Tasting the Wines in the Fall 2015 VINsider Club Shipments

Each spring and fall, we send out a selection of six wines to the members of our VINsider Wine Club.  In many cases, these are wines that only go out to our club.  In others, the club gets a first look at wines that may see a later national release.  And with each shipment, we reintroduce ourselves to these wines (which, in some cases, we may not have tasted since before bottling) with a tasting that we use to write the notes that will be included in the club shipments.  I opened the wines this afternoon with Assistant Winemaker Chelsea Franchi, and thought that readers of the blog would be interested in what we found.

We base the fall shipments around the newest releases of the Esprit de Tablas and Esprit de Tablas Blanc, and this fall's shipment is no exception. One difference, though, is that this year we reached back into our library to include not just the newest 2013 Esprit de Tablas, but also a bottle of the 2011 Esprit de Tablas that has been showing so well recently.  I'm excited to hear the feedback that we get.  

Finally, one quick note, before the notes on the wines.  This tasting convinced me even more strongly that the 2013 and 2014 vintages are the best back-to-back vintages we've ever made: both showing remarkable intensity, but with different personalities. The 2013's are savory and darkly spiced, with great tension, while the lusher 2014's still retain a core of acidity that keeps them in balance.

The classic shipment included six different wines:

2014 GRENACHE BLANC

• Production Notes: 2014 was a great year for Grenache Blanc, with intensity from our third year of drought but with the characteristic bright acids of the vintage. For the varietal Grenache Blanc, we chose lots that were fermented in stainless steel (for brightness) and foudre (for roundness), then blended and bottled in the summer of 2015.
• Tasting Notes: An immensely inviting nose of green apple and nuts, sea spray, caramel and crushed rocks. The mouth is rich but buoyed with vibrant acids, showing more fresh apple, lychee, preserved lemon, and a lovely briny note.  The finish is long, smooth, and refreshing, showing lime zest, nectarine, and more minerality.  Drink now and over the next few years.
• Production: 950 cases.
• List Price: $27 VINsider Price: $21.60

2013 ESPRIT DE TABLAS BLANC

• Production Notes: As our drought stretched into its second vintage, we pre-emptively cut back our crop levels, giving all our 2013's an extra level of concentration.  For the Esprit Blanc, this showed most dramatically in a powerful, structured Roussanne component.  To that, we added Grenache Blanc for sweet spice and openness, and Picpoul Blanc for floral aromatics and saline freshness. The final blend was 71% Roussanne (fermented primarily in foudre), 21% Grenache Blanc (from foudre and stainless steel) and 8% Picpoul (from neutral barrels). As we had done in 2012, we let the blend age in foudre through the subsequent harvest before bottling it in February 2015 and aging it an additional 8 months in bottle before release.
• Tasting Notes: A deep-toned nose of lacquered wood, peach pit, and butterscotch: absolutely Roussanne, richly layered, with an intriguing tarragon-like high note that emerged with air.  The mouth is more tightly wound than the nose initially suggests, with a rich texture, flavors of grilled peach, clove and allspice.  The finish opens back up, with nectarine, citrus blossom and a little sweet oak.  Impressive now, it should also go out 15 years or more and gain additional nuttiness and complexity with time.
• Production: 2200 cases
• List Price: $45 VINsider Price: $36

2013 GRENACHE

• Production Notes: 2013's lower crop levels produced Grenache with deeper, lusher flavors than usual, but the unusually large diurnal temperature shifts also provided good freshness.  Harvested mostly in September, Grenache lots were fermented in upright wooden and closed stainless steel fermenters, then moved to neutral barrels. The lots were selected and blended in May 2014, aged a year in a mix of foudre and neutral barrels, and bottled in April 2015.
• Tasting notes: A pretty garnet color, with an appealing nose of surprisingly dark fruit for the usually red-fruited Grenache: black raspberry, plum, black pepper, sweet spice and milk chocolate.  The mouth shows redder than the nose and is nicely balanced between sweeter and more savory flavors, with wild strawberry, new leather, and a little welcome mintiness.  Good acids and youthful Grenache tannins hold everything together, and it all smooths out and shows more red fruit and chocolate on the finish.  Drink now or for the next fifteen years.
• Production: 670 cases
• List Price: $40 VINsider Price: $32

