Elevating the virtual experience thanks to Master the World

By Ian Consoli

It is no mystery that I am a huge fan of virtual events for wine club members. We introduced semi-annual virtual pickup parties to accommodate the release of our wine club shipments in fall 2020. We started these virtual events during COVID when we had no choice, but elected to continue them because their benefits in access, intimacy, and convenience were significant. Wine Club members from around the country continue to express their gratitude through emails and social media comments for allowing them to connect with us from afar. Viewership of the events remains consistent, participation remains high, and the conversations started by viewer questions continue to bring value. From my conclusion in a blog I wrote in 2021 on the virtual pickup parties:

We're excited to continue to host this kind of event in the future. We're meeting our members where they are, we're teaching them new recipes, and we're giving them the opportunity to interact with the proprietor, winemaker, and chef.

All-in-all, we can say the virtual events are a success, and we look forward to continuing them. Today, I want to highlight a decision we made that elevated the experience and made the continuation of the series possible: producing tasting packs with Master the World.

It was always clear that we needed an option for guests to taste along with us from home. The first virtual pickup party we did was in the fall and aligned with the latest release of our Esprit de Tablas and Esprit de Tablas Blanc. Those are the only wines we bottle in 375ml packaging, primarily for distribution to restaurants. They worked perfectly as a two-pack for this initial virtual event – not least because restaurants were largely closed at that point, so we had 375ml bottles to spare – but when it came time for our spring shipment, we had no small format bottles to work with. As with any of our virtual tastings, we could invite attendees to pick one Tablas Creek wine to enjoy with the broadcast (from their shipment or not), but we needed something more.

We evaluated repackaging our 750mL bottles into 187mL but faced four significant hurdles.

• Technology: rebottling wines and having them emerge in good shape is a challenge that requires the purchase of specialized equipment and comes with a learning curve.
• Labor: rebottling would pull our cellar team away from their tasks for one to two full days. There's the cost to pay employees for those days and an opportunity cost of what else they would have done.
• Packaging: small batches of anything are expensive. Having to source new bottles and screwcaps, print new labels, and make sure that everything was compliant with the TTB was a non-trivial challenge, and expensive to boot.
• Shipping: the sample kits we proposed must ship around the country. That meant sourcing shipping boxes, negotiating shipping prices, and navigating different states' restrictions on bottle-size limits. Another hurdle for staying compliant.

That is when Master the World (MTW) came on our radar. Founded by Master Sommelier Evan Goldstein and Wine Business pro Limeng Stroh, MTW was created to help sommeliers studying for exams to taste wines from around the world without having to deal with the cost and challenge of sourcing full bottles. To facilitate this, MTW rebottles 750 mL bottles to 187 mL format and builds and ships tasting kits all over the country. Well, that sounded exactly like what were are looking for. Plus, they're pretty darn cute!

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After a call with the founders, we had a solution on our hands. Master the World has a system they developed where every bottle gets tested to ensure it is sound. They rebottle under a layer of inert gas, so the wine gets into the 187ml bottles in good shape. They solved our labor issues by taking on the entire process. All we needed to do was send a few cases of each of the wines in our VINsider Classic Shipment to their facility in Northern California, and they took it from there. They took on the TTB for label approval, and as of spring 2022, they even started making custom labels that match our full-size bottles. The kits sell through Master the World, not Tablas Creek. That allows them to handle all the shipping and compliance, and their licenses enable them to ship to even more states than we can.

We saw an opportunity to allow our virtual attendees to taste all six wines in our classic shipment and went for it. The kits sell for $99, which is manageable for our members and allows us to break even between the cost of wine and MTW's services. Guests purchased all 100 kits we made the first time through Master the World and the 80-kit runs we did for subsequent virtual pickup parties. We found a solution by finding the right partner, and we are delighted with the results for our members.

Our next Virtual Pickup Party is March 24^th, 2023, and the newest set of tasting kits are available now through Master the World's website.

Lessons from a Plague Year: Seven Ways Covid Has Made Us a Better Business

It's a commonly accepted tenet in business that times of change spur innovation. Covid was no exception. Its restrictions on travel and limitations on gatherings forced us to rethink how we share Tablas Creek with our customers and how we work together as a team. Now, eighteen months later, though it's not like Covid is entirely in the rear-view mirror, I feel like we've settled into another equilibrium that includes a renewed flow of visitors to our tasting room. Larger events are restarting, albeit often at reduced capacity and with new restrictions to limit the risks to their attendees. And wineries, for all our fears as we entered the pandemic, have thrived. One of the revelations from the preliminary results released from the annual Silicon Valley Bank survey of Wine Industry Conditions was that nearly a third of wineries surveyed are projecting their best year ever, financially, in 2021:

I've spent a lot of time thinking in recent days about how much we learned over the last eighteen months. I thought I'd share my principal take-home lessons here.

