200% tariffs on European wines would be extremely dangerous for California wineries

In 2019, I wrote a blog explaining why proposed 100% tariffs on European wines would create a cascade of negative impacts on American wineries, and shared the letter I submitted to the Office of the US Trade Representative in opposition to the plan. In the end, the tariffs didn't come to pass, either then or the following year when the threat was renewed. Well, even more substantial tariffs against European wines are now again on the table, and some of the hot takes in response have been badly off base. I responded to one of these hot takes on Threads, from journalist Christina Binkley, who has written on the business of culture and style for outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Town & Country, and Vogue:

To her credit, Christina posted a response owning up to the mistake after reading the responses she received. And I'm not posting her initial piece to pile on. But I've heard a variation of her take from lots of people outside the world of wine and wanted to dive a little deeper into why I am convinced that tripling the price on European wines would have negative spillover effects onto those of us who make wine here in America.

I'll start with the direct impacts. These tariffs post an extinction-level threat to importers of European wines. A thread by importer Lyle Fass, proprietor of Fass Selections, laid out the math. Tariffs are taxes due from the importer to the US government at the port of entry. Importers would be on the hook for double what they've paid for any wine that they order, including wine already paid for and in transit:

 

Let’s talk about the financial catastrophe these 200% wine tariffs will create. Not in theory but in reality.

In my case, the $350,000 worth of wine I have coming in September? I’ve already paid for it. That money is gone. Now I have to pay a 200% tariff just to bring it into the country. That means coughing up another $700,000 overnight.

That’s just me. Now imagine what this does to the entire industry.

Fine, I hear you asking, but how is this bad for a California winery like Tablas Creek? I see the danger in three areas:

• We are dependent upon wholesalers, all of whom sell both imports and domestic wines. We sell about half our production through a network of state-licensed wholesalers. This distribution system is mandated by law. A producer like us cannot sell directly to restaurants and retailers in other states, and our ability to sell directly to consumers, while growing, is still restricted. So, our success is dependent upon the health of this distribution network. None of the 50+ distributors that we work with represents exclusively domestic wines; all have a diverse portfolio including wines that would be impacted by the proposed tariffs. Many get the majority of their business from European wines. A significant number are also importers. For those importer/distributors, the proposed tariffs amount to a death sentence. For the distributors with a mix of imported and domestic wineries, sales will fall, perhaps dramatically, limiting their ability to buy our wines. To save money, they will lay off salespeople, limiting their ability to sell our wines. Could American wines fill in the gap? Not for years. The production of American wines is currently about 300 million cases. Consumption of wine in the United States is about 375 million cases. It takes roughly five years for new plantings to produce grapes, be fermented and bottled, and eventually reach the market. By the time that American wines could make up the difference, the damage to wholesalers would be done.
• Our exports, which have been a growing piece of our mix, would likely be subject to retaliatory tariffs. We've already seen this play out in Canada, whose provinces have responded to the on-again-off-again threats to impose across-the-board 25% tariffs by pulling all American products off the shelves of the province-wide monopolies that are the only legal outlets for wine in the country. We have already received cancellations of confirmed orders to Quebec and Ontario. If European wine is targeted in a new round of tariffs, it's very likely that American wine will be on the list of reciprocal targets. While export markets aren't a huge piece of our business, we've been investing in them in recent years and have been rewarded with significant growth. Last year we spent a little over $42,000 to grow our sales in our export markets, including visits I've written about on this blog to Asia, to Canada, and to Europe, and saw our export sales grow from $78,000 in 2023 to $175,000 in 2024. We expected additional growth in our export sales in 2025. Those prospects are looking shaky.
• The uncertainty is already inhibiting investment in an American wine ecosystem that is under record strain. I have heard from several distributors that because of the uncertain climate around tariffs this year that they're holding off on hiring new staff, bringing in new inventory, or taking on new suppliers. That impact is hard to quantify, but I know it's cost us at least one opportunity with a high profile distributor and it's reduced the coverage of the distributor teams we do work with as many are trying to make do with fewer salespeople to cover their existing network of accounts. And the distributor network is already under dangerous levels of strain. The country's two largest distributors, Southern Glazers and RNDC, have both executed multiple waves of layoffs in recent months. Constellation Brands, the country's fourth-largest wine company, is reported to be exiting the wine sphere entirely. If a major producer or distributor should declare bankruptcy the cascade of impacts on their suppliers and customers would almost certainly cause other failures.

