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September 2024

When you Need a Pairing, Who Do You Call? An Interview with Wine Club Assistant Janelle Bartholomew

Janelle Bartholomew is one of the first voices our club members hear when they call into our wine club office with questions about their membership, orders, or just for an opinion on the best pairing for that night's dinner. She’ll celebrate her 10-year anniversary at Tablas Creek next year, and it’s high time we introduced her to you here on the Tablas Creek Blog.

Janelle moved to the Central Coast shortly after graduating high school and never looked back. It was by chance that she found herself applying to Tablas Creek and, after an initial bump in the road, ended up working in our tasting room. From there, she graduated to the wine club team and has been answering our wine club members’ calls ever since.

She brings enthusiasm to the team, characterized by her heart-warming laugh that can be heard throughout the office. She coordinates regular themed tastings with members of the Tablas Creek team diving into the wines of specific regions around the world. She is a wine and food enthusiast and a great fit with the ethos of Tablas Creek. I can't wait for you to meet her.

 Who are you?

Janelle Bartholomew. I am the Wine Club Assistant here at Tablas Creek.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Livermore and am fourth generation from that area. My great, great, great uncle immigrated there from Germany and had a 160-acre farm partially planted to Zinfandel in Livermore in the late 1800s. I think it's cool that it's part of my heritage. I moved to SLO in 1997 and never left.

Janelle and David

Can you tell us a bit about your family?

I have a wonderful, very funny husband, David, and three kids. My oldest is Liam, he's 20, Aubrey is 13, and Autumn is 11. They're all very wonderful, happy, loving people.

Janelle with her family

What do you do in your spare time?

In my spare time, I coach softball for my daughter's softball league and like to read. I really like my alone time. I love hiking. I love laughing with my husband, and I like drinking wine.

How did you end up working at Tablas Creek?

I moved to Templeton from SLO and was looking for work on the weekends after being a stay-at-home mom for a few years. I asked my friend Chris Smith at Mitchella if they needed any help in the tasting room on weekends. He said no, but that Tablas Creek does. I had just tasted there for the first time and loved their wine, so I applied. I interviewed with John [Morris] and didn't get the job!

Luckily, a few weeks later, I got an email from John saying they ended up needing another person, so I took the job. I like to think he realized he had made the biggest mistake of his life [laughs].

After about a year, I became friends with Dani on the wine team. She recommended me to Nikki [Getty] for part-time work in the wine club office, and I moved there in 2016. I thought it would be a wonderful environment for me with two fellow moms, and I've loved every minute of my job. I love my coworkers, and I feel very fortunate.

What do you enjoy most about working at Tablas Creek?

The thing that I love most is definitely the people. I love my coworkers. I love everybody who works here. I feel like Tablas Creek brings people in who really appreciate what Tablas Creek stands for. I love the wine. I love that things are constantly changing and evolving. I love the scenery. Just looking out the window, it's hard to have a bad day.

Working here also made me appreciate nature more because you're so in tune with it. I think about how we need rain and sunshine and all these things to make our business work. I'm more in tune now with what's happening in my environment and its importance for everyday life. I appreciate waking up every day, knowing that the agriculture business is important in California, and being a part of it, which makes me feel like my job is valued.

Janelle and the Wine Club

If a genie said you could work at a winery anywhere in the world [that wasn't Tablas Creek], where would it be?

I really like cold weather, so I would like to be somewhere like the Willamette Valley. My in-laws lived up near Vancouver, Washington, for over 10 years, and I spent a lot of time up there. I've had wines from that region. They're beautiful, and I prefer that type of weather. I thought about that question for a while. So many different wine regions. You could go to Italy, Spain, Hungary, pretty much anywhere, but that's where I would go.

What's the best bottle of wine you ever had?

I had to think about that for a while. It's so hard because you drink wine for different reasons. The one that stands out was when I brought a Domaine Weinbach Grand Cru, Riesling, to my in-law's house when my Father-in-Law was diagnosed with cancer. He was the only person in the family who drank wine with me, and I remember drinking that bottle with him for Thanksgiving dinner. That was very special.

What three things would you bring if you were stuck on an island?

I would bring a fishing pole, a piece of flint and an ax. I would be a survivalist.

Is there anything else you want to share with the Tablas Creek audience?

One of the things that I really like about my job is when people call and say, "I'm having such and such for dinner. What wine should I have with it?" I wish people would call and ask that more because I am interested in what people are making for dinner and sharing with their friends, even on a random Wednesday. Give us a call and say, "Hey, what can I pair with my wine?" Because it's one of my favorite questions to answer at Tablas Creek.

Also, don't forget to vote!