• Safety and a great customer experience aren't mutually exclusive. When we reopened our tasting room in May of 2020, we chose to open outside-only. In order to maintain distancing, we gave each group their own table, for a full two hours. To keep the number of times we had to be in the customers' space modest, we moved to serving wines in flights of three. We restricted the maximum group size to six. To make it reasonable given the larger physical space, we reduced the maximum number of tables that any one of our tasting room hosts had to cover to three at a time. All of these changes resulted in a more relaxed experience, with better time to connect to the person pouring the wines, and the opportunity to compare and contrast the wines in each flight. It's probably unsurprising that we saw our average sale per customer and the percentage of customers who signed up for the wine club rise 30%-50%. At first, I attributed this to goodwill from guests grateful for a safe, appealing experience in a time when so many of those were unavailable. But even as things have reopened, that increase has held up. I just think that the experience we're offering now is a superior one to the tasting experience we offered before Covid. That's why when we reopened our indoor tasting room, we tried to apply these lessons to create a similarly appealing customer experience.   
• A great tasting experience means controlling your flow of customers. Equally important, I think, to the changes we made once customers got here was the implementation of reservations. At the outset, we didn't have a choice. We had twelve tables. If we hadn't required reservations, we would have had lines of dozens of people on weekends. We couldn't have kept people distanced. We couldn't have kept people cool while they were waiting. It would have been miserable, and frustrating, and unsafe. But we also realized that knowing how many people would be coming allowed us to always be appropriately staffed. It meant that our guests never had to wait, and that their tastings were never interrupted by us making room for another group that would then be at a different stage of the tasting, interrupting the logical flow of information. And we found that people redistributed themselves more evenly across more times and more days, instead of 40% of our weekly traffic arriving between 1pm and 4pm on Saturdays, as often happened pre-Covid. We learned that people who see that Saturday reservations are full will often make reservations on Friday, or Sunday, or earlier in the day. This is why even when we added capacity on our patios and reopened indoors, we kept tasting by appointment, with the option of accepting walk-in customers if we have space and staff to take care of them. That seems to me to be the best of both worlds.
• It's powerful to bring your marketing to where the people are. Before Covid, one thing that most winery marketing had in common was that it required customers to come to where the winery or winery representative was physically located. Whether that was a visit to the tasting room, going to a wine dinner, or stopping by a table at a retail tasting or a festival where a winery was pouring, we required customers to come to us. By contrast, most of the things we started doing during the first shutdown, from virtual tastings to live broadcasts to on-demand video, had in common that they could be accessed and participated in equally independent of location. Think how powerful (and how much more scalable) options like this are. Pre-Covid, even our local customers weren’t making weekly trips to visit us. What's more, the majority of our current customers and an even larger share of our potential customers don't live an easy drive from Paso Robles. In the periodic surveys we have done to former wine club members, we regularly saw responses that they weren't able to take advantage of the events we offered because of their distance from Paso Robles. We think of limitations like that as constant, but they're really not. We weren't utilizing the tools we had to offer opportunities to learn about and become more connected to what we're doing. And those tools, from Zoom to Instagram and Facebook Live, are much more robust now than they were before the pandemic.
• Technology is often a great alternative to travel. Over recent weeks, I've been enjoying getting back out in the California market, visiting restaurants and wine shops and spending in-person time with the distributor reps and Vineyard Brands managers who represent us in the wholesale marketplace. In two weeks I'll host my first Covid-era wine dinner, at Mama Shelter in Hollywood. That should be great fun. Those sorts of experiences are hard to replicate using virtual tools. Other sorts of experiences, however, are at least as effective over Zoom or its equivalent. If I never have to go to another in-person board meeting, that would be fine with me. Spending several hours driving to and from a central location for a meeting of an hour or two is inefficient to start with. Add to that the restrictions that this places on who can attend and from where, and the challenges of integrating people who can't make it via polycom phone... no thanks. Give me a Zoom meeting I can do from my office any day. Similarly, those distributor sales meeting presentations, where you have 15 minutes in front of an often-distracted sales force, and you're the 11th of 15 suppliers they're hearing from that day? And you have to travel to wherever they are to do this? Zoom is 95% of the experience at a tiny fraction of the cost, time, and carbon footprint of attending in person. For the companies and reps too, think of the efficiencies. Instead of having to coordinate 80 people's travel from all over the state, rent a hotel ballroom and arrange for AV, losing a full day of sales because of travel, and likely paying for hotels for the farthest-flung reps, a company can knock out the meeting in the time it takes to meet, then have the reps out in the market for the rest of the day. It's a win-win. What's more, identifying areas like this where there are viable alternatives to travel, particularly air travel, is going to have to be a priority as we all try to lower the carbon footprint of our business activities.  
• Having multiple ways to experience an event pays off. Just because people can start traveling again doesn't mean that all your customers will be able to come to you on your schedule, or that you should discard the virtual and on-demand pieces you've added over the last year. Our VINsider pickup party is a good example. We have about 8,000 VINsider Wine Club members. Twice a year, for nearly two decades, we have closed our tasting room on a Sunday just after wine club shipments have been sent out and invited any club members to join us. Once there, they get to taste the new wines, see and hear about what we've been working on, and enjoy some unhurried time with our team. Those events are great, and have attracted some 400 people to most recent sessions. But... 400 people (typically more like 200 couples) represents less than 3% of our members. And that was pre-Covid! During Covid, when we couldn't host gatherings, we pivoted to hosting a virtual tasting, where members could join me, Neil, and Chef Jeff Scott live on Facebook and YouTube to learn about the wines and our ongoing projects. The last two shipments, we worked with Master the World to give people the option of ordering tasting kits of 187ml bottles to accompany these tastings. And there's nothing about this that conflicts with an in-person event. This fall, when we resumed hosting an in-person pickup party, we still got about 500 people to join us live for our virtual tasting. Because the discussion gets archived, people who couldn't make it can still participate; the archives have received another 1,000 or so views. Finally, for four weeks after shipments went out, we gave members the option of tasting the wines in their most recent shipment if they visited the tasting room. We had another several hundred members take advantage of that. So instead of touching 2-3% of our membership after a shipment, we were able to interact with more than 2000: 350 members in person plus 500 members live virtual plus 1000 members archived virtual plus 600 or so members who came to the tasting room in those four weeks. I don't think it's a coincidence that our wine club cancellation rates over the last 18 months have been the lowest in our history.
• It's a big risk relying on just one or two sales channels. The pandemic produced unprecedented changes in the types of outlets in which wine was sold. Restaurants closed around the country, and when they reopened were often restricted to outdoor service or limited capacity either by mandate or by staffing challenges. Tasting rooms had to close for a stretch too. Many larger retailers saw increases in business, while smaller retailers often struggled unless they had built up a robust mailing list and e-commerce capability. And wineries had the challenge and the opportunity of an unprecedented surge in requests for shipped orders. By the end of 2020, it was clear that two sorts of wineries really struggled: those who were relying on foot traffic but had never translated that traffic into an effective mailing list or wine club strategy, and those who didn't have a robust direct sales business but instead traditionally focused on sales to restaurants and independent retail. I'm guessing that most of the 10% of wineries in the "Most Difficult Year in Our History" and "One of the Most Challenging" categories in the chart at the beginning of this piece fell into one of those two camps. And we saw challenges too from losing so much restaurant business and having to close our tasting room for more than four months. I've long been a believer in having wine available in different channels, because I'm convinced that each plays a role in reaching different customers and increases our chance of developing new fans. And that diversity proved to be a huge driver in our success over the last year and a half. Though we're a small player, we already had limited relationships in a couple of larger retail chains like Whole Foods and Total Wine, and were able to shift some of the wine we'd otherwise have intended for restaurants to the grateful retail outlets that were seeing a surge in business last spring. Although our tasting room was closed, we were able to work with our wine club and mailing list to offer out these wines to our fans, and with the shipping house we've worked with to handle the increases in volume. And now that restaurants are back up and going, we're poised to have our best sales year ever this year.
• It's all about connecting. I am sure that over the last year, many more people have seen the inside of my office, my back yard, or my living room than ever before. There is an intimacy to these sorts of virtual meeting platforms that so many of us experienced for the first time during the pandemic. These tools help address one of the areas where winery marketing is often weakest: establishing meaningful connections between the winery and the customer. You might buy a wine off a shelf at a retailer, or a list at a restaurant, whose connection to the winemaker or winery proprietor is third-hand at best: the winery sells the wine to a distributor, its national sales manager tells the story to the distributor sales team, a sales rep shares the wine with the buyer for that restaurant and retailer, and only then does the customer see it. These live virtual tools cut out all the layers between the producer and the customer, allow for direct interactions in ways that would previously have been rare, and give the customer a chance to really get to know the people behind the wines they love. That's a dream scenario for a business. The fact that it took a pandemic for us to learn to use these tools is a source of some embarrassment to me. But much better late than never.     