Would tariffs hurt European producers? Absolutely. But because of the legally-mandated channels that alcohol must be distributed through, Americans would be hurt more. The US Wine Trade Alliance has calculated that for every $1.00 in damage tariffs would inflict on the EU, they cause $4.52 in losses to American businesses. 

That $4.52 in losses doesn't include the losses in export sales by the imposition of reciprocal tariffs, or the damage to the international reputation of American wine, which could be both sharp and lasting. Canada has been California wine's largest export partner for decades, at a total value of over $1 billion last year. The recent tariff dispute has already created a boycott of American wines (and other products) that will likely render the market less welcoming even after any trade issues have been resolved. It's taken decades to build up the international reputation for American wine. That goodwill can disappear fast, as evidenced by these signs now posted in the American wine sections of Ontario's LCBO stores:

But would there be a larger piece of the pie here for California wineries? Not much of one, I don't think. As I mentioned above, the additional capacity here is finite. It's also not clear that American wines would be the first choices for replacing the lost business from European wines. At the low end, the likely substitute for European wines would be wines from other New World countries like Chile, Argentina, and Australia, all of which do better in the under-$15 segment than American wineries. At the high end, the places that wines come from are inseparable from the wines' identities. An Oregon Pinot Noir isn't going to smoothly replace a Grand Cru Burgundy, nor is a California Nebbiolo going to replace a Barolo. Classic wines aren't commodities produced by formula from specific grapes, that could be grown anywhere. My guess, based on what we saw last time, is that at the high end, there would be a period where restaurants and retailers scavenge inventory from warehouses around the country, and then sales would drop sharply as buyers wait and hope the tariffs are rescinded. We might see a few new placement opportunities but those benefits would be overwhelmed by the disruption in our distribution network.

I also think that the long-term impacts would be negative for the broader world of restaurants and hospitality. The restaurant business is never easy. It's famously low-margin, with half of all restaurants closing within 5 years. Wine offers restaurants an area where they do make good margins, and while I have my complaints about that model, I still want restaurants to be successful. Can a neighborhood Italian joint replace its inexpensive Chianti with a California Sangiovese? Probably not when that grape represents less than one-half of one percent of the red wine grape acreage here in California. Instead, they probably sell more cocktails or beer and less wine, and the wine they sell will be more expensive and less good, as they trade down to find the cheapest available wines that fit the category they're looking to fill. That will make restaurants more expensive, discouraging customers from dining out and from including wine when they do. Would there be some additional opportunities for California wines, either in new placements or in the opportunity to raise their prices? I'm sure there would. But the resulting higher prices of wine to restaurants and consumers would drive people to other categories of alcohol and to other non-alcohol options, with negative impacts to the category over both short and long term.

All of these economic costs to wineries and the wine ecosystem are serious. It's also worth noting that it would mean the end of an era for the American wine consumer. For nearly a century, the United States has enjoyed the world's most dynamic wine market, with vibrant domestic wineries in every state and the world's best selection of imported wines. That has led to the flowering of wine culture here and allowed the wine market to grow from about 4 bottles per person per year in the 1950s to the roughly 15 bottles per year that are enjoyed today. It has vaulted the United States to its position as the world's largest wine market, the home to two-thirds of the world's Master Sommeliers, and an appealing destination for generations of winemakers, both domestic and international, who settle here, like us, with dreams of making wines that will compete on the world's stage.