Janelle


Harvest 2024 Recap: Warm Temperatures Push the Pace and Give Us an End-of-Vintage Surprise

Yesterday, with a few surprise bins of Tannat (more on that later) we completed the 2024 harvest. This was two weeks later than the first time we finished harvest, but still two weeks earlier than last year. And that's a theme for 2024: it's a lot like 2022... except when it throws a 2023-like curveball at us. But no matter when it happens, being done is a cause for celebration. 

Last bin of 2024

There will be lots to remember from 2024, from us getting exciting and much-more-substantial picks off of our head-trained, dry-farmed Jewel Ridge plantings to the chance to break in new concrete fermenters in the cellar to our largest-ever (though still small) harvest of the 14th and final Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape grape to make it to us, Muscardin:

Muscardin in bin

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start out back in the spring, where 2024 started out reminding us of 2023. At the end of May, it was just a touch warmer than 2023, and well behind what we saw in 2022. Then, after a more-or-less average June, we saw a much warmer weather pattern set in. July shattered records as the warmest month by far ever seen in California. Paso Robles was no exception. We saw 14 days over 100°F and an average high temperature of 98.5°F. And not only were the hot days hot, we never got much of a break, as just four days failed to reach the 90s. August was nearly as hot (average high temperature: 94.5°F) though we did get a little break the third week of the month. Even September (average high: 90.6°F) was as hot as many of our midsummer months have been in the past, while October began with a seven-day heat wave that saw average highs of 105°F. If that sounds unrelenting, it was. The period between July 1st and October 11th (when we finished harvest for the first time) saw average high temperatures 4.3°F higher than our long-term averages, and average low temperatures 3.4°F higher than our long-term averages. In this chart below you can see the cumulative degree day measurements for our last 10 vintages at Tablas Creek. 2024 is the dashed orange line. You can see at the end of June we were still below our long-term average. The 2024 line crosses the average in July and then accumulates heat steadily until October, when it makes another turn upward to become one of our hottest years on record (though still behind 2022):

Cumulative Degree Days at Tablas Creek 2015-2024

Another way of looking at the cool year is going month by month compared to normal. We started the year with two months that were cooler than average and since then have had five consecutive months between 2% and 30% warmer than our averages. And remember, these are already warm months:

Degree Days by Month 2024 vs Average

As you might suspect, the pace of harvest was driven by our hot weeks in early September and early October. In their aftermath, fruit came tumbling in. But because even in the interludes it was still at least warm, we see something close to a bell curve in the distribution of harvest by week. In the chart below, blue is purchased fruit for the Patelin or Lignée programs, and orange estate-grown fruit:

Harvest by week 2024

You may have noticed the outlier in late October, which I hinted at in my opening paragraph. That surprise consisted of four more tons of Mourvedre, Grenache, Counoise and Tannat from an unusually plentiful set of "second crop" clusters. ⁠A second crop sets in maybe a month after initial flowering in the spring. Evolutionarily, these additional berries offer vines a chance to reproduce if the primary crop gets eaten or otherwise destroyed. But for a grapegrower, it's usually not worth going back and picking these clusters, which have less sugar and are typically smaller in size. But this year was different for us because in this relatively early harvest we had plenty of good ripening weather at the end. So clusters that in a later year, or one with an earlier onset of wet weather, wouldn't have gotten ripe, got the extra hang-time they needed to get into our sweet spot.⁠

We had extra incentive to go pick this fruit because it became clear during harvest that despite our wet 2023-24 winter we were seeing lower-than-normal yields. So we decided to let the second crop hang (instead of dropping it) in case we got lucky with late-harvest-season weather. And we did!⁠ Finally, second crop clusters are generally more prevalent in blocks with higher vigor. For us, that comes from head-trained, wide-spaced blocks with extra long cane growth. Tannat produces a decent quantity of second-crop clusters every year. This year, we noticed that the young, vigorous Mourvedre, Grenache, and Counoise vines on Jewel Ridge also had enough second crop clusters to be worth revisiting. We're happy we did!⁠ The lots that we got off Jewel Ridge seem like they're sure to be some of the highlights of the year.

Harvesting Jewel Ridge

⁠Even with that end-of-harvest windfall, yields were down 12.7% overall off the estate vs. 2023, which is a bit disappointing given that we had our second consecutive rainy winter and dodged frosts. We also have 15 additional acres in production, which means that our yields per acre declined to 2.35 tons/acre. There are really only two other years that produced yields around 2.5 tons per acre, and they both turned out to be terrific: 2021 and 2011. So that bodes well. Diving in detail, about half of the decline from 2023 were in two grapes (Bourboulenc and Grenache Noir) that we felt that we left a bit too much crop on last year, and on which we cut back intentionally. The other half came from smaller declines from a range of grapes:

Grape 2024 Yields (tons) 2023 Yields (tons) % Change vs. 2023
Viognier 7.9 10.1 -21.8%
Marsanne 7.9 9.0 -12.2%
Grenache Blanc 24.7 29.3 -15.7%
Picpoul Blanc 6.3 7.2 -12.6%
Vermentino 14.4 13.0 +10.8%
Bourboulenc 4.5 7.2 -37.5%
Roussanne 23.7 26.2 -9.5%
Other whites 4.4 3.2 +37.5%
Total Whites 93.8 105.2 -10.8%
Grenache 76.5 97.1 -21.2%
Syrah 47.6 41.7 +14.1%
Mourvedre 37.8 47.4 -20.3%
Tannat 14.4 15.3 -5.9%
Counoise 14.8 22.4 -33.9%
Cinsaut 3.6 3.6 +0%
Other reds 8.1 7.1 +14.1%
Total Reds 202.8 234.6 -13.6%
Total 296.6 339.8  -12.7%

2.35 tons/acre is low for us in a non-frost vintage, about 20% below our 20-year average of 3.08 tons/acre. Some of that is attributable to the higher percentage of wide-spaced, dry-farmed vineyard acres that we have in production now compared to our first couple of decades, but it's also clear to me that yields did suffer in the heat this summer. Most concerning to me are three late-ripening, low-vigor grapes: Mourvedre, Counoise, and Roussanne, that were down an aggregate 20.5% vs. 2023 despite significant new acreage coming on line from Jewel Ridge. Neil, Jordy, and I have already started talking through what we're planning to do to help rejuvenate our older blocks.

We had 131 harvest lots, an increase of two vs. 2023. These included six fewer estate lots (88 instead of 94), three more Lignée lots (7 instead of 4) and five more Patelin lots (36 vs. 31). Despite the higher number of lots, the total quantity of fruit (535.5 tons) was actually about 18% less than last year. This was mostly driven by some of our standby Patelin vineyards, particularly the ones that we rely on for whites, coming in lower in yields than we expected. In response, we reached deeper into our network than we have in years, and have a lot of little Patelin lots. Our label designers will have to get creative next year to fit all the Patelin vineyards on the back label! In the photo below of our harvest chalkboard, estate lots are in white, while purchased lots are yellow. Each line represents one pick. And yes, we finished the year using every single line on the chalkboard, a testament to Chelsea's divination skills:

Final Harvest Chalkboard 2024

The duration of harvest was 59 days, just above our 20-year average of eight weeks. But that's deceptive. If you look at the initial conclusion to harvest on October 11th rather than the day that we finished harvesting our second-crop clusters, it was only 46 days, or six and a half weeks. That would have joined 2019 and 2020 as our shortest harvest seasons of the last two decades, and is probably a better way of thinking of the pace of this year.

One other way that you can get a quick assessment of a vintage is to look at average sugars and acids. Since 2010, our average degrees Brix and pH at harvest:

Year Avg. Sugars Avg. pH
2010 22.68 3.51
2011 22.39 3.50
2012 22.83 3.65
2013 22.90 3.63
2014 23.18 3.59
2015 22.60 3.59
2016 22.04 3.71
2017 22.87 3.74
2018 22.80 3.62
2019 22.30 3.62
2020 22.14 3.62
2021 22.12 3.55
2022 22.14 3.70
2023 22.77 3.51
2024 22.25 3.69

Unlike the outlier that was 2023, you don't have to go very far back to see a year with numbers like 2024. 2022 offers very similar numbers, as do years like 2020 and 2016, all hot years where the heat sustained itself through harvest. That suggests that it was the hot second half of the year rather than the cool first half of the year that was more important to the vines' output.

Of course, just because we've finished picking doesn't mean that we're done with our cellar work. There are still plenty of lots to be pressed off, tanks to be dug out, and fermentations to monitor. But it feels different than it does earlier in harvest, when you're emptying tanks to make room for the next pick. We've already put a couple of our open-top fermenters outside, along with our sorting table and destemmer. And now, when we press something off and clean a tank out -- like this concrete fermenter, one of two that we bought and used this harvest for the first time -- that's the last time of the season: 

Emptying the Concrete Vat - 2024

In character, it's early to tell what things will be like, but I asked Director of Winemaking Neil Collins to sum up the vintage, and he was optimistic: "good maturity, great acidity, whites are showing great floral character and good depth, unfortunately it's a bit short, but it will be an interesting vintage, interesting in a good way. Textural with good intensity on the reds. I think it will be strong, a lot of good color and good intensity for sure. I think it will be a fun one." We're all looking forward to getting to know the wines of 2024 even better in coming weeks.