Last July, roughly three months into the pandemic, I took a crack at predicting which of the Covid-inspired changes to the wine business were likely to endure and which to fade away as businesses were allowed to reopen. Rereading that list, I feel pretty good about my predictions at the time. But what I don't think I could have predicted was the extent to which I'd feel like we were a better business as we emerge from this pandemic than we were entering it. From the Silicon Valley Bank survey, it doesn't seem like we're the only ones. I'm proud that we've been able to do this while keeping our team and our customers safe, taking care of the vineyard and the wines during two different (and as far as we can tell, outstanding) vintages, and continuing our commitment to be on the leading edge of responsible farming, resource use reduction, and farmworker equity.

It seems like one last thing I've learned is to expect that my desk will look like the below photo fairly often in the future. I can live with that.

California Re-Opening: How COVID Changed our Tasting Room Model Going Forward

[Editor's Note: thanks to Director of Marketing Ian Consoli, who contributed many of the ideas we're implementing, including an early draft of this blog and its photos.]

Sometimes, it takes a crisis to spur you to change something fundamental to your business. So it was when we got the news on March 18th, 2020 that we’d have to close our tasting room for the foreseeable future. When we were allowed to reopen in June, we were challenged to think of how we could give guests (and our team) the safest possible experience while also continuing our mission to educate them and showcase the great work our vineyard and cellar teams were doing. It’s only gradually that we’ve realized that the changes we made actually produced a superior experience to the one that we had been offering before.

Pre-pandemic, we were experiencing significant growth in our tasting room. It had reached a point where on busy Saturdays and holiday weekends, we were seeing 250 people or more per day. We always did what we could to make space for everyone, hiring more staff and even setting up tables in our cellar, but it was often a challenging environment to tell the story of Tablas Creek. You might squeeze into a bar space, next to someone already mid-way through their tasting, hear snatches of the story, get served a wine that you might not know, have your pourer try to quickly give you the overview of the property and a wine, all with four other groups at the bar at different points in their tastings. Not ideal for the customer experience, nor the wine educator. Our tasting room staff prides themselves on sharing the information they have spent hours learning and translating to customers. I remember hearing from some of our best tasting room folks who would feel dejected when the end of the day arrived and they realized they hadn’t connected with one individual or group because of the crowds.