2013 EN GOBELET

• Production Notes: Our sixth En Gobelet, a non-traditional blend all from head-trained, dry-farmed blocks, and mostly from the 12-acre block we call Scruffy Hill, planted in 2005 and 2006 to be a self-sufficient field blend.  In this warm, dry year, our head-trained vineyards thrived, and in fact showed less decline in yields than our irrigated blocks.  After several years of co-fermenting the components from Scruffy Hill, in 2013 we kept most separate to preserve our options in blending, and then included them in trials with our two blocks of head-trained Tannat, valuable for its chalky tannins and deep flavors. The final blend was 34% Grenache, 31% Mourvedre, 19% Syrah, 11% Counoise and 5% Tannat.  It was aged in foudre and bottled in April 2015.
• Tasting Notes: A deeply spiced, minty, polished nose of black cherry, crushed rock and plum, with a tangy marinade-like element bringing lift.  The mouth is rich and deeply savory, with chalky tannins cloaking blackberry and black cherry fruit, a spicy sage note, and a long finish showing mouth-coating, brambly fruit.  Should be fascinating to watch age. Drink now and for the next two decades.
• Production: 580 cases
• List Price: $45 VINsider Price: $36

2013 ESPRIT DE TABLAS

• Production Notes: Like all the 2013 reds, the Esprit de Tablas shows the results of the vintage's combination of intensity from drought-reduced yields and generosity from the classic Californian vintage.  The comparative lushness of the year again convinced us to shift the blend toward the dark, smoky, savoriness of Syrah as opposed to the open juiciness of Grenache.  Still, Esprit is as usual led by the red fruit, earth and mocha of 40% Mourvèdre, with additions of 28% Syrah, 22% Grenache and 10% Counoise. The wine's components were fermented separately, then selected for the Esprit, blended and aged a year in foudre before bottling in August 2015.
• Tasting Notes: For me, this wine was immediately evocative of Beaucastel on the nose: deep and meaty, with wild blackberries, currants, mint, and a spicy note that Chelsea nailed as cumin.  On the palate, the wine shows wonderfully lifted red fruit (plum, and more currant) with a leathery, mocha richness behind it that is characteristic of Mourvedre in a great year. The long, savory finish shows a cedary, smoky spice over the fruit, like wild berries harvested on campout while the meat is grilling.  We recommend that you hold the 2013 Esprit for a few months, then drink either between 2016 and 2018 or 2022-2040.
• Production: 3700 cases
• List Price: $55 VINsider Price: $44

2011 ESPRIT DE TABLAS

• Production Notes: Like all the 2011 reds, the components that went into the Esprit de Tablas were concentrated by the vintage's spring frosts and then given acidity by one of the coolest years in our history. Upon release, the wine was medium-weight and dominated by an iron-like core, but in the intervening two years that core has opened and is now showing a creamy generosity while still preserving its dark, savory character.  2011 Esprit was as usual based on Mourvèdre (40%), while a relatively high percentage of Grenache (30%) brought rich mouthfeel, glycerin and a refreshing acidity, Syrah (20%) provided black fruit and mineral and Counoise (10%) added vibrancy and brambly fruit. The wine's components were fermented separately, then selected for the Esprit, blended and aged a year in foudre before being bottled in June 2013.  The bottles have aged in our cellars ever since.
• Tasting Notes: Fun to taste after the youthful 2013, the nose shows as deep and plush, with a soy and squid ink darkness over a minty, black raspberry base.  The mouth has developed an appealing integration over the last two years in bottle, with a noteworthy creamy texture, a saline iron-like firmness, and generous but very dark-toned fruit, like blackberry preserves.  The finish shows savory and meaty, like the drippings from a steak that has been prepared with a salty dry rub.  Drink over the next year or so, or hold until 2018 and drink over the next two decades.
• Production: 4000 cases
• List Price: $60 VINsider Price: $48

There were two additional wines (joining the Esprit de Tablas Blanc and Grenache Blanc) in the white-only shipment:

2014 MARSANNE

• Production Notes: The 2014 Tablas Creek Vineyard Marsanne is just our fourth varietal bottling of Marsanne, the noble white grape of France's Hermitage appellation. We use most of our Marsanne in our Cotes de Tablas Blanc each year. However, in 2014 we felt that the Marsanne was so complete and compelling, and so representative of the Marsanne grape, that we selected out one small lot, fermented in foudre, for a single-varietal bottling.
• Tasting Notes: A pretty pale gold color, with a surprisingly tropical nose of fresh pineapple and lychee, baked apples, lemongrass and wet rocks.  The mouth is pretty and composed, notably saline, with apple skin and candied lemon peel flavors that soften and broaden into a long, gentle finish with echoes of soft minerality.  We thought it quite gorgeous, and that it should drink well for at least the next five years, likely longer.
• Production: 300 cases
• List Price: $30 VINsider Price: $24

