White blending gives us our first detailed look into the scarce, concentrated 2015 vintage

This week, my brother Danny flew out to join me, my dad, Neil, Chelsea, and Tyler around the blending table as we took our first comprehensive look at the whites from 2015. As usual, we started our blending week Monday morning by tasting, component by component, through what we had in the cellar. Because of the many varieties that were very short compared to recent years [for why, see my 2015 harvest recap] there were fewer lots than usual, and many lots were smaller. Of our major components, only Roussanne saw similar quantities to 2014:

Grape	Gallons (2015)	Gallons (2014)	% Change
Viognier	972	1750	-44.5%
Marsanne	948	1560	-39.2%
Grenache Blanc	3621	4827	-25.0%
Picpoul Blanc	804	1176	-31.6%
Roussanne	6853	6781	+1.1%
Clairette Blanche	144	92	+56.5%
Total Whites	13342	16186	-17.6%

As you would guess from the chart above, we knew going in that we were likely to be constrained by our quantities in what we could make.  Still, the first stage was to go through the lots, variety by variety, and get a sense of both the character and diversity present in the vintage:

We grade on a 1-3 scale, with 1's being our top grade (for a deep dive into how we do our blending, check out this blog by Chelsea from last year). My quick thoughts on each variety:

• Viognier (3 lots): A really good year for Viognier, with 2 of the 3 lots getting 1's from me. Concentrated, tropical and deep, with surprisingly good acids and a little welcome minty lift. Absolutely worthy of bottling solo, but in this short year it will all go into the Cotes de Tablas Blanc.
• Picpoul Blanc (3 lots): Very strong for Picpoul, too, with luscious depth and electric acids. The one lot that got a 2 from me could have been a 1 as well.
• Roussanne (13 lots): A very heterogeneous mix, with a relatively large number of lots with very low acids.  Some of these had the richness and charm to carry their weight; others felt heavy. Those with the best acidity were really powerhouses, with a creamy, honeyed charm that should be very crowd pleasing. My grades: six 1's, five 2's, one 3, and one incomplete (for a lot that was still fermenting actively).
• Grenache Blanc (5 lots): Very classic and polished for Grenache Blanc at this stage, quite uniformly good (three 1's and two 2's from me), with lots of the variety's signature green apple. We just wish there was more of it.
• Marsanne (3 lots): Pretty clearly Marsanne's best showing ever for us, to the point that my dad (who in past years has suggested we think about pulling Marsanne out entirely) mused out loud that we should look to plant more acreage. Great minerality, nice acids, elegant and complete. If there had been more, we'd love to have bottled it on its own, but like the Viognier, it will all go into Cotes Blanc.
• Clairette Blanche (1 lot): Just the 3rd vintage of this new grape for us, the Clairette was pretty: like new-cut grass drying in the sun. Not much complexity here, but fun for us all. We'll bottle this on its own, to continue to share it with others.

Tuesday morning, we started on our blending work by tasting possible Esprit de Tablas Blanc blends.  The last few years, our Esprit Blanc has been 70% or more Roussanne, though in very rich years this has not always been true. Case in point: the 2009 vintage, whose combination of drought and frost produced yields that approximated pretty closely those we saw in 2015.  And like 2015, it was a warm year, with Roussannes with a great deal of weight and relatively low acids.  In our blending trials the following spring, we ended up preferring our blends with more Picpoul and Grenache Blanc, and less Roussanne, though we could only use 12% Picpoul because that was all we had.  The 2009 Esprit Blanc ended up containing 62% Roussanne, 26% Grenache Blanc, and 12% Picpoul Blanc. This year, knowing how strong the Picpoul and Grenache Blanc were, we tried out some blends with high percentages of both, and ended up choosing in our blind trials (blind meaning we tasted not knowing the percentages in each wine) a blend that maxed out on Picpoul again. Happily, we now have more Picpoul in production than we did in 2009, and our preferred blend contained 55% Roussanne, 28% Grenache Blanc, and 17% Picpoul Blanc. This wine will be blended in the next month or so, be moved to foudre to age for another year, and be bottled next spring.

Once we'd decided on the Esprit Blanc blend, the other wines fell into place with remarkable speed.  I figure that our minimum quantity of Cotes de Tablas Blanc, for its various demands to our wine club, in our tasting room, and to the national market, is 1500 cases.  This wine is always led by Viognier, and using all our Viognier only made up 26% of a 1500-case lot. All the Marsanne made up 25% of the lot.  Because these two varieties were so strong, we were confident in that the finished wine would be great, and chose some of the brighter, more mineral-driven Grenache Blanc (25%), and some of the least assertive Roussanne (24%) to finish off the blend.  We tasted it, ready to make adjustments if necessary, and decided we couldn't think of anything that would improve it.  Those who get some 2015 Cotes Blanc are in for a treat.

At this point, we'd used all our Viognier, Marsanne, and Picpoul, and had enough Roussanne left for about 1200 cases of a varietal bottling, and enough Grenache Blanc for about 600 cases. And that, as often happens in short vintages, was that. Wednesday morning, we tasted the five wines we'll make from 2015 (including the Patelin de Tablas Blanc, that received one declassified Roussanne lot to add to its purchased fruit), to make sure that each felt complete and fell into its appropriate slot relative to the lineup.  They did: 

We wrapped things up yesterday afternoon with a prowl through the cellar, tasting a selection of barrels to begin the process of wrapping our heads around the reds from 2015.

We won't blend those until late April, but it was clear that the vintage will be a strong one there too. As for the details, stay tuned.