Enter May of 2020. As we started to think about what a reopening plan might look like, we knew we wanted to be outdoors, socially distanced, in control of our traffic flow, with reduced contact between the wine educator and the wine taster. A few of the key choices we made were:

• Tastings by reservation. We didn’t know what the demand would be for wine tasting when we reopened. But we did know that we didn’t want lines or crowding. Reservations were the solution, because they allow our staff to know who is coming, and to limit the traffic to the number of seats we have. But they have a value beyond that. We can prepare for a wine club member and greet them by name when they arrive. Or we can know what wines they have enjoyed in the past, or who referred them. They have value for customers too, who know they have a table waiting for them and dedicated to them, and know that the winery will be properly staffed.
• Outside only. At the beginning of the pandemic, it wasn’t yet well understood how Covid-19 was transmitted. But the research that we did suggested that airflow was key to reducing transmission. So we opened outside only, even though the state had OK’ed wineries to reopen inside. When the regulations caught up with the science and forced wineries (and restaurants) to be outside-only a month later, we felt like our research had been vindicated. And the fact that not a single member of our tasting room team contracted Covid through the duration of the pandemic provided validation that we were able to create a safe environment.
• Tables, not bars. We talked at the beginning about trying to move our tasting bars outside. But we worried that people really didn’t want contact with people outside of their group. Instead, we repurposed the tables we’d set aside for picnickers as our main pouring areas. Everyone who reserved got their own table for two hours. We made sure the tables were well distanced from each other. That was for safety and comfort reasons, but we realized that it had other benefits. Each of our hosts had a maximum of three tables at a time. That allowed our wine educators to judge how much attention each group wanted. The taster benefits from this individualized experience. The wine educator benefits from the opportunity to build a relationship with the group at each table.
• Flight tastings. In our “before” tasting room setup, a guest was given a glass when they arrived, and poured a tasting. To move on to the next wine, they had to finish or dump out the previous taste. The complexity of this process and the number of people in front of any host meant, in practical terms, that we had to have a single tasting list for everyone. We would customize it a bit, offering some extra tastes or wine club exclusives as appropriate, but it was still the same basic lineup. Flights offer tasters a new way of experiencing a collection of six wines. We served them in groups of three, and guests could compare, contrast, and hop back and forth. We poured the wines inside and then carried them out with these cool touchless wine caddies. When we came with the second flight of three, it gave us a chance to check in with the guests and tell a little more of the story, but they never had to dump anything. The whole thing felt more elegant, more intentional, and less hurried.
• Options for everyone. When everyone is getting flights, and they have the time and space (and menu) to navigate them, it opens up the options of customization. We gave visitors a choice between our classic (mixed red and white) selection, our red wine selection, and our white wine selection. During wine club shipment times, we made flights of the recent shipment, to help make up for the fact that we weren’t able to host an in-person pickup party. These options help encourage comparison and discussion; it’s not at all unusual to have each guest at a table pick a different option so that they can try the maximum number of wines. At a place like Tablas Creek, where we make upwards of 25 wines each year, that’s great for everyone. It also gives us the chance to do fun things like component tastings. In our current white wine flight, for example, a customer can try Viognier, Marsanne, Roussanne, and our Cotes de Tablas Blanc, which is composed of those three grapes (plus Grenache Blanc). It’s a made-to-order educational seminar.

We reopened with a significantly reduced capacity. Because of the time we gave people to enjoy their tasting, and the number of seats we had, distanced, around the tables on our patio, we were able to welcome a maximum of about 120 people per day, less than half what we saw on an average pre-pandemic Saturday. We expected to see our traffic decline on Saturday and Sunday, which it did. What we didn’t expect was that guests who tried to make a reservation on a weekend day and saw it fully booked instead visited on other days. Our traffic on weekdays actually went up, and our weekly traffic was only down by about 30%, from roughly 700 guests to an average of around 500. Even more interestingly, our average weekly tasting room sales were almost identical to those of a pre-pandemic week, which means that our average sales per customer were up nearly 50%. Our wine club conversion percentages went up similarly.

Why? We’re convinced that it was because we were giving people a better experience.

Of course, there are other factors involved. The outpouring of support from our wine club members and long-time regulars was amazing and heart-warming. Just getting out to go wine tasting was a little slice of normalcy in an incredibly challenging and stressful year. But we feel confident it was more than that. For years, our average rating on Yelp and TripAdvisor hovered between 4.3 and 4.5, with about half our reviews being 5-star reviews. That’s pretty good, and puts us in the top quarter of local wineries. But it was noteworthy that a decent number of the lower reviews mentioned that the tasting room seemed busy and impersonal. Every one of these lesser reviews that we could tie to a specific date had visited on a weekend. During Covid, the percentage of our 5-star reviews rose to 83%. That’s a massive jump. We really don’t think that it was just pandemic goodwill that was leading to the higher sales and club signups. It was that we were doing a better job.

So what does all of this mean for our tasting room?

Last month, we received the OK to move back inside as the county moved to the orange (moderate risk) tier in the state’s recovery roadmap. But by that point we’d already started preparing to bring that experience we’d offered outside over the last year to our indoor guests. The challenge was that our tasting room, built ten years ago, was designed around the traditional “belly up to the bar” experience. The bars are built into the room, and located around the outside of the space that looks into our cellars. There’s a big built-in merchandise display space in the middle of the room. It wasn’t going to be as simple as just putting some tables inside. The space wouldn’t work for that. It was Tasting Room Manager John Morris who zeroed in on the option that we settled on: keep the bars, but retrofit them for seating.

John contacted the same local craftsman who custom-built our concrete bar tops ten years ago and commissioned him to update the bars with new, wider tops that provided room for guests’ knees. He ordered comfortable bar stools for the guests. Those bars were installed last week:

This process adds twenty-eight seats to our offered reservations. We’ve also added a few additional tables outside. Overall our maximum seated capacity will be more like 100 than the 65 that we had before. Guests will be able to reserve a bar seat inside, or a table outside. All guests, inside or outside, will have their own dedicated space and host, and be able to choose from our selection of flight tastings. And each will give a different level of interaction; think of it like being able to choose a seat at the sushi bar vs. a seat at a table. As we’ve learned, giving people a choice in their experiences has lots of other benefits.

