Elevating the experience: introducing seated flight tastings at Tablas Creek

By Linnea Frazier

Here at Tablas Creek it’s been a busy start to 2018. With winter pruning almost over and bottling season well under way, the vineyard and cellar have been a constant hive of motion. Not to mention preparing our spring wine club shipments for release in mid-March as well (pro-tip: the Vermentino this year is insane). But maybe most exciting development is a new way to experience our wines in our tasting room; with a seated flight tasting.

For a long time, the tasting room experience didn't change much. You belly up to the bar, your server gives you a little history of the winery and pours you the first wine, and you move on down the tasting list. Some wineries offer you the ability to customize the list, or ask you to pick a few from a larger selection. But the basic experience stayed more or less the same. Sometimes, that's exactly what you want: a chance to taste through a range of wines, to chat with a knowledgeable pourer, and to learn a little about the history and background of the winery you're visiting.

But for a while now we've felt that we wanted to also offer a more in-depth, more focused experience. I asked Jason Haas what his thinking was and here's how he explained it:

"Wine is enriched by context. What I mean by that is that wines, at their best, provide a window into the place and year in which they were grown, and into the people who made them.  One of the best ways to learn about wines is to be able to go back and forth between two or three wines that share something in common -- maybe a grape, maybe a vintage, maybe a winemaking treatment -- and use what's similar about the wines to highlight what is different. That's rarely possible in a standard tasting room setting, because you're tasting the wines in sequence. We're excited to start offering flight tastings, which include multiple vintages of our Esprit de Tablas wines, to give our guests the opportunity to experience Tablas Creek's wines in a more curated environment."

Flights are nothing new to the wine world, but it was important for us to not lose our personal touch that is part of our tasting room’s pouring style. We spent last six weeks remodeling the smaller tasting room (to the left, as you walk in) into the chamber that it is now, with three small tables for two or four people, and one larger communal table for groups of up to eight. Not only are you seated at your leisure but you also have a full hour to contemplate, compare, and contrast the six wines we will place in front of you. For the warmer months to come we also have the option for you to enjoy your flight outside on a private patio, to better appreciate that California sun from the safety of our veranda.

To start, we've designed three separate flights for you: a Classic, a Reds-only, and a Whites-only. Each was created in order to highlight not only our Rhone blends but also some of the smaller production and wine club wines that we produce.

The three-vintage vertical of our flagship Esprit that you can see in the reds-only flight had me particularly purring.

Although we will be pouring you your flight at the outset of your tasting, and we have prepared detailed folios with everything from the history of the winery to how the wines were made, this doesn't mean you'll be left on your own. The dedicated hosts in our new flight room will act as your guide through the experience, adding context and background, answering questions, and customizing your wines based on what you're most interested in seeing. Don’t be surprised if he or she pulls up a chair at one point or another!

Reservations are strongly recommended, although if we have free space available we will do our best to accommodate walk-ins. Flight tastings are $25 per person ($10 for wine club members), fee waived with a $75 purchase. Because of our seating constraints, this experience is limited to groups of 8 or fewer. For more information or to reserve a time, go to tablascreek.com/visiting and if you have questions, please email [email protected].  And if you've had similar experiences you've loved at other wineries, please let us know in the comments. We're actively soliciting ideas and feedback.