What We're Drinking with Thanksgiving 2019

I am a fan of Thanksgiving. It's a holiday that's mostly about eating, drinking, and family. It's still relatively uncommercialized. And it's about giving thanks, which I feel like puts a celebration into the right perspective.

Thanksgiving meals can be motley, usually involving a range of flavors and sweetnesses, and a group of participants whose interest in wine is likely to not all be acute. So I think it's good that most of the criticism I read about Thanksgiving wine pairing suggests first that you not stress too much about it, and second that you offer guests a range of choices. I was reminded recently of the 2016 piece on W. Blake Gray's blog where he set up a simple 5-question quiz to answer the question "is this wine good for Thanksgiving". I'm sure I haven't gone through every possible combination, but I've never gotten any answer other than "yes". And that's an approach it's hard to argue with.

There are wines that I tend to steer clear of, like wines that are powerfully tannic (which tend to come off even more so when they're paired with some of the sweeter Thanksgiving dishes), and wines that are high in alcohol (which tend to be fatiguing by the end of what is often a marathon of eating and drinking). But that still leaves you plenty of options. With a traditional turkey dinner, I tend to steer people toward richer whites and rosés, and fruitier reds relatively light in oak and tannin. There are a lot of Tablas Creek wines that fit these broad criteria, so if you want to stay in the family, you could try anything from Marsanne (one of my absolute favorites right now) and Esprit Blanc to Dianthus Rosé to Counoise or Cotes de Tablas. Richer red meat preparations open up a world of Mourvedre-based reds young or old, from Esprit de Tablas to Panoplie to En Gobelet, which just (say it out loud) sounds like something you should be drinking at this time of year.  

To give you a sense of this diversity, I thought it would be fun to ask a broad cross-section of our team what they were planning on drinking this year. Their responses are below, in their own words, in alphabetical order.

Janelle Bartholomew, Wine Club Assistant
This Thanksgiving will be spent with just my little family of five in our quaint town of Templeton. I truly enjoy cooking so I plan to spend my day in the kitchen creating memories with my kids while they help me make the feast. There will be Charlie Brown and the Macy’s parade on the TV for the kids - music playing while we enjoy bubbles and appetizers. For dinner this year, it was a toss-up between Domaine Weinbach Riesling and Tablas Creek Counoise. Given the possibility of rain (yay!!) on Thursday, I opted for a red wine. The Counoise fruit and spice notes pair perfectly with all things Thanksgiving.  I hope everyone has a wonderful day filled with love, laughter, and lots of good food. Cheers!

Neil Collins, Executive Winemaker
Well the Thanksgiving table, what to drink? There will of course be some Bristols Cider. This year we will have some Ojai Vineyards Roussanne which I just picked at the tasting room and is delicious. Also we will be opening a nice Beaujolais Nouveau from Domaine Dupeuble Pere et Fils. I think it will be a nice occasion for a Story Of Soil Grenache. Perhaps a nice Calvados to round it all off.

Ian Consoli, Marketing Coordinator
I like to balance guarantees with experiments in my Thanksgiving wine selections. This year the guarantee is The Bonny Doon Vin Gris de Cigare Rosé. The tart red fruit of Grenache focused roses tend to pair well with the meal every year. My Tablas bottle is a bit of an experiment recommended by a local Somm. During a recent tasting he noted the Viognier focus and balancing Grenache Blanc of our 2017 Cotes de Tablas Blanc would pair nicely with the flavorful feast that fills aThanksgiving table. I’m looking forward to finding out. In a red I shoot for a fruit forward wine. This year I am looking at a Pinot from Alain Gras in Burgundy and an Old Vine Cinsaut from South Africa. There’s only 4-6 people at our table so I’ve been told I can only choose one of the reds. Wish me luck. Happy feasting!

Evelyne Fodor, Tasting Room Lead
My friends Andrea and Michael Dewit are hosting Thanksgiving dinner at their new home this year. The wines I chose are as much about pairing with the traditional meal as to a nod to them. 

The first is a 2017 Sattlerhof Gamlitz Sauvignon Blanc from Sudsteiermark, Austria, the town where Andrea grew up. I found it at K&L where an eager staff told me it is light and has good acidity. He assured me it will pair beautifully with the fresh, crunchy endives salad I am bringing. Andrea will appreciate it immensely.