All that will be welcome, we think, year-round. But having an indoor space will be critical on the occasional Paso Robles days where the weather is unfriendly. Last year we had to close entirely five days because of smoke or rain, and an additional twelve days had to close early when even with fans and misters we felt that the heat made the tasting experience unpleasant or even dangerous. Each time, we had to call customers to explain and try to reschedule, or if necessary cancel their appointments. That’s always hard. Going forward, while it may still be an issue with our outside seats, we’ll at least be able to move many of the guests inside. It gives us options. Seventeen days may not seem like much, but we got lucky. There have been plenty of years where we’d have had to close dozens of times if we were outside only.

When can you expect to see this new indoor space? We’re targeting July 2^nd. That should get us an inside option before the full heat of the summer is upon us. It also gives our whole team the chance to get fully vaccinated, which we felt was important before we moved back inside. You’ll be able to book the tasting of your choice directly from our visiting page.

This decision isn’t without downsides, which we recognize. It will mean that, unlike in the times pre-Covid, a visit to Tablas Creek will require some advance planning. It will mean that if you go to a neighboring tasting room and ask them for recommendations, it might not be possible to just show up at the place you want to discover and have a space waiting for you. But we’re hopeful that with our additional capacity we’ll be able to take more walk-ins, and visitors know that it’s not only us who are making this decision to keep our visits by reservations. A visit to Paso Robles Wine Country may be less spontaneous, but it will be more relaxed and much more reliable.

We are very excited about how the tasting experience at Tablas Creek has evolved. We hope you are too. We can’t wait to welcome everyone inside in July. See you all soon!

How to reopen tasting rooms indoors (more) safely... and why we won't be, at least at first

Since we reopened our tasting room in June, we've been operating outside only. Why? It's much, much safer. Even though in June we could have chosen to open indoors, we decided outdoors was the only way that we were comfortable. The state of California, a month later, made the same determination, and has required outdoor-only operation for winery tasting rooms ever since.

Fast forward five months. California's reopening plan has evolved as more science became available, eventually settling where it is now, with four different color-coded stages measuring county-level Covid risk, from yellow (minimal) through orange (moderate) and red (substantial) to purple (widespread). Since the plan was released, all the wine country counties have been in purple or red, both of which limit winery tasting rooms to outside operation only. But with San Luis Obispo County approaching the threshold of orange (moderate) Covid risk, and Napa and Marin counties already there, we're again in a period where wineries will have the option of choosing to offer indoor tastings. But should we? I am skeptical. 

There is a terrific interactive graphic in El Pais that models the likelihood of Covid transmission under various indoor environments, including private living rooms, bars, and schools. These models are based on research by José Luis Jiménez, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Colorado and an expert in the chemistry and dynamics of air particles. It makes for fascinating and helpful reading, whether you're a business owner thinking of how to design the safest-possible spaces, a customer deciding what sorts of businesses are safe to patronize, or a government administrator determining which sorts of businesses can safely reopen.

Jiménez's research demonstrates that it is ventilation first, and proximity second, that is the most important determinant of transmission. The analogy in the piece that I found most helpful was to think of the aerosol clouds that are the principal form of Covid transmission as like smoke. If a room doesn't have good air flow, and people are in it for an extended period, whether you're within a few feet or across the room won't make much difference. The clouds of aerosols will permeate a space, and eventually even render masks ineffective. Actions like shouting or singing, or not wearing masks, increase the speed with which those aerosols are produced and enter the environment. The flow of fresh air determines how fast those aerosols dissipate. 

The fact that your risk of infection is determined by the viral load you inhale means that it's not a binary do-you-come-into-contact-with-a-Covid-particle question. It's a how-much-virus-do-you-come-into-contact-with question. This is why outdoor activities carry very low risk unless you're right next to an infectious carrier for an extended period: fresh air keeps the concentrations of potentially infectious aerosols low. So, if a winery is considering moving back into their indoor tasting room, what should they do?

• Maximize air flow and ventilation. First and foremost, I would be doing everything I could to keep outside air moving inside. Open doors and windows, and make sure the air is flowing in, with fans if it's not moving naturally. This isn't just for your tasting room; when I get into our office I make sure we have as many windows and doors open as possible, and I ask the rest of our team to do the same.
• Install high quality purification HVAC systems. Not every room has great access to outside air. And that definitely increases the risks. But there are still ways that you can keep fresh air flowing in an interior room. At Tablas Creek, to protect everyone in our offices as best we can, we've put in UV air purifiers as a part of our HVAC system. You can get a similar protective effect from filters, though because the filters that can filter out aerosol particles are quite dense, they may require upgrades in fans and these filters need to be changed regularly. HVAC systems have been shown to spread Covid if not upgraded, so it's not as simple as just making sure that existing fans are on. 
• Focus on seated tastings. Bar tastings are problematic for the same reason bars are problematic. The format puts your customers face-to-face, unmasked, in close proximity to your staff. In that situation, even increased fresh air flow may not be enough to protect them. A seated tasting, like an encounter at a restaurant, makes maintaining distance easier. It also means that the amount of time spent in close proximity (remember, accumulation of exposure matters) is less.
• Limit the number of people in a room at once. Obviously, the fewer people you have in your space, the lower the chances that anyone, at any time, is infected. It's also essential if you hope to maintain distancing. But beyond those considerations, it also reduces the volume at which everyone has to speak to make themselves heard. Because shouting releases something like five times as many aerosols as speaking in a normal voice, reducing the ambient noise level is an important consideration. If you can also install noise-reducing insulation, that's worth considering too.
• Make sure people are wearing masks consistently and properly. This is especially important for your own team, and for guests when they're moving around your space and past other guests. If your air flow is good, you're just trying to make sure that no one ever gets a blast of infected aerosols or (god forbid) the larger respiratory particles that the CDC was initially most concerned with, and which spurred the 6-foot social distancing guideline. Masks are great at slowing and minimizing aerosols, and almost totally effective at eliminating respiratory droplets.   