With the harvest in, we've turned to getting the vineyard prepped for winter. We've been spreading compost and seeding cover crop in our dry-farmed blocks:

Seeding cover crop October 2024

At the same time, we've been getting our flock of sheep back into our no-till blocks, where they can eat second-crop clusters and start the process of spreading the nutrients and microbial activity in their manure. Lambs should be on the way in the next few weeks:

Flock in Haas Vineyard at Sunset
It's always an adjustment coming down from the intensity and pace of harvest. But this autumn season offers its own rewards. We'll settle back into the rhythms of the vineyard and help it make the most of the rain when it comes. It's ready for a rest, as are we. But we'll be able to rest better knowing that the 2024 vintage is in the cellar, and as far as we can tell so far, looking good.


Paso Robles Is Ridiculously Beautiful Right Now, Autumn Transition Edition

We've had a hot last few months. That's been enough to accelerate things in the vineyard enough that we're pretty much done with harvest after just 46 days, ten days less than last year and roughly a week shorter than our long-term average. But by the middle of last week it was clear that the weather was changing. This week is forecast to top out, most days, in the 70s. And we have clouds:

October 2024 Beauty puffy clouds over Haas Vineyard

Now if you live in another part of the country, it might not seem that extraordinary to celebrate clouds. But in Paso Robles, we have 320 days of sun a year, and we can go months in the summer with nothing but blue sky and sun so intense that it's easy to remember that we live and work at the same latitude as Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. So we're grateful for the clouds' shelter when they arrive. And for their beauty:

October 2024 Beauty looking west over Counoise vertical

Growing up in Vermont, where the fall foliage is an international attraction, probably conditioned me to look forward to the changing colors. And it's of course a lot more subtle here than it is in New England. But the grapevines do pick up yellow, orange, and red hues that do remind me at time of that show.

October 2024 Beauty looking east toward Halter

The clouds also set off the incredible deep blue of the sky, and the lighter tones of the leaves emphasize the darkness of the evergreen foliage on our live oaks:

October 2024 Beauty oak in Santos Block

The partial cover of the clouds also gives me the opportunity to take photos looking toward the sun in diffused light. I've always liked that effect, which makes the vines in the foreground look like they're glowing.

October 2024 Beauty looking west over Cinsaut

In moments when the clouds thicken you get a different color tone, more grey than golden, which is beautiful in its own right. This photo looks over one of our biodiversity blocks where we've planted fruit trees and an insectary preserve around a low wall of dry-laid limestone from the vineyard:

October 2024 Beauty rock wall and insectary

We also have the fun of having the sheep getting back out into vineyard blocks we've finished harvesting. The combination of sheep and sunsets is pretty amazing, and my wife Meghan has been making regular visits to document:

October 2024 Beauty sheep and sunset

I'll leave you with one more shot from a vantage point I've come to love, looking west across Counoise and Syrah blocks toward the Santa Lucia Mountains and the setting sun: 

October 2024 Beauty looking west over Counoise horizontal

The autumn colors in Paso Robles don't last all that long; I'd estimate that we've got about a month before some combination of frost and rain will start the vineyard's natural progression toward brown leaves and eventually bare canes, and we start a new transformation to the brilliant green hillsides that reminded me of Ireland the first time I saw them. And that's beautiful too. But meanwhile, if you're visiting in the coming weeks, you're in for a treat. Don't think of any clouds you might get as a problem. Think of them as a theatrical backdrop. 


Harvest Interns 2024: Loaded with Enthusiasm and Ready for a Successful Career in Wine

By Ian Consoli

Every year, we sit down with our harvest interns to learn about their wine journey and what brought them into the cellar at Tablas Creek. This year's batch of interns each brought a level of enthusiasm to the cellar that made each of their presences known from day one. Whether introducing themselves to our team in the office, enjoying a taste of wine with our tasting room team, or asking for pointers on how to use the espresso machine, the 2024 harvest interns, Austin, Elena, and Rachel, made it known that they are thrilled to be here.

With that first impression in tow, I sat down with each of them to find out their past, their journey into wine, and their ambitions going forward. The singular theme that stood out was their level of intention towards their journey into making a career in wine. They may have come from different backgrounds, but each of them caught the wine bug, and they have every motivation to make it their life's work. They are fantastic. I can't wait for you to meet them:

Tablas Creek Harvest Interns 2024

2024 Harvest Interns: (from left) Austin, Rachel, Elena

Who are you?

My name's Elena. I'm an intern here at Tablas Creek, working Harvest for 2024.

I'm Rachel. I'm one of the amazing interns at Tablas Creek!

I'm Austin Gambler. I live in Cayucos, California and I'm a harvest intern at Tablas Creek.

What's your story?

Elena: I grew up in Long Beach, California, and I moved up to this area seven years ago to go to college at Cal Poly. The Central Coast has been my home ever since. My undergraduate degree was in finance and business administration. I worked as an investment advisor for a couple of years before going back to school for environmental science and diving into the wine industry.