The second is a 2003 Côte-Rôtie from Domaine Patrick Jasmin. My brother gave me the bottle several years ago when I was visiting him in my hometown Lyon. Interestingly, the patriarch, Robert Jasmin was a friend of my dad. Our host Michael previously owned a vineyard (Domaine Maillet) in Vaison-La-Romaine, knows very well the region and is a true connoisseur of Côte-Rôtie. My brother described it as a wine in full maturity, with gentle tannin and moderate acidity. Not the least, a moderate alcohol level. No doubt it will be a great match with the spiciest part of the turkey. I can’t wait to see Michael taking the first sip of it.

Chelsea Franchi, Senior Assistant Winemaker
My husband’s family is from Orange County, which is around four hours away, and my mom lives in the Sierra Foothills, which is approximately five hours away. This means for the holidays, we normally spend a decent amount of time in the car. This year, however, my family is coming to us! I am feeling incredibly grateful and as such, have taken the time to plan for wines that they will love as a small thank you for the long haul they’re making to spend time with us. We’ll be making our traditional prime rib for Thursday night, so our final wine will need a little more heft and structure than we would be for the more traditional turkey feast.  We’ll go through a progressive wine list, starting with light and fruity and making our way up the structure scale. To kick things off while cooking in the kitchen, I typically like to have something with bubbles. It looks like it may be a chilly, rainy afternoon, so instead of the usual bottle of white or rosé sparklers, we’ll have a bottle of Barbolini Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro. It’s bubbly, fruity, and incredibly fun to drink. For dinner, we’ll have dueling glasses of red – one glass that’s a little dancier on the palate and one with a little more heft and weight. Jolie Laide’s 2016 North Coast Syrah will be our wine on the leaner end of the spectrum to pair with the non-meat dishes. For the prime rib, we’ll have a bottle of The Royal Nonesuch Farm 2017 Red. I’m unbelievably excited about opening and enjoying each of these wines, but even more excited to share them with some of the people I love most in the world.

Craig Hamm, Assistant Winemaker
We are going to be doing a potluck at my family’s house so my duties are the wines. There will be a sparkling rosé made with some friends, a fully garagiste special: my first vintage of wine, the Paysan Rosé of zinfandel. Then to some white Esprit Blanc, which always goes well at Thanksgiving with the richness it brings. I will also be bringing something I purchased from a great tasting at Kukkula: Vaalea, a blend of Grenache Blanc, Roussanne, and Viognier. For the reds we will have a Niner Cabernet Franc, Tablas Creek Counoise, and also the Tannat. I hope everyone has a good time with family and friends. Cheers.

Jordan Lonborg, Viticulturist
Thanksgiving is the best day of the year. Friends, family, food, WINE, and whiskey. I am pulling the trigger this year and opening a magnum of 2013 Esprit de Tablas to share with my Mendocino family branch. On our journey north, this being Alma’s (our 5 month old daughter) first visit to the NorCal coast, we figure we’d expose her to some of the gems Route 128 and Anderson Valley has to offer. Our planned stops for Pinot (and hopefully a few Rhônes) will be Navarro, Husch Vineyards, Toulouse, and lastly, for the bubbles, Roederer... The night will end, or begin, with a bottle of Blanton’s Whiskey!!! Big things to come out of Tablas Creek Vineyard this year! We will keep you all posted! I am truly thankful to be a part of this team! ¡Viva Tablas Creek Vineyard! 

John Morris, Tasting Room Manager
The thing is, this Thanksgiving I still don’t know what wine we’ll be serving.  This is directly and irrefutably related to the fact that we don’t yet know what we’ll be serving for dinner.  I know, I know, its Tuesday.  We’re going back and forth between a traditional Thanksgiving spread and something more to my liking, like say, lamb chops, or my wife’s amazing Thai cuisine (which is her traditional Thanksgiving dinner). It will be a game time decision, made while grocery shopping Wednesday morning.  So I thought I’d pass along some general guidelines that I follow for Thanksgiving. Frankly, you could skip this and check out Eric Asimov’s always excellent Thanksgiving column, which features better writing and the suggestions of a savvy group of wine professionals, as the message is pretty similar. 

1. Keep it light.  Wines with low alcohol, tannin and oak work better with a traditional Thanksgiving feast. 
2. Keep it simple.  It kills me to see Uncle Lush knock back an expensive and complex wine like he’s taking a shot of cheap tequila. Unless you’re hosting an avid wine crowd, save yourself some stress and money and look for modest bottlings that follow rule #1.
3. Rose always works. 