So, given all that, what would the safest indoor tasting look like? It would be a seated tasting, given plenty of space, in a room with good outside air flow. Honestly, not all that different from what most of us have been doing outside, except inside. But I still don't think we'll be moving inside as soon as the state says we can.   

Why? Our space isn't ideally set up for that sort of optimally-safe indoor experience. We designed our tasting room to be surrounded by the cellar, with big windows that show the work that's going on. The two exterior doors are pretty close to one another, both toward the same corner of what is essentially a big, square room. It wouldn't be easy to get the air from outside into that space. And the cellar spaces are designed to be well-insulated, exactly the opposite of the well-ventilated rooms we would want.

There's also the question of the physical space. Our main tasting room has built-in bars around the outside and a permanent merchandise installation in the middle of the room. Because I feel that standing bar tastings are an unacceptable risk, we'd be left with a room that's unsuited to the sort of tasting we'd want to offer. I could see us using our smaller semi-private room (which we previously reconfigured for seated tastings) because the space works and we have big doors to our patio we could open. But that's only big enough for maybe 3 tables, distanced, and right now it's also the space we're using to stage all the glasses and bottles we're using in the flights we're offering, because it's closest to the patios where everyone is sitting. Putting tables in there would make it harder to serve the (much larger) patio spaces.

Plus, and I keep coming back to this, wine tasting is a non-essential activity. Sure, it's a fun and pleasant activity. And it's good for our bottom line. But I don't think that's enough: our risk has to be exceptionally low in order for me to feel comfortable with us operating. That's a high threshold. As we're operating now, outdoors only, well spaced, with good cleaning and sanitizing protocols, groups limited to 6 or fewer, and with all our people masked (and our guests masked unless they're seated at their tables) I think we clear that threshold. The fact that we haven't had a single case of Covid among any of our tasting room team, over thousands of interactions over the last five-plus months, bears that out.

But as the evolving Covid safe-operation guidelines have shown, just because the state or county (or even the CDC) says you can do something, doesn't mean that it's a good idea. We opened outdoors-only in June, even though the state said indoor tastings were allowed. A month later, they changed their guidance and everyone had to move outside. I am still committed to a cautious approach. We've invested in heaters and will be covering over the rest of the top level of our patio so we have more space that's available to us if it rains. Most winter days in Paso Robles are nice enough that with a little extra heat, being outside is a pleasure. If we have to close a few days because it's stormy, I'm willing to do that. It's better than opening in a configuration that puts us, and our guests, at risk.

So, if you're looking forward to visiting Tablas Creek this winter, bring a jacket, and plan to check the conditions. It will most likely be lovely; winter here is my favorite season. And at the very least, you can be confident you'll be enjoying a social activity that doesn't put yourself or anyone else at risk.

Creating a Wine Tasting Show: The Story behind Chelsea and the Shepherd

By Ian Consoli

If you follow only our blog and not our other social media channels, it’s possible that you don’t yet know Chelsea and the Shepherd. Or at least, you might know Chelsea, or the Shepherd, but not Chelsea and the Shepherd. If that’s the case, please allow me to introduce you. Blog readers, meet our YouTube series in which our Senior Assistant Winemaker Chelsea Franchi and our Shepherd Nathan Stuart walk you through the wines in Tablas Creek Vineyard’s most recently released VINsider wine club shipment. YouTube series, meet our readers.

For many, the series has become a favorite. Some gravitate toward Chelsea’s incisive observations (and next level vocabulary). Others identify with Nathan, as he brings the wine tasting process down to Earth.

As we prepare for the release of Chelsea and the Shepherd Season 2 I thought it would be fun to share how it came to be created. It’s a story that begins with two guys with just enough time on their hands to be creative and a desire to make the wine tasting process less intimidating and more fun.

Shepherd Nathan Stuart came to Tablas Creek with an eclectic resume and a remarkable collection of talents. Shepherd. Cellar hand. Trained vineyard guy. Cameraman. Drone operator. Video editor. In early 2019, when I moved into my marketing role here at Tablas Creek, he had already produced two amazing videos sharing Tablas Creek’s story: the Esprit de Tablas Story and the People behind Patelin de Tablas. We were fortunate enough to share an office. Day one Nathan looks at me with an eager smile under an impressively giant mustache and says, “Oh we’re doing marketing together now? This is going to be fun.”

Fun it certainly has been. To his technical talent Nathan adds a creative mind, openness to discussion, and an inability to turn off his imagination. He also, it turns out, is just as good in front of the camera as he is behind it. The net result? I’ve been living in a think tank for most of the last two years.