Rachel: I'm from Newport Beach, California. I went to Cal Poly and have been away for a while, and now I'm back on the Central Coast and loving it. I studied animal science and fell into wine while traveling around the world. I lived in Prague for a year, and then I taught English. I lived in New Zealand for three years and worked in wine there.

Austin: I grew up in Birmingham, AL and moved to San Luis Obispo County in 2015 to attend Cal Poly. I was really inspired by the California coast and the culture out here and wanted a change. I studied biochemistry, and after I finished, I got into wine.

Rachel and Elena hugging

So how'd you get into wine?

Elena: It started as a hobby, just going wine tasting with friends and my boyfriend. I always felt an affinity towards the people pouring for us in the tasting room and a little bit of jealousy. I wondered, "why do you get this super fun job?" So, while in grad school, I decided to take a part-time job pouring in a tasting room; the rest was history. I just really fell in love with being able to teach people about wine and tell stories about wine, and then my curiosity just kept going and going. The next step was to work a harvest. So here we are.

Rachel: My first job was when I was in college at Cal Poly and I worked at a tasting room in Paso when I was 21. I didn't know anything about wine, but I just loved it. I liked talking to people, and then I started traveling. I knew I wasn't going to be a vet, so I was like, what am I going to do now? When I went to New Zealand, I worked at a winery and was like, oh, this is awesome. Cause I get to use my science brain that I loved from studying a lot of chemistry and working with animals. And then it's also such a social thing and I love traveling so you can travel around the whole world with wine.

Austin: I grew up in a half-Italian, half-Jewish family, so wine has always been around for me. My family on my mom's side is from Sicily, and I feel like that comes with a really strong wine culture. Then, moving to this area and getting into the farm-to-table movement, I was able to bike downtown to the grocery store and see, oh, this wine's made in my backyard. That's pretty cool. I want to get into that. I felt like I had a pretty strong draw to microbiology in school, and it's one of the biggest parts of wine, so that's where the initial interest started.

Have you worked a harvest before?

Elena: Nope. This is my first harvest.

Rachel: This is my fourth harvest. The first one was in Marlborough, New Zealand. The second was in Germany, and the third was in Central Otago in New Zealand, so two in New Zealand.

Austin: I've done a couple harvests now. For some, I made my own wine in my garage or helped farm some vineyards for some friends. But this is my first official cellar harvest, processing a lot of fruit, and seeing how everything moves.

Rachel Workin

How did you end up working at Tables Creek?

Elena: I worked at another Regenerative Organic vineyard down in Santa Barbara County and poured for Charlie from the tasting room at Tablas. He noticed my passion for regenerative agriculture and recommended I follow Tablas Creek on social media. That was my first time learning about Tablas Creek. Shortly after, I saw an email that Jason was coming to do a tasting down in Goleta. I had a class that night, but I rushed out and caught Jason right as he was leaving the wine bar. I introduced myself and inquired about a harvest internship. He gave me Chelsea's contact information. We had a Zoom call that week and really hit it off.

Rachel: I visited California with my mom and friend, and I came for a tasting. I love biodynamics and the whole regenerative ag sort of thing. So, I did a tasting and then met the winery crew. This was last harvest. And I realized I would love to work in California. So I talked to Chelsea and then did an interview, and then here we are a year later.

Austin: Yeah, I feel like, shortly after starting in the industry here, Tablas was pretty high on my list. I did a tasting here, probably six months into getting into the wine industry in 2021. I had never done a wine tasting or anything like that. I was super keen to learn, and I had the most educational experience by far at Tablas as far as the history of the area, wine history, varietal history and blending. I was pretty inspired by that. That really resonated with me.

Austin Eating

How's it going so far?

Elena: It's going great. It has really opened my eyes. I mean, I knew it was a lot of work to make wine, but I mean, it is so much work to make wine. It's really awesome to see how much everybody cares about making a quality product, from starting in the vineyard to the grapes coming into the cellar. Everyone is super intentional every step of the way, cleaning everything thoroughly, setting everything up properly and then processing all the fruit we started getting.

Rachel: Amazing. So good. The team is awesome. And yeah, it's good. Lots of different beautiful-looking fruit so far, so it's exciting.

Austin: I'm absolutely loving it. I didn't even have a cup of coffee this morning, and I'm absolutely frothing. Every time we have fruit around, I'm just excited and hyped up, and it gives me a lot of energy. So I'm in my happy place.

Elena Working

What's the best bottle of wine you've ever had?