If you’re looking for suggestions from Tablas Creek, the Esprit de Tablas Blanc is always spot on with the savory flavors of this holiday, and elevates this meal to something more. For a budget white, the Patelin de Tablas Blanc would be terrific.  For reds I like the Counoise, Grenache, or Cotes de Tablas.  Just don’t forget the Rosé.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Gustavo Prieto, Tasting Room, Cellar, and Vineyard
These year we’ll have a mix of guests, meaning there will be wine drinkers and beer drinkers, so it will be more of a challenge to choose the wines but one thing for sure it will be bubbles to start with. I’m thinking an Amirault cremant from the Loire and for the dinner table a bottle that I always choose for Thanksgiving, an older vintage of Tablas Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc, probably a 2005 and for reds a 2017 Tablas Counoise and also from the Loire a 2013 Patient Cottat, Le Grand Caillou, Pinot Noir. 

Randy Thurman, Facilities & IT
Kirk and Sweeney rum, Port from a winery in Greenfield, and probably English Ales Black Prince Porter and some English Ales Fat Lip. Maybe some English Ales Big Sur Ale as well and might have some fish and chips from their pub on the weekend. My father in law will probably have several bottles of TCV wines open as he has saved a few from his last shipment. My father in law is waiting for the 24 hour apple cider brined rotisserie smothered in herb butter stuffed with veggies and cooked over peach wood turkey on a rotisserie add on for our Weber kettle grills and I use the drippings from the turkey to make the gravy for the mashed potatoes.

Amanda Weaver, Cellar Assistant
This Thanksgiving I will be traveling down home with a couple options in my car. I usually go for something to pair with the main dish, TURKEY!!! However, my mom has gone the way of veganism so I’ll have to get a bit more creative with my selections. I’m thinking a couple whites, like Delaporte Sancerre Monts Damnés and Paix Sur Terre Ugni Blanc. Both bring a lot to the table with lovely acidity and lots of texture, they are both pleasurable to drink on their own but can also accompany a meal. As far as reds for the occasion, I like to keep things light seeing as the meal typically brings everyone to the edge of bursting their buttons. Domaine Dupeuble Beaujolais Nouveau 2019 is a great light, pleasantly fruity, and easy on the wallet wine to pair with what will probably be a vegetable-heavy meal.

And as for me...
Typically, my choice is to open the largest bottle I have to hand at Thanksgiving gatherings. There's usually a story behind a big bottle, and the randomness of "just open it" adds a certain amount of pleasurable discovery to the gathering, as well as the festivity that large bottles bring per force.

The largest bottle I have is a 3-liter of 2005 Robert Mondavi Napa Cabernet, acquired at some silent auction this year (a consequence of attending fundraisers in wine country!). I'm sure that would be amazing. But I'm not feeling like I want to commit four bottles of the same wine to a meal where there will only be eight adults. This is a smaller gathering than some recent ones in our history. If I don't open the big bottle, I may go with a magnum of 2000 Talley Rincon Pinot Noir that I've been saving for the right occasion. I also ordered a case of one of my favorite Beaujolais producers, the 2018 Clos de la Roilette Fleurie, with Thanksgiving in mind.

Whichever way we go, I'm sure that it will be preceded by some Dianthus, and we'll likely break out some whites for those who'd prefer that with their turkey, maybe the 2018 Picardan for something mineral and refreshing. For me, it's an important consideration that none of these wines will demand to be the center of attention: they will be dining companions with which you can have a conversation, to tell (and help you tell) stories around the table. After all, that's what it's all about.

Wherever you are, we wish you a happy, healthy Thanksgiving, and that you be surrounded by good food and great company.

Sustainability Matters: We ditched the plastic water bottle. And so should you.

By Leslie Castillo

[Editor's Note: With this blog, we're launching a the new blog series "Sustainability Matters", written by Leslie Castillo. In addition to her responsibilities as a team lead in the tasting room, she is our point person on a major waste-reduction initiative we began at Tablas Creek late last year.]

Have you been to our tasting room? If you have, you’ve probably seen and enjoyed the complimentary cool, fresh water we provide in reusable stainless steel canteens. Our guests are welcome to enjoy this water while they are visiting; we ask that they return the canteens when they're done. And most people do. We often receive comments from our first-time visitors expressing what a genius idea it is to provide water in reusable canteens instead of single-use plastic bottles, and that they wish more other places adopted it. To us, finding alternatives to plastic is more common sense than genius.