Fast forward to a vertical tasting of Panoplie in July of 2019. I sat in awe as I first got to bear witness to Senior Assistant Winemaker Chelsea Franchi’s descriptors and vocabulary. After scurrying back to the think tank and mentioning it to Nathan, the idea of capturing her ability to paint pictures with her words was born.

Fast forward again, to November 2019, just after a harvest in which I see the value of Nathan’s periodic forays into cellar life, how he makes the rest of the team laugh, how his ability to work hard but not seriously makes the whole team better, and it clicks, “a wine tasting show with a winemaker and the shepherd!” Chelsea absolutely loves the idea. The valve on the think tank opens up, the ideas pour out like some freshly fermented Grenache, and Chelsea and the Shepherd is born.

Our challenge: even in a non-Covid year, we ask a lot of our members if they want to learn about the wines we send to them. We host a pickup party each spring and fall, and it’s a testament to their dedication that so many of them make the trip each time, but still, it’s an experience that the 90+% of our members who don’t join us can’t share. How to bring this experience to members, wherever they live? Technology! Our idea: A YouTube video to walk wine club members through their newest six-bottle shipment. Give great information, but don’t assume too much knowledge. We know that people can join us at any point in their wine journey, so it’s essential that we be approachable for newcomers. By combining Chelsea’s wine knowledge and vocabulary with Nathan’s everyman relatability, it seemed like we had a good balance.

The first take: February, 2020. Nathan prepares his camera for a six-wine, single-day shoot. Un-planned, un-rehearsed, they sit down for a full 8-hour workday, a testament to Nathan’s boundless energy and Chelsea’s patience and inherent parenting skills. They piece together what will ultimately become the first episode of Chelsea and the Shepherd. For Nathan, that 8-hour film day is just the beginning as he takes many more to turn those hours of footage into a five-minute video.

Covid’s impact: The original launch date of the Chelsea and the Shepherd video was March 24^th 2020. We’d prepared a couple of teaser videos that we pushed back because mid-March felt so scary. But as we settled into a “new normal” of lockdowns, social distancing, and stay-at-home orders we began to recognize that this video was a potentially powerful way for us to connect our fans and our wines with the tasting room closed. Turning it into a series seemed only appropriate. Nathan utilized the extra footage, compiled individual videos for each wine, and our YouTube video became a YouTube series.

Had Covid-19 not hit, it’s hard to know whether or not we would have felt compelled to turn it into a full series. We’re glad we did, and plan to continue to release new seasons with every wine club shipment, giving you insights that, in the past, were only available if you visited.

And now: Enjoy Season Two, Episode One of Chelsea and the Shepherd on our YouTube Channel! While you’re there, consider subscribing and following along.

So did we reach our goal of appealing to all of our audiences? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Wineries -- and visitors -- should expect months of recurring periodic closures to tasting rooms

Yesterday, our tasting room was open all day for the first time since Thursday, August 13th. We're open again today, and conditions are lovely. Tomorrow looks pretty safe. After that, well, we'll have to see. At least the heat wave that forced us to close most of last week has moved on, but there are still big fires burning to our north, and whether we'll be able to open will depend on where that smoke goes. 

Welcome to 2020. Anyone waiting for things to go back to normal may be waiting quite a while. And I'm just not sure that wine lovers -- or wineries -- have fully realized that this uncertainty is likely to be the norm, rather than the exception, for tasting room operations over the next six months and more. For our part, I'm fully expecting that we'll have to be closed at least one day a week, on average, over the next six months. Why?

First, and most importantly, COVID, which has meant that wineries in California are restricted to outdoor service only. I agree that this is by far the safest way to open. In fact, even when we could have reopened indoors we restricted ourselves to outdoor service only, because the evidence is strong that the risk of COVID transmission is very low in distanced, outdoor settings, and higher in indoor spaces, even with distancing in place. Of course, being outside means you're at the mercy of the weather. But the virus itself is a source of uncertainty; we’ve already had a few instances locally of positive COVID cases at wineries, who have had to close for stretches to make sure their team and their spaces were safe.

It's not bad, most of the time, being outside in California. It's a big reason why people live here. And we got lucky that we had a moderate summer up until the last few weeks. But the climate that allows wine grapes to ripen is sunny and often hot. We do have some control; we installed extra shade, fans, and misters, and have found that with these measures we're able to lower the temperature roughly ten degrees. Plus, we're typically a little cooler than downtown or areas further east. And we do usually get a late afternoon breeze. But still, if it’s over 100, it’s not safe for our team or pleasant for guests. So, we close early and get people on their way before the heat of the day becomes blazing. We've had to do so eight days so far in August, including a six-day stretch between August 14th and 19th. Our average in Paso is a dozen 100+ days each summer. So expect at least a few more heat-related closures before fall.

The heat wave broke late last week. Unfortunately, we’ve got big fires throughout California, producing copious smoke. A few days ago we had the worst air quality in the world. At least with the heat, we could be open in the mornings. We typically took our last appointments at noon each day. That’s a little less than half our capacity, but it’s a lot better than nothing. But with air conditions unsafe, we couldn’t open at all August 20th, 21st, and 22nd. This dramatic satellite image shows the smoke blanketing much of California late last week:

Stunning view from space of the intense wildfires burning across Northern California covering the region in a sea of smoke. #LNULightningComplex #CZULightningComplex #SCULightningComplex #CAwx #CAfire pic.twitter.com/pr8NRRDSJw

— US StormWatch (@GreatWinter2017) August 21, 2020

The primary culprit for our smoke is the River Fire in Monterey County to our north, which has burned some 48,000 acres since it was started by a cluster of lightning strikes a week ago. But there are fires burning all over California right now, with other big ones in Sonoma, Napa, and Santa Cruz. And I think there’s every reason to expect these to be burning for months.