Are these tariffs a serious proposal, or just a negotiating tactic? I hope it's the latter. But the reality is that even the discussion of them has negative consequences for American wineries. Their implementation would usher in a new era with much greater and more unpredictable dangers. If this is an issue you care about, please reach out to your federal representatives and let them know. Sometimes an eye for an eye really does make the whole world blind.

Is the biggest story in our 2024 white blending that it's even scarcer than we thought? Or that we made a white version of Panoplie?

We spent three days last week around our blending table, working to turn the 32 different lots we made from our white grapes in 2024 into the blends and varietal bottlings we'll be releasing to you in coming months. There is good news, and bad. The good news is that what we tasted was of exceptionally high quality, so good that we're making, for the first time, a high-end white whose name we haven't yet decided on, to be the white wine equivalent of our Panoplie. The bad news is that not only was the 2024 vintage low in tonnage, particularly on whites, but the gallons of wine that we got per ton of grapes was lower than any year in our memory. I'll speculate some on why that might have happened below, but the take-home message is that we were nearly as scarce on whites as we were in the frost- and drought-impacted 2022 vintage. That constrained our choices somewhat and meant that it wasn't possible to make some longtime favorites. What did we make? And how did we decide what to put into the blends we'll be bottling over the coming year? Read on.

If you're unfamiliar with how we do our blending, you might find it interesting to read this blog by Chelsea that she wrote a few years ago. There wasn't much different that we did this year, but to help with the ambiance during a cool, showery spring week, we turned on the yule log setting on the TV that overlooks our blending table:

Our first step was to taste each variety in flights, give each lot a grade, and start assessing the character of the year. Our grading system is simple; a "1" grade means the lot has the richness, elegance, and balance to be worthy of consideration for Esprit Blanc. A "2" grade means we like it, but it doesn't seem like Esprit, for whatever reason. It may be pretty, but without the concentration for a reserve-level wine. It might be so powerful we feel it won't blend well. Or it might just be out of the style we want for the Esprit, such as with too much new oak. A "3" grade means the lot has issues that need attention. It might be oxidized or reduced. It might still be fermenting and in a place that makes it hard to evaluate confidently. Or it might just not have the substance for us to be confident we'll want to use it. Most "3" lots resolve into 2's or 1's with some attention. If they don't, they end up getting sold off and they don't see the inside of a Tablas Creek bottle. Then, we start from the top of our hierarchy and brainstorm possible blends, taste those blind against one another, and come to consensus. Once we've determined the blend and quantity for the wine at the top of our hierarchy, we set aside the lots that wine uses and look at what we have left for the next wine, and so on down the line. Finally, we taste everything we're going to make to be sure that each feels complete and individual. A snapshot of my notes highlights just how many 1's there were this year, and how few 3's:

In a normal year it takes us two days to taste through all the white lots. Not this year; we finished in one day. My quick thoughts on each variety are below. For context, in a normal year, for every 10 lots we might see three or four "1" grades, five or six "2" grades and one "3" grade. When we think a lot is right on the cusp between two grades, we can note that with a slash ("1/2", or "2/3"). As you'll see, in this year, more than half our lots got "1" grades and there was only one lot that anyone gave even a single "3" to. In rough harvest order:

• Viognier (4 lots): An outstanding Viognier vintage, with classic flavors, good richness, solid acids, and a lovely salty mineral note that provided balance to the fruit. I awarded three lots "1" grades and the other, which was still sweet enough I wasn't 100% sure what it would be like when it had finished fermenting, a "1/2".
• Grenache Blanc (8 lots): We saw a range of different styles of Grenache Blanc, from pure, pithy lots with classic green apple flavors and great length to some others that were showing a more golden color and some heaviness that I attributed to some minor oxidation. I gave four lots "1" grades, one other a "1/2", and three lots, which I found on the heavy side "2"s.
• Marsanne (3 lots): An outstanding Marsanne vintage as well, with all three lots showing Marsanne’s classic combination of gentle honeyed flavors, creamy textures, and a little pithy bite that provided focus. I gave all three lots "1" grades.
• Picardan (1 lot): Our lone Picardan lot showed nice brightness and a pretty note of sweet green herbs, but it didn't have a ton of length. I gave it a "1/2".
• Bourboulenc (2 lots): The best Bourboulenc showing we've had in our (admittedly short) six-year history. Both lots had the grape's signature bright preserved-lemon acids and rich, nutty texture. We didn't have any lots with orange weirdness we've seen in previous warm years. I gave both lots "1" grades.
• Clairette Blanche (2 lots): I was a little disappointed in our Clairette Blanche lots this year, as I thought the grape's expressiveness took a step back from the 2023 vintage. One lot was very low in acid, and reminded me of sake. The other was rich, with good acids, but a little heaviness and without the mineral note I look for in Clairette. I gave the first lot a "2" and the second a "1/2" as I thought it likely had just finished fermentation and the heaviness was due to some transitory oxidation.
• Picpoul Blanc (2 lots): Only two lots of Picpoul this year, but I loved them both. One was still a little sweet but with explosive acids and lovely tropicality, while the other was drier and added a lemongrass note to Picpoul's signature pineapple core and salty mineral flavors. Think a piña colada in a glass with a salted rim and you have an idea of what these Picpouls were like. I gave them both "1" grades.
• Roussanne (9 lots): In a year when we were hoping to make a high-end white based on Roussanne and still have enough Roussanne left for a beautiful Esprit Blanc it was a bit of shock to realize we had about 15% less quantity than we'd expected. But on the plus side of the ledger, all the lots were strong. I included the word "classic" in seven of my nine descriptions, and could have with the other two. All the Roussanne lots showed the honeycomb, lanolin, pear, and spice notes that the grape offers at its best. I gave five of the nine lots "1" grades. Three others got "1/2" grades because I was concerned about the amount of oak that they showed. And one lot got a "2"  because while it was rich and textured it was very low in acid and had a bite to the structure that we thought might not play all that well with other lots in a blend.

One goal that I had going into this blending was to make a high-end white. I've been getting requests for a few years now that we do so, but until recently we couldn't wrap our heads around what that wine would look like. We knew we wanted it to be based on Roussanne, as it really needs to be a collectible wine, and Roussanne is by far the most ageworthy white that we grow. But up through about 2019, we were making our Esprit de Tablas Blanc with 60%-70% Roussanne in most years. Short of making a 100% Roussanne, it was going to be hard to increase the Roussanne enough to differentiate it from the Esprit Blanc. And while we can look to the example at Beaucastel of their stellar 100% Roussanne Vieilles Vignes, we had our doubts about the wisdom of using a pure Roussanne as our top white wine given Roussanne's low acid profile in Paso Robles and the fact that we always feel like the Roussanne is improved by the addition of some of our higher-acid grapes like Grenache Blanc and Picpoul.

Two things have changed in recent vintages that pointed the way forward for this new wine. Since 2020, we've had a combination of hot years and low production on our Roussanne blocks that we weren't able to make an Esprit Blanc with 70% Roussanne even if we'd wanted to, at least not without using Roussanne lots that were not our favorites. So we've been choosing Esprit Blanc blends with percentages more around 40%-45%, and incorporating more of the fresher, higher-acid grapes. This has been made more exciting by the fact that since 2019 we've had the full collection of all six Chateauneuf-du-Pape whites in production. Our newer grapes (which include Bourboulenc, Clairette Blanche, and Picardan) have proven to be so good that we have incorporated all or most of them in our Esprit Blanc each year since 2020. The three have overall fresher profiles and lighter body than the trio of Roussanne, Grenache Blanc, and Picpoul Blanc we've used in Esprit Blanc since 2004. Their incorporation, along with our increasing love (and acreage) of Picpoul Blanc, has nudged the Esprit Blanc into a fresher, more aromatic, more tropical profile since 2020. We've liked that profile so much that we've decided to target it going forward, even when Roussanne is more plentiful. 