Ever since we opened our doors to the public in 2002 we have made sure water is provided to our guests. That's an essential accommodation for any business serving wine and a common courtesy for a winery like us who wants to get our guests out to see how grapes are grown in an often warm, dry climate. In our first few years, we hosted tastings in a smaller tasting room at the western edge of our winery, and used 5-gallon reusable water jugs. But as our traffic increased, and we got more demand for water to take out on tours, we switched to a more convenient alternative: plastic bottles with our logo on the label. From June 2007 to June of 2011 we purchased one pallet of single-use water bottles roughly every five and a half weeks. Each pallet had 84 cases, and each case had 24 bottles, which meant we were going through some 19,000 bottles per year.

That summer, our General Manager Jason Haas had the common-sense idea to replace the single-use plastic bottles to the reusable stainless steel canteens we offer now. I asked him why, and he said "it always made me a little queasy seeing the pallets of water arrive, and knowing that we had a hand in creating demand for all this plastic. It seemed like there had to be a better way. When I came up with the idea of the stainless steel canteens, I kicked myself for not having thought of it earlier." This decision turned out to be good for our bottom line as well as for the environment. We lose between 5% and 7% of the canteens. They cost roughly four times what a plastic water bottles cost. The cost of the water filtration station and the labor to sterilize and refill the empty canteens each morning have been modest. So, we figure we've reduced the cost of providing water to our guests by some 75%. And the reduction in the amount of plastic waste we were producing has been dramatic. That was important even when the plastic that we were collecting was being recycled. With recent changes to the international plastic recycling supply chain it's even more so.

You may assume that plastics thrown into your recycling bin end up reprocessed into a new material. New research (and changes to international trade) suggest that's largely not the case. In fact, worldwide, 91% of plastics are not recycled. For the last 30 years, most of the plastic waste the US and many other countries produced was exported to China to be recycled. But as of January of 2018 China stopped importing all plastic waste from residential collection. This means China went from being the main world’s plastic waste recycler to only buying plastics that are 99.5% pure, this means 99.5% clean, free of contaminants like left over food, liquid, grease, etc. As a consequence, bales of plastic waste began to pile up around the world, from Japan to the UK, Germany, Australia, and yes, the United States.

It's not like things are likely to get better soon, either. Most consumer plastics today have no market value in the recycling industry, and virgin plastic is cheaper than its recycled version. Single-use plastic is everywhere, from the grocery store to the shopping mall to the fast-food restaurant. And yet, we don't have to go back that far in history to find a culture that didn't embrace a throw-away lifestyle. If we look back at the World War II era, thriftiness was encouraged. People collected metal to be melted into bullets. But the years following the end of WWII were an era of economic growth and prosperity in the US, and the focus on consumer products was ease of use. A sign when the society began to switch from a thrift based model to a throw-away model is an article published in August 1955 by LIFE Magazine that includes a remarkable image by Peter Stackpole of Getty Images (right) of a couple and their child throwing disposable plates and other food ware up in the air. The title of the article is “Celebrating Throw-away Living”. 

It's easy to understand why plastic became popular. It is easy to mold into different textures and shapes, can be flexible like a plastic bag or rigid like the keyboard I’m using to type this blog post, it is impermeable so it can serve as a barrier for oxygen and bacteria, and it is cheap to produce. Plastic is also extremely durable: so durable that it lasts essentially forever. It seems crazy that a material that lasts forever is the underpinning of single-use products that are meant to be thrown away!

Plastic does not biodegrade. It fragments into smaller pieces instead called microplastics, fragments 5mm or smaller. These fragments are now permeating our oceans to the point that they can reasonably be called the smog of the sea. These small plastic particles are ingested by ocean animals, from the smallest fish in the sea to huge filter-feeding whales. This is an environmental crisis. It's also a social justice crisis, and I’ll explain why.

According to 5 Gyres, a California-based organization that fights global plastic pollution in our oceans, in the US an average of 3 million water bottles are used per hour, a number that has continued to grow despite well-publicized city bans of single-serve bottled water and the faltering recycling system. Since the January 2018 China plastic ban, cities like Memphis, Tennessee and Deltona, Florida have stopped their recycling programs. Earlier this year, RePlanet, the biggest recycling center in California, went out of business, shutting down all of its 284 centers because there is too much plastic waste and not nearly enough infrastructure to reprocess plastic into new materials. The accumulating plastic waste is either going into landfills or oceans, or being incinerated, adding to climate change worries and adding air pollution disproportionately in majority-Latino and black communities.