Elena: I think what makes a good bottle of wine is good company and good food. Before I moved up here and was still living in Santa Barbara in grad school, one of my friend's partners had worked several harvests. They invited us over to bring a couple of bottles of our own, and they would share some of theirs with us. Then, we would just have a wine night and enjoy the food they cooked. Jared had worked two harvests in New Zealand, so he shared a bottle of Clos Henry Sauvignon Blanc, a place where he had worked harvest. It was totally different than any wine I had had before. It was super aromatic and just delicious, and there was a great story to go along with it. He smuggled it in his suitcase; some bottles were lost, but this one made it. Hopefully, I can return the favor once we have some 2024 wines in bottle.

Rachel: I think that question can be answered in terms of the actual wine, but I see it as the experience. I was in the Dolomites in Northern Italy, and I was with my mom and my best friend, and we had hiked for 10 hours up the Alps, and we got to this little Rifugio, which is this little hut in the mountains, and we had this bottle of wine as we sat looking at the sunset. We had been hiking the whole day, and then you're in the top of the mountains, enjoying this bottle of Lagrein from a local producer and just looking over the Alps at all the things that we'd hiked, and it was awesome. And I also love bubbles.

Austin: I think it's kind of hilarious, but I think I'm going to say it's the first wine I ever made. I'm not saying it's the most delicious wine I've ever tasted, but it was rewarding after farming the vineyard with a good friend. We made a sparkling wine like a pet nat. I was really interested in that, especially as a chemist, getting all my numbers and calculations and trying to capture that native ferment at the right time so the bottle's not exploding. And so we have bubbles. That first bottle we opened was just perfect bubbles coming out, and I was so stoked. I think I cried because I was like, it worked!

Austin Gandler doing a punchdown

And what's next for you?

Elena: I'm definitely committed to working in the wine industry. I really like sharing stories about wine, and I really like teaching people about wine and helping the wine business thrive. Maybe something where I can help connect people to that story and, through that, help them learn to enjoy buying and drinking wine. I like being a part of that whole cycle, so I'll be looking for a job in that realm after harvest.

Rachel: I'm thinking of going to Australia. I definitely want to be a winemaker. I know that for sure. And I still want to travel more, so I'm thinking maybe going to Australia next or South America. But as of now, I'm unsure. Stay tuned.

Austin: I would love to visit the Rhone after working here and see the origins of how we do things. I feel super lucky to work with old-world equipment, like beautiful wooden uprights and foudres. As far as winemaking goes, I am looking at doing a southern hemisphere harvest in Chile. I did one in New Zealand last year. But Chile, to me, is calling a little bit more than somewhere like Australia or maybe even South Africa because, from everything I've heard, it seems and feels like it has this old-world kind of grip on it.

Group Sparkling

Anything else you want to share with the Tablas Creek audience?

Elena: Just that the wine here is amazing and the people are even more, well, I won't say even more amazing, but the people are amazing, and it makes the wine even greater because there's just so much love going into every single part of the cycle in every bottle of wine.

Austin: Before I started here, I was invited to the Esprit vertical tasting from 2000 to 2023. Jason and Chelsea were leading the tasting, and Jason was like, "alright, who was here for the first Esprit release?" And there were multiple people in the room who raised their hands. I thought that was the coolest thing. There's something really special happening here. Tablas is a benchmark for California winemaking and viticulture. I think that's a really beautiful thing and something worth getting involved in at any point. Being a part of something bigger than all of us is making an impact. Being somebody who supports that says a lot. So keep drinking the wine. It's made really well - responsibly and sustainably. Enjoy.


Why are Rhone white grapes like Picpoul and Grenache Blanc so different in California?

Most grapes have a pretty well defined character. If you read the literature about Cabernet Sauvignon, it will give you a good sense of what it's going to taste like whether the bottle you're tasting is from Bordeaux, or Chile, or Sonoma. Same with Pinot Noir, whether you're tasting from Santa Rita Hills, the Willamette Valley, or Volnay. This isn't to say there aren't regional signatures or a stylistic range depending on the region's specific soils and climate, or the producer's preference for ripeness, oak, or winemaking techniques, but there's still a pretty recognizable through-line irrespective of region. 

So what the heck is going on with a grape like Grenache Blanc? If you read the older literature of what it tastes like from France or Spain, it sounds like an entirely different grape than we know. Take the description of Grenache Blanc in Jancis Robinson's "Guide to Wine Grapes" from 1996:

"...the variety is much planted in Roussillon, where it produces fat, soft white table wines. It need not necessarily be consigned to the blending vat, however, and since the early 1990s, flattering, soft, supple, almost blowsy varietal versions have been marketed."