In the same way that we can differentiate our Mourvedre-led but not Mourvedre-dominated Esprit de Tablas from our Panoplie by increasing Panoplie's target percentage of Mourvedre to around 70%, the new Roussanne-led but not Roussanne-dominated profile of Esprit Blanc opens up the possibility of making a higher Roussanne percentage in an upper tier white blend, while still allowing us to incorporate some of the higher-acid varieties to make a wine that has both richness and balance. It also allows us to consider the inclusion of the United States' first-ever planting of Grenache Blanc, which we have all been raving over the past few years around the blending table. The idea behind this new high-end white is to lean into Roussanne's richness, rounded and deepened by a touch of oak, and make a wine that is luscious, textured, ageworthy, and memorable. 

So at the end of our day of tasting our white components we finished by brainstorming ideas for this new wine. We were only trying to make 300 cases this first year, so didn't need a ton of quantity, and identified three lots of Roussanne and one each of Grenache Blanc and Picpoul Blanc that we thought had the requisite character and intensity. As usual in a three-variety blend, we decided to start our blending process by making three test blends and having each one lean a little heavier into one of the three grapes to see what we learned. As often happens, it was clear that one of the three directions (the one that maxed out Roussanne at 75%) was the wrong way to go because the lower acid profile made the wine taste comparatively flat, but we split between options with Roussanne around 70% and greater amounts of Grenache Blanc and Picpoul. We tried a second round exchanging one Roussanne lot for another and ended up with a clear favorite, at 70% Roussanne, 25% Grenache Blanc, and 5% Picpoul Blanc. It had a powerful, textured, viscous mouthfeel, a lingering finish, and should only get better with another year in barrel. Now all we need is a name. 

That decided, we moved on to Esprit Blanc. Although Roussanne had recovered a bit from the punishingly low yields of 2022 and 2023, it was still going to be scarce. Making 1800 cases of Esprit Blanc (about 100 cases more than the minimum that we need to cover the things we use it for with our wine club, tasting room, wholesale and export) meant that realistically we were capped at about 40% of the grape. Given the scarcity and quality of grapes like Picpoul and Bourboulenc, we decided to dedicate all of both of these into all the blends, at 17% and 11% respectively. So in our first round of blending trials we decided to focus on whether we preferred a little more Roussanne (tasting wines that ranged between 34% to 40%), a little more Grenache Blanc (26% to 29%), or a little more of the lighter-bodied white grapes Picardan and Clairette (a combined 4% to 11%).

I loved all three options. The one that leaned into the lighter-bodied grapes (in our first glass) was pretty and minty, pure with good acid structure. The one that leaned into Grenache Blanc (in our second glass) was longer, with more structure but a little less charm. But the one that leaned into Roussanne (in the third glass) was a consensus favorite. For me it was a goldilocks wine: a little more richness than glass one, and a little more fun than glass two. The group agreed, and we had our winner: 40% Roussanne,  26% Grenache Blanc, 17% Picpoul Blanc, 11% Bourboulenc, 3% Picardan, and 3% Clairette Blanche. Our rule is always that the Esprit wines get first dibs on whatever lots they need to be great. This year, that means it got all of the Picpoul and Bourboulenc. So be it.

Looking at what we had left after setting aside two top wines made some options clear. We needed one more wine in enough quantities to send out to our entire wine club (meaning 600+ cases) and three others that needed to be in enough quantity to go out to our whine wine selection club (so mimimum 200 cases). The only way that those puzzle pieces fit together with the quantities we had left was to make a Grenache Blanc for the whole club and Cotes de Tablas Blanc, Viognier, and Marsanne for the White Wine Selection club. We only had about 250 cases surplus to those minimum quantities, and it could have been in any of the varietal wines or as Clairette Blanche or Picardan. So we decided to make the decision based on which Cotes Blanc we loved most. Cotes Blanc is always led by Viognier, but there have been years where Marsanne or Grenache Blanc approach Viognier in quantity. In our first round of test blending, we tried one wine that maxed out on our available Viognier (46%) and Grenache Blanc (22%), another that maxed out on our available Marsanne (36%), and another that maxed out on the lighter-bodied grapes Picardan (11%) and Clairette Blanche (10%). Somewhat to our surprise, the last wine got first place votes from seven of the eight of us around the table. The extra higher-acid grapes seemed to bring the stone fruit of the Viognier and the opulent honey character of the Marsanne to life. And sometimes that's the way it is: a lot that you didn't grade particularly highly on its own turns out to be just what another grape needs to shine.