So, what to do? First, recognize the scale of the problem. Plastic bottles are the number two in the top five single-serve disposable items. Maybe switching to reusable steel canteens instead of the single-use plastic bottle at a single winery in California seems insignificant, but over the eight and a half years since we made the switch, we've saved the production of more than 161,000 plastic bottles. Every reduction of 1000 bottles reduces demand by 40 gallons of oil and eliminates the release of 142 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. And that's just the production. The reprocessing or destruction of these bottles requires additional resources and releases additional pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We are just one of more than seven million businesses in California. Imagine if one in ten found a similar area where they could make a change that reduced their waste and helped their bottom line. If more and more people set aside a little bit of convenience to begin practicing more sustainable ways of water consumption, perhaps sooner than later our culture will begin to see throw-away as what used to be the norm. Think of other norms that have changed surprisingly rapidly, like smoking in restaurants, bars, and airplanes.

I’m curious to know if any of you readers who live in areas where recycling has been suspended. How has this impacted your community? Have you made any changes in the way you consume? And, most importantly, have you come up with any great ideas that deserve to be more widely adopted?

Does a dry fall mean a dry winter season? Less than you might think.

Last week, I wrote about the dry, cool beginning to winter that we're seeing this year in Paso Robles. In my research for the piece, I made a surprising and reassuring discovery. It turned out that having a totally dry October, as we did this year, didn't have any predictive effect on our future rainfall for those winters. There were five such Octobers in the 23 years since we installed our weather station in 1996, and for the rest of the rain season (November-May) we averaged the same 22.2" of rain that we did in the 18 not-totally-dry Octobers. Yes, we missed out on the rain we didn't get that month (an average of 1.5") but it didn't appear that the conditions that produced these dry months lingered in any meaningful way later into the winter.

That got me wondering: was that true for future months? Did low rainfall in October and November mean we were likely to see a drier December-May? Did low rainfall October-December mean drier January-May? Or were the weather patterns truly independent, as my first-pass analysis last week suggested? It turned out that a dry month or months does have some predictive effect, but it's less than you might think. I'll present my findings below, but first a note on my methodology.

I decided first that using "totally dry" as my measuring point wouldn't be reasonable. We do of course have winter months without any rainfall, but after October they're rare. So, I decided that for a period to qualify as "dry", we'd need to have seen less than half of our annual average winter rainfall to date. So, for the period through October, "dry" meant less than 0.85" of total rainfall since July. For the period through November, "dry" meant less than 1.8" of rainfall since July. And for the period through December, "dry" meant less than 4.1" of rainfall since July. This does mean that the results are correlated, since this is a cumulative total, but it seemed better than counting a winter like 2009-10 as "dry" through November because we received less than 1/10" of rain in November, while ignoring that we received a nearly 10" storm in October.

So, what predictive effect does a dry early season have? About 15%, in my calculations. Here's a quick recap of the averages. At the bottom I've added in some graphs that highlight how the dry early seasons have played out.

Period	Avg Rain, Rest of Winter	Avg Rain (Dry Years)	Avg Rain (Wet Years)	# of Dry Years
Through October	22.49	20.84	24.28	12
Through November	20.49	16.92	22.05	7
Through December	16.04	14.31	16.52	5

As you might expect, the data is noisiest when you're looking at early-season results, both because there are more dry years (12) and you'd expect to have received a lower percentage of your total precipitation. In the below graph, I've marked years that met my definition of dry through October with orange columns. Wetter years are blue:

While the averages are still somewhat predictive, there are some very wet winters that followed dry early seasons, including last year. Looking at years that are dry through the end of November shows a more obvious correlation:

In the seven years where we had less than 50% of our average rainfall at the end of November, we only saw one year where we recovered to even hit our long-term average (2005-06). Some of that is the lower average future rainfall (23% less) but a lot of it is that we'd already gotten through enough of the rainy season that the difference between what we've banked in a dry year (1.2") and our average from our wet years (4.7") starts to become more significant. Looking at the data through the end of December doesn't change the picture that much:

It's probably unsurprising that when it's been dry through December, we're likely to be looking at a dry winter. But even more than in the previous chart, the biggest difference isn't in the future rainfall we'd expect (we received an average of 13% less rain January-June in those years that were drier through December) but in how much rain we've banked, or not. We'd normally expect to have received 8.17" of rain through the end of December, a little more than a third of our annual total. In the five notably dry years, we'd only accumulated an average of 2.7" to date, while in the other eighteen years we'd averaged nearly four times that already: 9.6".

