10 and 15 tons of grapes (the equivalent of roughly 1000 cases of wine) still out on the vines.

It's still a little early to tell whether we'll be able to use these grapes that we left out.  Neil and Ryan's assessment of the storm damage is that we came through remarkably unscathed; there is some erosion damage, but not as much as we'd feared.  The ground was apparently so porous and so thirsty that most of the water, amazingly, was absorbed.  The morning after the storm, Tablas Creek wasn't particularly full -- an indicator that the ground absorbed most of the rainfall.  With the weather forecast showing warmer, sunny, breezy conditions, it seems likely that we'll be able to wait for at least the Mourvedre and Grenache to reconcentrate.

Our yields are going to be low this year.  We've brought in about 195 tons of grapes, down 22% from the already-low yields of 2008.  Even if we do get another 10 tons out of the vineyard, we're still looking at making nearly 3000 fewer cases than the 15,000 that we made in 2008.  That will leave us some difficult choices.

One positive that we're looking forward to: the main culprit of these last three low-yielding years is the ongoing drought.  We don't have enough water to do much irrigation, and we'd prefer not to anyway.  But it's clear that the vineyard can subsist on a water deficit for only so long.  If this storm is the harbinger of a wet winter (as October storms have tended to be in the past) it will be a major boon for us.  We'd feel better about sacrificing 1000 cases of production this year if we can look forward to regaining the 6000 cases of production we're down below our peaks from 2005 and 2006.

A truly scary weather forecast

We've been fortunate with our weather during harvest for the last four years.  Each year starting with 2005, whatever the conditions during the spring and summer, we've had beautiful autumns, without serious heat spikes and without any significant rain.  That's one of the major reasons that in my post ten years of Paso Robles vintage grades that I wrote last year, the last four years all received "A-" or "A" grades.

I'm not sure that we're going to have that kind of luck this year.  We suffered through an extended heat spike in late September that threatened vineyards with dehydration and over-rapid ripening.  Warmer than normal nights have meant that grapes are ripe with lower acids than we've seen in years.  And now, as if on cue, we have a forecast for the most significant October rain in two decades.  The complete extended forecast, from the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance's usually conservative meteorologist:

Those comments about "some mountain areas" typically mean the foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains, where Tablas Creek is located.  So, we're looking at possibly six inches of rain across three days next week.  Not good.

We're fortunate, in Paso Robles, that we don't often get rain before November.  That's typically two weeks later than Napa and a month later than Sonoma and Mendocino.  The longer growing season is a luxury in that it allows us to wait as long as is necessary to get our later-ripening varietals (read: Mourvedre, Counoise and Roussanne) fully ripe.  And, in fact, the North Coast has already had a small rain event in mid-September that dropped half an inch of rain up north but just brought clouds to Tablas Creek.  And this rainstorm is predicted to be at least as heavy up north.  But six inches is a lot of rain, and no vineyard with grapes nearly ripe can expect to come through it unscathed.  Between dilution, swelling and splitting of berries, rot and mildew, there are a lot of possible negative consequences.

So, what are we doing?  Picking as fast as we can between now and Monday.  We hardly ever pick on Sundays, as it's hard on our crew and cellar staff, but we are tomorrow.  We should be able to complete most of our Grenache and Roussanne harvest, and get a good chunk of Counoise in.  We're most worried about the larger, thinner-skinned grapes like Grenache and Counoise, who tend to absorb more water when they're ripe and are more prone to swelling and splitting. 

We'll also be picking the Mourvedre that is ripe (or nearly so) because there is no guarantee that, even with Mourvedre, whose thick skins allow it to more easily shrug off late rainfall, we'll be able to use what's left out there after the storm comes through. 

On the positive side, our hot September meant that grapes like Mourvedre that aren't usually ripe in mid-October are more or less ready to come in.  In a perfect world, we'd leave some vineyard blocks out for another week or ten days in the cool, sunny weather we've been having, but the little last bit of added concentration we'd get isn't worth the risks.

Of course, there are blocks, particularly ones that were impacted most heavily by the spring frosts, that just aren't ready.  There's nothing to be gained by bringing in this fruit, as we wouldn't want to use it as it stands now.  The only thing to do is to leave it out, hope that the storm is less severe than predicted, and that the extended forecast (which is calling for warmer, dry weather for the end of October) is true.

The last time we faced a similar decision was in 2004.  We had Mourvedre still out that wasn't ready, and a storm predicted for mid-October.  We harvested what we could, left out the two-thirds of our Mourvedre that wasn't ripe, and hunkered down for two inches of rain.  The skies cleared after, and after two weeks of cool, sunny and breezy weather, we picked about 60% of what was left.  Another storm came through at the end of the month, and though we still had fruit out, the weather never dried out again, and what was still out wasn't usable.

Still, our patience in leaving out the Mourvedre through the first storm was rewarded: we had some terrific fruit that we wouldn't have had if we'd picked everything before the rain.

At the very least, this will get our winter rainfall off to a good start.  And, if we're looking for silver linings, everyone can be happy about that.

Family Business: Generations

This essay is the next in an occasional series of articles by Robert Haas.

In my career as a wine buyer, I have been fortunate to find models to admire and mentors willing to share their knowledge and experience in the business of producing fine wine. One such was Jacques Perrin, owner with his family of Château de Beaucastel since the beginning of the twentieth century. He was a fanatic for estate growing, organic farming and using all thirteen permitted grape varieties in his wines. In our profession there is a great tradition of passing on wine knowledge from generation to generation. Although he was only seven or eight years older than I, he took me under his wing like a father: showing me around not only Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but also all the appellations of the Côtes du Rhône.