So on Thursday we gathered to taste the seven estate wines that we made, plus the Patelin de Tablas Blanc and the one Lignée de Tablas white that we made: a blend of Marsanne, Grenache Blanc, Bourboulenc, and Roussanne from the Fenaughty Vineyard in the El Dorado AVA in the Sierra Foothills. A snapshot I took of the wines is below, complete with the post-it notes from our brainstorming names for our new white:

My brief notes on each wine are below, with the rough quantity we'll be bottling between now and the end of 2025:

• 2024 Grenache Blanc (775 cases): A pretty pithy nose, lightly tropical, with notes of cumquat and anise. The mouth is richly textured, but with great acids and flavors of caramel apple, salty minerals, and a little bite of green apple skin tannin on the finish. Classic Grenache Blanc, both charming and substantial.
• 2024 Marsanne (285 cases): A pretty nose of cantaloupe and citrus blossom, sweetgrass, chalk, and brioche. The palate is appealingly gentle: yellow plum, wet rock, fresh apricot, and sweet spice, all over a medium-bodied frame with gentle acids providing freshness and leaving a lingering flavor of pear tart. Lovely.
• 2024 Viognier (220 cases): An exuberant nose of jasmine, vanilla custard, and fresh peach. The mouth is classic Viognier but with a light touch: flavors of peaches and cream, sweet spices and a little minty lift. The wine's texture shines on the finish, which is long without ever being heavy.
• 2024 Patelin de Tablas Blanc (4500 cases, some of which will be diverted to boxes and kegs): A high-toned nose with tropical fruit and spice at the fore, showing notes of camphor, lemongrass, mandarin, and pineapple. The mouth shows kiwi and fresh apricot fruit, then bright pithy acids and chalky minerals. There is still a little more fermentation to come for this wine, but it's seriously appealing. I am excited that we have a solid supply of this!
• 2024 Lignée de Tablas Fenaughty Vineyard (390 cases): A nose of honey and brioche, herbal tea, spicecake, gardenia, and sweet cream butter. On the palate, mouth-filling with flavors of honeydew, guava, and preserved melon, medium body, and a wet rock minerality coming out on the finish. This will be the first Marsanne-based blend we've ever released, an it shows that character in a nice way. 39% Marsanne, 35% Grenache Blanc, 13% Bourboulenc, and 13% Roussanne.
• 2024 Cotes de Tablas Blanc (450 cases): A beautiful nose of peach and sweet green herbs, anise and chalky minerals. The palate is similar: white peach and wet stone, full and rich but with good minerality providing balance and a red apple note giving both sweet and tart aspects on the long finish.
• 2024 Roussanne (275 cases): Deep and powerful on the nose at this stage, with notes of cedar and honey. The mouth is textured and salty, with baking spices and a kiss of sweet oak. Powerful and dense, with structural elements at the fore rather than fruit at this stage, it will go into barrel for another year of aging.
• 2024 Esprit de Tablas Blanc (1815 cases): A gorgeous nose of passion fruit and green pear, honeysuckle and chalky minerals. The mouth is lifted and lovely, with flavors of baked pear and satsuma, white flowers and sea spray. The wine's texture shines on the long finish, with lively acids framing apricot fruit. I'm very happy with how this came out, and it has (for me) an ideal balance of substance and charm.
• 2024 To-Be-Named Blanc (305 cases): A powerful but lovely nose of caramel and honeycomb, nutmeg and white flowers. The mouth is intense and very Roussanne in character, with flavors of creme brulee and baked pear, a nice moderate dose of sweet oak, and appealing pithiness at the end that leaves a finish of lemon bar and salted butter. I can't wait to start sharing this with people.