What does this mean for us this winter? In practical terms, not much. Like always, we're at the mercy of the weather patterns, and what we've seen so far this fall has been consistently dry, with a persistent area of high pressure diverting storms well north of us. But for the first time, forecasts are starting to sound more hopeful, and it looks like there's a chance that this pattern will break down by the end of the month: 

Multi-model agreement that extremely dry pattern will continue across CA for next 7-10+ days (outside of poss. sprinkles in north). Ensembles suggesting about ~ 1 in 3 chance that Westerlies could break through ridge last week in Nov, bringing more widespread rain.#CAwx #CAfire pic.twitter.com/8dVNmVmYvN

— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) November 11, 2019

For all that, I feel like the results of my digging into the weather details have done some good for my state of mind. Each week without rain at this time of year feels long. And as nice as it is to be able to go out and enjoy the beautiful sunny afternoons, I enjoy them less because of this nagging feeling that it's wrong, and we really need the rain. Knowing that the predictive effects of past early season dry spells have been modest, and that we have 90% of our rainy season in front of us (and fully two-thirds after January 1st) is a good reminder to be patient. Storms will be coming. Fingers crossed that they'll come soon.

A Dry, Chilly Beginning to the 2019 Winter Season

Those of you who have been following California's recurring struggles with fire won't be surprised to hear that it's been dry. Record low relative humidity has been a major contributing factor to the wildfires that have raged in both northern and southern California. Here in Paso Robles, we haven't seen the same high winds that fueled this year's terrible fire season, and one somewhat comforting fact is that those sorts of wind events are quite rare here, as the Santa Ana winds that affect southern California don't often make it this far north, while the Diablo winds that affect northern California don't typically make it this far south. Still, it's been really dry, with no rain yet, relative humidity dropping into the mid-single digits the last few days, and the lowest dew point I can ever remember seeing (-3°F) on Halloween. There have been several mornings over the last couple of weeks where I've gone out to my car in the morning, had it be below freezing, and yet have no frost on the windshield because it's just been too dry.

What may not be so obvious from the news coverage is that it's been quite cold so far as we've transitioned from fall to winter. We've already had several frost nights in our lower-lying spots, and the vines are mostly in dormancy. Check out the difference in the look of one of our old Roussanne blocks from a month ago:

To today:

And we haven't even been the coldest spot in Paso Robles. If you look at the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance's weather summary for October 31st (the day with the amazingly low dew point) you can see that there were several local weather stations that measured lows around 20°F and one that even dropped into the teens. And yes, even on this day with some very cold mornings, we had warm afternoons. The diurnal temperature swings, always big here in Paso Robles, reach extreme (50+°F) levels during this season:

Even with the cold nights, the hilltops are still showing nice fall colors, and are likely to until we see a hard freeze. This photo, of one of our Syrah blocks, is just up the hill from the Roussanne block I photographed above:

How unusual is all this, and what does it mean for our prospects for a wet winter? Not particularly, and not much. We see our first rainfall of the winter by the end of October about three-quarters of the time. The rest of the years, which have included 1996, 1999, 2003, 2005, and 2017, it's been dry into November. A lack of early rainfall has not particularly impacted what the rest of the winter has looked like; those five years have averaged 22.5 inches of winter rainfall, only about an inch and a half different from the 24.2 inch 20-year average. As the 1.5 inch difference is exactly what we've averaged in our last twenty Octobers, there's essentially no correlation between a dry October and a dry winter. That's a reassuring thought.

While we'd like it wet, the cold is a good thing, as it forces the vines into dormancy and keeps them from expending extra energy at a time of year when there's no fruit to ripen. And we'll take what we can get, while we wait for the long-term forecast to show some hope for rain. We'd like to get our cover crop growing, so our sheep have something to eat. And rain would put to bed any lingering worries about this year's wildfire season. There no rain forecast for the next two weeks: more dry weather, with sunny, warm days in the upper 70s and low 80s, with chilly nights dropping to around freezing. But while our vines would like to usher in the rainy season, that sounds like pretty ideal weather for people. If you're coming to Paso Robles between now and Thanksgiving, it sounds like you can expect conditions to be pretty great.

Meanwhile, we'll look forward to the greens, yellows, and oranges of the harvest season transitioning to the softer browns of fall, like the Mourvedre block below. It may not have autumn's drama, but it's beautiful in its own right.