What started out to be a business relationship soon developed into a strong friendship between Jacques and his wife, Guite, and Barbara and me. Barbara and I were frequent visitors to Beaucastel, not only to taste and buy wines, but also to tour the Vaucluse, dine, share older vintages, socialize, and philosophize. A photo of Jacques holding Jason, age four and one half months is above. Jacques’ sons, Jean-Pierre and François were soon to follow and to found new family wine businesses, one of which, some twenty years later, turned out to be our partnership in Tablas Creek Vineyard. Although I was a half of a generation between the sons and their parents, we all became good friends, business partners, and frequent visitors back and forth between France and the United States.

I am often asked if our venture at Tablas Creek is the realization of a dream. Actually, it was more of an itch than a dream. For many years while selecting and marketing other peoples’ wines I had been tempted by the idea of owning vineyard and making wine. However, it took until 1989, strong family attachments and the Perrins’ acquired confidence in California, its climates and soils, for us to believe that we could use the Beaucastel model to succeed here. Jason joined me at Tablas Creek a few years later and both Marc and Pierre, Jean-Pierre’s two oldest sons, have been frequent visitors to and contributors at Tablas. And visitors to Tablas Creek have come to know Jason's sons Eli and Sebastian, now four and two.  The next generation is well engaged.

While multiple generation family vineyards are frequent in France, they are less so in California. Tablas Creek happened above all because of a clear model to follow and the expectation that it would be served by succeeding generations of our families. We have worked together profitably for years with a totally convergent point of view and amazingly with hardly any disagreement.

Tablas Creek Vineyard is a logical following for me of the role models I so much admired: dedicated vignerons who worked their domains and made and bottled their wines in a terroir conscious manner and who fought hard to get their fellow proprietors to do the same. In practically all the estates with whom I worked I see their children and grandchildren continuing to respectfully work the land and make great wines. We are planning to do the same here.

[As an aside, readers may be interested in the second-ever post from this blog, from December 2005, with photos from when Jason and Meghan brought a 6-month-old Eli to visit Beaucastel.]

Harvest, Week of September 28th: A Change in the Weather and Worries about Yields

If you've been following our 2009 harvest report, you'll know that we'd been hoping that the vintage would turn out to be a little more plentiful than the last two drought-reduced crops.  Perhaps this was wishful thinking, given our third-consecutive below-average rainfall winter.  But the distribution of the rainfall (lots of small doses of moisture) and the vigor of our vines and cover crops led us to believe that perhaps we had received enough "usable" rainfall, even if our total rainfall was just sixteen inches (about 60% of normal).

It does not seem that these hopes will be realized this year.  After another intense week of harvesting, we're now about half done with this year's crop.  And we've completed harvest on a few varietals, which allows us to compare with what we received last year.  The results do not paint a pretty picture on yields.  Of the four varietals we've completed harvesting, only Vermentino came in above last year's totals.  Syrah is down 20%, and Viognier and Marsanne more like 40%.  The specifics, in tons:

                    2009       2008       % Change
Viognier:       12.2         19.4        -37%
Marsanne:       5.3          9.8         -46%
Vermentino:    4.3          2.7         +59%
Syrah:           24.0        30.1         -20%
Totals:         45.8        62.0        -26%

I don't think that, when all is in the cellar, we're going to end up down 26%.  Whites (compared to reds) gave us a comparatively generous harvest in 2008.  And based on our best estimates, it looks like Grenache and Counoise have pretty good crops on them, likely at or even slightly above last year's numbers.  But I don't think it's unrealistic to expect us to be down 20% on whites and 10% on reds.  That's a lot less wine than we were expecting... something like 2000 cases fewer than we'd been hoping.  Having that much less wine (something in the neighborhood of 13,000 cases rather than 15,000 cases) will make for some tough choices about to whom to allocate the wine we have.

The good thing about low-yielding vintages is that their quality is almost always high.  And the fruit that we've seen come into the cellar has looked very good.  Intensity is excellent, sugars (particularly on the whites) are a bit lower than we've come to expect, and the pH levels are higher than normal.  We may have to do some fairly widespread acid adjustment for the first time in several years, but that's a fairly minor intervention.

Meanwhile, the weather has taken a decided turn cooler.  After two weeks of hot weather (accompanied by, for Paso Robles, unusually warm nights) the temperature plummeted early last week.  On Sunday, September 27th, the high at the weather station in the middle of the vineyard was 102, and the low 53.  The next day, the high dropped to 82, with a low of 50.  The following day, the high was 72, with a low of 38.  And we've now had a week of these unusually cool days, including three nights where temperatures dropped below freezing in at least a few lowest-lying sections of the vineyard.  We have run our frost-protection fans the last three nights, and will certainly need it again tonight, which is forecast to be the coldest yet.  It does look like we're supposed to revert to more seasonal temperatures later in the week and into next week, which will be good for ripening what's left in the vineyard.

These recent cooler temperatures were helpful after the weeks of hot because they really reduced the pressure on the cellar.  When you have extended hot temperatures in the middle of harvest, it's essential to bring fruit in as soon as you decide it's ripe.  Waiting even a couple of extra days can be disastrous.  (I'll have a blog post on some of the unpleasant consequences of dehydration in vineyards later this week.)  But these cooler temperatures have allowed us to pick in a more leisurely fashion.

Over the last week, we've picked more Grenache, our first batches of Mourvedre, several pickings of Roussanne, and most of the rest of our Grenache Blanc.  We're being very selective about what we pick, making sure the get clusters that are showing signs of starting to raisin even if the other clusters on the vine aren't ripe yet.  It seems to us that, moreso than in recent vintages, the amount of care that is taken in the vineyard is going to determine the quality of the end product.