A few concluding thoughts:

• Man, would we ever love a productive vintage, at least on the white side. This is now the third time in four years that we've averaged less than 2.8 tons per acre on our whites, and the fourth year in a row that both Viognier and Roussanne were below 2.4 tons per acre. In 2024, those numbers were way below: 1.4 tons per acre on Viognier and 1.6 tons per acre on Roussanne. And unlike most of our history, productive grapes like Grenache Blanc and Marsanne (both of which averaged at least 4.4 tons per acre every year between 2017 and 2020) haven't been stepping up to provide other options. We love our whites, and know that people look forward to them. While it's great to know that we're putting together enough to satisfy our wine club shipment needs, it's hard knowing that we're not going to have much beyond that. We do have about 20 acres of whites planted over the last three years but not yet in production. That cavalry can't arrive soon enough.
• On a related note, it seems like the heat of the vintage impacted the wine in a very specific way. It wasn't, as you might expect, that we saw higher sugars or lower acids. In fact, sugars were a little lower than they were in 2023, and pH only modestly higher. But as I mentioned briefly in our intro, we saw significantly lower yields of juice per ton of grapes than we expect. Typically we use 155 gallons/ton as our placeholder, knowing that some thicker-skinned, smaller grapes (think Viognier, or Roussanne) usually produce yields a bit below that, while larger, thinner-skinned varieties (think Grenache Blanc, or Vermentino, or Marsanne) are typically more like 165 gallons/ton. In this year where we saw unrelenting heat that began in late June (five consecutive months between 2% and 30% warmer than our long-term averages) we saw significantly less yield of juice from the berries. Vermentino (150 gallons/ton) and Grenache Blanc (142 gallons/ton) were close to our normal estimates, but still about 10% below what we expect from those grapes. Later-ripening varieties like Roussanne (131 gallons/ton), Marsanne (130 gallons/ton) and Picpoul (135 gallons/ton) were lower yet. And some of the trace varieties were so much lower that we were all sitting around the table scratching our heads as to why. Picardan saw yields of just 122 gallons/ton, while Bourboulenc was just 113 gallons/ton, and Clairette just 109 gallons/ton. We do get lower yields of juice from press loads that are less full, and those varieties do come in small lots. But we were also being careful in this lower-acid year not to squeeze the berries to the point that we were getting the lowest-acid bits from the heaviest press fractions, and it seems like this might have impacted the yields. We'll be doing some more investigating this upcoming harvest.
• But enough about yields. That's our problem to figure out. You're probably wondering what vintage in our history might be a good comp for the wines that we made. And you don't have to go too far back to see one that I found familiar. 2022 was the third year of a drought cycle and a year when that, combined with a fluke early May frost, pushed yields on whites to the lowest in our history. Then those low yields were exacerbated by a very hot second half of the growing season. Like 2024, it produced low yields with very high quality lots. We ended up using every drop of Roussanne that the vineyard produced in the Esprit Blanc, and it was still just 33% Roussanne. This year wasn't quite that extreme, but if you like the 2022 Esprit Blanc, I think you'll love the 2024. Going a little further back, I think this year will also resemble the 2015 stylistically, though with a little more body. 
• Now we just need a name for the new high-end white, and I'm not too proud to solicit suggestions. Let me know if you think of a good one!

Now that the blending decisions have been made, we can move forward in getting the wines racked, blended, and given time to settle and integrate. The Patelin Blanc and Lignée de Tablas will be the first to go into bottle, in early May. The Viognier, Marsanne, Grenache Blanc, and Cotes Blanc will be next, in June. And the Roussanne, Esprit Blanc, and our new high-end white will go into foudre and have another 9 months to evolve before their scheduled December bottling.

We're excited to share these 2024 whites with you, and apologize that many of them will go very fast because of their scarcity. But what there is should be memorable.