2014 PICPOUL BLANC

• Production Notes: The 2014 Picpoul Blanc is our eighth bottling of this traditional Southern Rhône varietal, used in Châteauneuf du Pape as a blending component, and best known from the crisp light green wines of the Pinet Region in the Languedoc. On its own, it shows the vibrant acids for which it is valued, balanced by a tropical lushness from the generous Paso Robles climate.  We ferment it in a mix of stainless steel and neutral barrels, and use the majority of our production for our Esprit de Tablas Blanc, while reserving a small quantity for this varietal bottling.  The Picpoul was blended in April 2015, and bottled in June 2015.
• Tasting Notes: A mostly savory nose of watermelon rind, dried pineapple, green herbs, white flowers and lemon peel.  The mouth is exuberant by comparison, richly tangy with pineapple juice and sweet baking spices, bright acids, and saline minerality, with a long finish of fresh mango and crushed rocks.  Drink now and over the next few years.
• Production: 350 cases
• List Price: $27 VINsider Price: $21.60

One additional red joined the Grenache, En Gobelet, and the two Esprit de Tablas vintages in the red-only shipment:

2013 MOURVEDRE

• Production Notes: Mourvedre is the one red varietal that we try to bottle on its own each year, partly because it is our most planted grape (and plays the lead role in our Esprit de Tablas) but equally because we think it is a wonderful grape that has an undeserved reputation as "just a blending variety".  The 2013 vintage and our second year of drought emphasized Mourvedre's savory darkness.  We ferment it in large wooden fermenters, then move it to neutral barrels to await blending.  The Mourvedre was blended from selected lots in the spring of 2014, then aged in foudre until bottling in April of 2015.
• Tasting Notes: Absolutely characteristic of Mourvedre's tension between deeper and more high-toned elements, with aromas of black currant, leather, meat drippings, bittersweet chocolate, and rose petals.  On the mouth, tangy and nicely balanced between sweet and savory, with plum skin, cocoa powder, leather, baking spices, and an appealing burst of acidity on the finish to clean everything up.  Still a baby.  Open a bottle now, if you'd like, but expect it to really shine between 2020 and 2030.
• Production: 690 cases
• List Price: $40 VINsider Price: $32

If you're a wine club member, you should make your reservation for our shipment tasting party, where we open all the wines in the most recent club shipment for VINsiders to try.  This fall's party will be on Sunday, October 4th.  If you're not a wine club member, and you've read all this way, then why not join up, while there's still a chance to get this fall shipment?  Details and how to join are at tablascreek.com/wine_club/vinsider_club

Veraison 2015 Suggests an Early September Start to Harvest

Although we've been distracted by the more unusual occurrence of last weekend's summer rainstorm, this week also has provided the annual milestone of veraison.  Veraison marks the point where the grapes stop accumulating mass and start accumulating sugar (and, more noticeably, change color from green to red). It is one of the landmarks of the season, not least because it marks a point roughly six-weeks before the onset of harvest. As usual, we saw veraison first in Syrah, closely followed by Grenache and Mourvedre.  A few of the more colored Syrah clusters are below (though it's worth noting that even in these, there are still as many green berries as red, and that most of the clusters in the vineyard are still totally green):

While we expect to start our red harvest with Syrah sometime in early September, Mourvedre is an outlier, with relatively early veraison but an unusually long time between veraison and harvest.  Although we're starting to see color in many of our Mourvedre blocks, we don't expect it to come in before October:

I had to go to the very top of our Grenache blocks to find any color, and even there it's still just beginning.  We expect this to start coming in sometime in mid- to late-September:

The transformation between hard, sour green berries and sweet, soft, red berries takes some time, and when it starts depends both on how early the vine sprouts and begins to grow (determined largely by the date of the last winter freeze) and on how fast it can photosynthesize (determined by the amount of heat and sun after budbreak).  Some years (last year, for example, which was warm and frost-free) it was easy to know that we'd see an early veraison; the question was just how early.  When you have a year, like this year, that is giving contrasting conditions (a budbreak two weeks earlier than normal, followed by a summer that has alternated hot and cold and is currently 5% behind normal in heat accumulation) it's less obvious, and we watch for veraison's signs more eagerly.  You can see from the chart below, from the Western Weather Group's Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance forecast, where 2015 sits in degree days compared to other recent vintages:

The duration between veraison and harvest is not totally constant, and is determined by the weather that we get in the interim.  The chart below shows the two dates for our last eight harvests, with the year linked to my blog post about veraison that year:

Year	First Veraison Noted	Harvest Begins	# of Days
2007	July 20	August 28	39
2008	July 23	September 3	42
2009	July 20	September 1	43
2010	July 30	September 16	49
2011	August 5	September 20	47
2012	July 25	September 5	42
2013	July 17	August 26	40
2014	July 9	August 23	45
2015	July 20	?	?

July 20th forms the median of the data points above, and suggests a beginning of harvest also sometime near normal.  Based on the range of days that it's taken between first veraison and harvest (between 39 and 49 days) that suggests that harvest will begin sometime between August 28th and September 7th.  Given that our crop levels are relatively light this year, I'm betting that it will be toward the early end of that range.

It is noteworthy, I think, that we've recovered from a two-weeks-earlier-than-normal budbreak to a normal veraison.  That we've already achieved two extra weeks on the vine compared to an average year is a good thing, given that the longer that the grapes can stay in contact with the vines, the more opportunity they have to pull character and minerality out of the soil.

Now, we start waiting, but at least we know roughly how much time is on the timer.

Did 2.6" of rain in July really just happen?

Yesterday, we hosted a seminar on dry-farming.  In the rain.  In Paso Robles.  In July.

And it wasn't just a little rain, either.  As we were talking about how we've been working to plant increasing acres of vines without any irrigation infrastructure, and how we've been weaning even our established vines off of needing regular water, we were in the process of accumulating more rain -- seven times more rain -- than Paso Robles had received in any July day in its history.  In fact, we received four times more rain yesterday than Paso Robles has ever received in an entire month of July before.

Of course, July is the driest month of the year in Paso Robles, averaging less than 0.2" of rain for the month.  But residents of other parts of the country may not realize just how unusual summer rain is in the Central Coast of California.  Maybe a graph will help (from the useful site climate-data.org):

The unusual storm was caused by the remnants of Hurricane Dolores, which instead of remaining offshore or moving inland toward Phoenix (both more common paths for Pacific ex-hurricanes) wandered slowly and more or less directly north up California's coast, bringing unusually hot, moisture-laden air to parts of the state where humidity is almost totally foreign.  This moist, unstable air spurred a series of thunderstorms (themselves rare in this area) whose path took them directly over Paso Robles.  The town recorded 3.55", the highest total in the county and more than a quarter of the average annual rainfall the city can expect to receive.  It's also more than the town averages in any month during the year; for those of you who like me need a translation from the metric, 3.55" is more or less 90mm... about 10% more than Paso Robles receives on average in January, its wettest month.  We saw a little less rain out here than they did in town, but at 2.6" we still received more than we did all but two months (December and February) this past winter.

Given how much rain we received, and how fast it came down, you might wonder how the vineyard fared. It came through with flying colors. We rarely see much erosion here, due to the porosity of the clay-limestone bedrock, and we didn't see any in the vineyard. The little we saw was confined to a few vineyard tracks, where the occasional tractor traffic compresses the soils enough that water runs down rather than soaking in. From this afternoon:

We don't anticipate any serious negative consequences from the rain. After a last round of showers and thunderstorms that are forecast to blow through this evening, it's supposed to dry out. It looks like we'll have a few sunny, breezy, relatively cool, low humidity days, and then it will warm up to normal for the season (highs in the 90s and lows in the 50s, with virtually no humidity).  This should serve to dry out the surface layer of the soil, and prevent too many weed seeds from germinating.  Plus, both the low humidity and the warm days will serve to prevent mildew from becoming a problem.

On the positive side, this is a time of year when the vines are nearly all under some stress.  A dose of rain now helps alleviate this stress, and gives the vines the energy to make their final push toward ripeness.  And the amount of rain that we received was enough to get through the topsoil and replenish the moisture in at least the upper layers of the calcareous bedrock, which will provide a reservoir for the vines over the next couple of months.  You can see how rich and soft the soils look after the rain, and also how void of erosion channels they are even near the bottom of a steep hillside:

If the rain had come a month later, with some grapes nearly ripe, we would worry that the water might dilute the flavors and even cause grapes to swell and split.  But now, with veraison barely started, that's not a risk.