Is this the same Grenache Blanc that we've found to achieve ripeness at high acids and produce wines with exceptional tension, minerality, and high-toned fruit? It sure doesn't seem like it. How about Picpoul? Here's what Jancis has to say in the same reference:

"It can produce usefully crisp blending material in the Languedoc"

Talk about damning with faint praise. Here at Tablas Creek, and more generally in California's Central Coast, both grapes come with a remarkable balance of medium-to-full body, bright acids, and crystalline fruit. They have different flavors, with Grenache Blanc leaning more toward petrichor minerality and green apple/white grapefruit fruit, while Picpoul Blanc is more tropical, with a saline sea spray mineral character that reinforces its reputation as the Rhone's preeminent oyster wine, but in both cases what we're seeing here is nearly unrecognizable from these European descriptions. Now I will admit that I am stacking the deck a little by looking at older references. In more recent editions, writers like Jancis have started to paint more nuanced portraits, often with a caveat explaining that the grapes show differently in California. So, what do I think is going on? I'd attribute what we're seeing to some combination of four factors:

The specifics of the California climate

When we purchased our property in Paso Robles back in 1989 we thought we'd found a perfect match for the climate of Chateauneuf du Pape. It turned out we had chosen a place that was a bit cooler overall. The mid-summer days are hotter here, yes, but the nights are colder, and in fact more colder than the days are hotter. For example, Monday of this week was the beginning of the little heat wave that we've had. The day topped out at 98.0°F. But the coolest point of the morning was a chilly 48.2°F. That's a swing of 50°F! And it's not just about the low during the night. Those chilly nights mean that the mornings are cool quite late. At 11am it was just 72.8°F, and it only hit 90°F at 3pm. Four hours later, it was back down in the 80s. It's important to remember that it's not just the high temperatures but the duration of the heat (and cool) that matters to grapevines as they ripen their fruit.  

The net result of these cooler average temperatures mean that we pick the same grapes on average about 10 days later than they do at Beaucastel, with slightly lower sugars and somewhat higher acids. If you ask the grapevines whether it's cooler or warmer, they will tell you unequivocally that it's cooler, most years, in Paso Robles than it is in Chateauneuf du Pape. What's more, the differences in soils further differentiate the two terroirs. In Chateauneuf, the rounded river stones known as galets serve to absorb the daytime sun and warmth and radiate it back to the vines in the nights. That was critical in earlier eras because it allowed the region's vineyards to ripen late-ripening grapes like Mourvedre and Roussanne before the rainy season got going in earnest in late October. In Paso Robles we have no such stones at the surface, and our move toward regenerative farming has meant that we're doing everything we can to avoid bare ground and instead focusing on having the sun hit plant material that can absorb it for photosynthesis while guarding moisture and keeping the soils below cooler.

Finally, there is good evidence that calcareous soils preserve acidity in grapes because the omnipresence of calcium ions tends to displace potassium, which grapevines use to break down acids in the ripening process. I dove into that in detail in a blog from 2020. While both Chateauneuf-du-Pape and west Paso Robles have calcareous sub-soils (it's a main reason why we chose to found what would become Tablas Creek here) those soils are closer to the surface here, on average, than they are in the Rhone. I had the opportunity recently to dive into (almost literally) our soils in a recent explainer video posted to Instagram:

Taken together, all these climate and soil factors tend to preserve acidity in wines as they ripen. That allows us to give grapevines longer hang times, which tends to produce wines with more texture and more opportunity to develop well-delineated fruit, which is in turn highlighted by the acids. 

An attention to yields

We're convinced that grapes like Picpoul and (to a lesser extent, Grenache Blanc) are victims of a vicious circle in France. Because they're not much respected and don't command a high price on the market, they tend to be only viable economically if they're cropped heavily. So, they're usually overcropped and then earmarked for quick fermentations and inexpensive bottles, which reinforces that they're of low value. Here in California, we crop them modestly and give them the attention in the cellar they deserve. 

Take Picpoul de Pinet. A quick look on Wine Searcher produces 131 results. Of those, just 3 are listed for more than $20. Several are below $10. For that price, the wine needs to be grown and made, bottled, shipped to America, imported (and marked up), sold to a distributor (and marked up again), and finally sold to a retailer (and marked up a third time). The three markups typically double, at least, the price that the producer receives. Imagine how cheap the grapes have to be to sustain a wine at this price! One of the ways that you can keep grape cost low is to produce more tons per acre. To protect against overproduction, the laws that govern the Picpoul de Pinet AOC specify a maximum number of kilograms per hectare (10,000, or about 4.5 tons per acre) as well as a maximum yield of juice (66 hectoliters per hectare, which works out similarly). And side note: it's amazing to me that at those yields and those prices a grapegrower can earn a living.

Picpoul vine from below
A picpoul vine, from below


Compare that, though, to the Picpoul yields here at Tablas Creek. Even if we wanted to increase our yields, the dry climate and often punishing summer heat mean that we've never averaged even 4 tons per acre. Over the last 20 years, our average has been 3.07. That inherently gives you more concentration, while the longer hang time from the cooler climate allows you greater intensity of fruit. Add while the AOC limits are just that -- limits -- the low prices that the wines from a grape like Picpoul have historically commanded has meant that the only way to make a living there is to get as close to those limits as you can.

More focus on whites and the modern fermentation techniques to match

While Picpoul has had the advantage of a regional AOC that mandates its use, Grenache Blanc has not. Instead, it's mostly planted in places where red wines are dominant. Take Cotes du Rhone. Despite significant increases since 2015, white wines only account for 11% of the production there. In Chateauneuf du Pape, as of 2009, the total was even lower: just 7% of acreage was dedicated to whites, and while the most-planted of these was Grenache Blanc, it only accounted for 2.5% of the appellation's total. 

With whites making up such a small part of most wineries' production, it's probably not surprising that in many cases there was not the incentive to invest in the technology -- specifically stainless steel and temperature control -- that we take for granted when making white wines here in California. What's more, picking crews were typically hired to pick at the time the Grenache Noir (which makes up roughly 60% of Cotes du Rhone's acreage and 70% of that in Chateauneuf-du-Pape) was ripe. In our experience, Grenache Blanc is at its best picked about 2 weeks before Grenache Noir. If you're picking Grenache Blanc at the time you've hired your picking crew to pick Grenache, it likely started off a little overripe. If you ferment it in the same concrete tanks and age it in the same old neutral oak barrels that are traditional for the reds from the region, you're likely going to further squander whatever brightness you had when you picked.

Grenache Blanc cluster August 2019
Two Grenache Blanc clusters, nearly ripe in August

It's important to note that these two things are changing fast in France now. Many more Rhone producers are focusing on whites, and the old-fashioned cellars without temperature control are much rarer than they were. We've know from our conversations with the Perrins and other Chateauneuf-du-Pape producers that there is a renewed surge of interest in particularly the higher-acid white grapes like Clairette Blanche and Bourboulenc. But the formative era when many of these mostly-British writers were cataloguing the white wines of the Rhone was one in which whites were more likely to be an afterthought.  

The direct-to-consumer customer marketplace

Finally, what a luxury it is having direct contact with the customers who we hope to share our examples of these lesser-known grapes with. We can write stories about them on our blog (for example, see here, here, here, and here). We can share on-the-spot video of visits to the vineyard blocks, as we did in this YouTube short video series. We can announce their release to our mailing list and tell the story of how the wines are made and why people should care.

The direct contact with our customers means that we are not subject to the game of telephone that selling wine in wholesale inevitably becomes. For our wholesale sales, we tell our national marketing agent, who tells their distributor brand managers, who hopefully tell their sales team, who tell the buyers at the retailers and restaurants they call on. It's rare that the message stays consistent through all those links. The challenges involved are why there is typically so much less diversity on display on the shelves at grocery stores and at box retail than there is when you visit a winery. Most larger retailers don't have the time or the staff to talk customers through things they don't know, and so focus on large selections of the major categories.

Economies of scale come into play here too. If we make, say, 150 cases of an obscure white grape, how exactly is that supposed to be divided up among our 50 distributors. Should we give North Carolina, which represents 1.5% of our national sales this year, 2 cases? Or Connecticut, which represents 0.3%, 5 bottles? In either case, that wine will sit orphaned on a distributor's shelves with quantities so low that no sales rep will even pull a sample bottle. Multiply that out by a dozen different small-production wines each year, and thousands of wineries in the book of the average wholesaler, and you start to get a sense of the scope of the challenge.

Instead, we just sidestep the whole issue and reach out directly to the list of people who have over the years shared their contact information with us. We'll often sell out a small-production white in a few weeks after sending out an email. That allows us the confidence to plant it, and the better margins that we get from our direct sales allow us the resources to invest in its import, propagation, planting, and production.

Would we have trouble marketing a $40 bottle of Tablas Creek Picpoul in the national (or international) marketplace? Maybe. It's hard -- though not impossible, if you look at our box wine program -- swimming upstream against the current of what the marketplace thinks a particular grape "should" sell for. But does that mean that a bottle of Regenerative Organic Certified Picpoul Blanc or Grenache Blanc, made with love by the Tablas Creek team from grapevines imported from France, electric with acid and yet with plenty of fruit, shouldn't cost $40? I would argue that they should, and invite you to put one up against a similarly priced example of a more exalted white grape (say a Premier Cru Chablis, or a dry Alsacian Riesling). I think you'll find it will shine.

Picpoul and GB 2023 bottles

And maybe it will put the idea to bed that these grapes are fat, soft, and should be consigned to the blending vat.