It's worth remembering that most other wine regions, including the Rhone, see summer rain.  The same chart as above, for Chateauneuf-du-Pape, shows that while rain is a bit less common in the summer than in other seasons, it's hardly rare:

So, we'll enjoy the unusual moisture in the air, and feel thankful that we got it now and not during harvest.  If this is a precursor to what is sounding likely to be a strong el nino winter, so much the better.  I'll leave you with one final photo, taken in the middle of yesterday's rain, and looking more like an impressionist painting than a summer Paso Robles landscape:

State of the Vineyard, Mid-Summer Edition

This has been an unusual summer.  We had the warmest late-winter/early-spring anyone can remember. This was followed by the coolest May in 20 years. Then June was hot.  July, so far, has been cool, and we've even had (very unusual for summer in Paso Robles) a couple of showery days.

Overall, the year looks about average in terms of heat accumulation.  At 1276 degree days to date, we're about 10% behind where we've been the last three warm years (2012-2014 average on July 14th: 1483) but 15% ahead of the cool 2010 and 2011 vintages (average on July 14th: 1112).  Through it all, the vineyard continues to look remarkably healthy.  

To get a sense of how healthy, I'll start with this panoramic photo, taken this week, overlooking olur main Grenache block.  It's worth expanding it; click on it (or any photo) to see it bigger:

All this variation in the weather, particularly the warm April and the cold May, suggests that we'll see a harvest that will begin early and end late.  The grapes that had sprouted by early April (like Viognier, Grenache and Grenache Blanc) were spurred on by the warmth and sun, and pushed canes already a foot long or more by the time it cooled off in May.  The later-sprouting grapes (like Counoise, Mourvedre and Roussanne) were barely out when it got cold, and didn't really start growing until things warmed up again in June.  This led to a period in mid-June where the early varieties had grapes that were already pea-sized while many of the late varieties were still flowering.

Things have evened out in the last few weeks, but you can still see remnants of the uneven beginning in the different cluster and berry sizes.  First, Syrah, from near the top of the hill.  The berries look nearly full-sized, but we haven't seen any veraison yet:

Grenache, too, has grown a lot, though we do expect some added mass before they start to turn red:

Mourvedre is still farther away from being ready, with the grapes still as much oval as round, and small, hard and light green:

This same week last year, I was already talking about veraison in Syrah and Mourvedre.  2014's veraison was about 2 weeks earlier than normal, and this carried through to a mid-August beginning to harvest. The fact that we're still not seeing veraison suggests that we're likely looking at a later start to harvest than the last few years, and I'm also expecting a significantly later finish.  Could we start in late August and finish in early November?  It seems likely, at this point, though a stretch of hot (or cold) weather could move that around.

Crop levels seem down a bit compared to the past couple of years.  Given that we're now four years into our drought, that's hardly surprising.  But it doesn't look like it will be dramatically reduced, and the vineyard looks healthier than it has in mid-July in years.  Roussanne often is showing signs of stress by now, with leaves starting to yellow.  Not this year.  I'll leave you with one final shot of our Roussanne, sheltering under a vibrantly green canopy and beginning its long, slow trek toward what will likely be a mid-October harvest:

Photos of the Day (Week? Summer?): Celestial Meetings

The sky put on a show last night.  Not only was there a beautiful full moon, but Venus and Jupiter came together in a conjunction that takes place just once per year.  And the timing worked: the moon was rising in the east at the same time that the planets were setting in the west, keeping the moon's brilliance from obscuring the planetary show.

I got good photos of each (click on the pictures for larger versions).  First the planets, already clearly visible in the evening sky:

And then the full moon, even brighter, though the background sky was still blue:

Yesterday afternoon, we were thinking that seeing the sky show was going to be a long shot.  We've been in an unusual summer weather pattern with a high pressure system located to the east of us drawing waves of subtropical moisture over California.  We have had clouds (a rarity for mid-summer) in the sky most of the week, gathering density enough twice (this past Saturday and yesterday) to provide a few sprinkles. The rain hasn't been enough to register at our weather station, or to affect the growing season, but those overcast days have provided a nice respite from what has been a hot stretch for us, with high temperatures mostly in the upper 90's and lower 100's, and unusually elevated humidity.

Still, when you know that there is going to be a performance in the night sky, you don't want cloud cover.  When it broke apart around sunset, it gave the feel of a curtain opening at a play.  

And the performance turned out to be memorable.