Typically, wildfires in California’s forests burn until they are put out by the onset of the rainy season in early winter. Our state’s remarkable firefighters are mostly tasked with protecting structures and making sure that the fires aren’t endangering communities. Once a big fire gets going, with the accumulated fuel from California’s winter growth and exceptionally low summer humidity, it’s just too much to ask to put a fire out. And that’s true even when there are only a few fires burning. With dozens of big ones spreading resources thin, there’s no chance.

These fires were mostly started by lightning strikes from a rare summer thunderstorm week-before-last. We seem to have dodged the potential for more dry lightning overnight. But we’ve still got months before winter rains will end our fire season. Remember all those terrible California wine country fires in 2017 and 2018? Those were in October and November. It's still August. We've got a very long way to go.

Until then? We’re expecting to make day-by-day calls, informed by the local air quality, as to whether we can open for tasters. Most other California wineries will be the same. So if you’re thinking of going wine tasting, plan to check conditions. We'll be posting updates on our website each morning. If it looks like this, we won't be open. We appreciate your flexibility and patience, and promise you wouldn't want to be tasting here anyway.

The kicker? Once fire and summer heat season are over, it will be because of rain. Gentle rain can be handled with umbrellas and heaters. A Pacific storm, with heavy rain and wind? Wineries will have to close for those too. So get used to thinking about a visit to go wine tasting as like a visit to the beach. Sure, make your plans. But also plan to check local conditions in the morning. Welcome to the new (2020) normal.

Which of the many Covid-19 changes to the wine industry will prove enduring?

Usually, at this time of year, I'm locking in the plans for the market visits I'll be making for the busy fall selling season. When I travel, I typically spend my days riding around with distributor reps calling on restaurant and retail accounts to show them our new releases, and my evenings hosting in-store tastings and winemaker dinners to help those same accounts tell the Tablas Creek story to their customers. But I won't be visiting any out-of-state markets the rest of 2020. That's for sure, and I think the first half of 2021 is likely to be more of the same.

Instead, I've been scheduling Zoom meetings and arranging for sample deliveries to wholesale accounts, working on a national strategy to organize virtual tastings around the releases of the 2018 Esprit de Tablas and Esprit de Tablas Blanc, trying to figure out what sorts of trade visits to Tablas Creek we can safely host, and finalizing details with my guest for Wednesday's Instagram Live broadcast.

I think it's safe to say that this pandemic will be a generation-defining event, in the way that 9-11 was, or the Vietnam War. Covid has spurred changes large and small to nearly everyone's personal and work lives. I've been thinking a lot about which of the changes that we're making to our business will be things that will endure even after the pandemic is in the rear-view mirror, and which will fade away as we get back to normal life. Here are my current thoughts.

Things that seem like they will endure

• Virtual trade tastings. These sorts of tastings have been (in my opinion) exceptionally effective. We've figured out how to rebottle wines into sample bottles and get those samples to the restaurant and retail buyers (and media) in a relatively cost-effective way. Then, over Zoom, we can present the wines, have a conversation, show photos, answer (and ask) questions, and generally be interactive. Compare this to the closest thing in the before world: a trade lunch or trade seminar. People have to physically get to your location, you always get tons of cancellations, it's expensive, and it's inflexible. What you lose from being online is negligible, but what you gain is massive. People can be anywhere. There are no commute costs and no one cancels because they're stuck in traffic. You can add people up to the last minute, and you can even record the events for people who couldn't join you to watch later.    
• An increased focus on reaching consumers online with live events. At Tablas Creek, Neil and I both started doing live broadcasts weekly at the beginning of the pandemic, him on Facebook and me on Instagram. They've both been sufficiently compelling that although we've moved to an ever-other-week schedule, we're planning on keeping them going indefinitely. I've written about how one of the things this pandemic has done is encourage us (and other wineries) to meet consumers where they are, rather than force them to come to us. This is a great way to do this, at very low cost, and they're archived and posted on our social media channels for people to revisit at their leisure. 
• Shift toward e-commerce and delivery. Our baseline of weekly phone and internet orders during the pandemic was roughly three and a half times what it was last year. That's a huge increase. I know that some of it was an unsustainable surge in people stocking up, and some of it was that everyone was at home cooking instead of out at restaurants (and so they needed to buy wine to go with those meals). But that's a lot of customers who now know how to use the online tools who didn't before, and I think it's extremely unlikely that the baseline will go down to where it was before. I've read in other industries that the pandemic spurred five years of changes in behavior in a few months. That sounds right to me, at least for this metric.
• Tastings by appointment at wineries. We've always been proud that you didn't need an appointment to taste at Tablas Creek, and felt that allowing someone who is recommended to visit to make a spur-of-the-moment decision to do so was central to our mission to spread the word on the Rhone Rangers category. But we realized that there was no way that we could control our flow of tasters (which then allows us to maintain distancing and ensure a good experience for those who come) without appointments. So, we implemented them. The results have been quite positive. The average sale per customer has gone up about 13%, as have wine club conversions, and we haven't lost much traffic, because when visitors see that Saturday is sold out, they've been booking Friday or Sunday visits instead. That means we can give everyone better experiences, and we've seen the results in sales and club signups. I can easily imagine not wanting to go back.
• Fewer wine cruises. We've hosted wonderful cruises that brought people to Beaucastel and around French, Spanish, and Italian wine regions each odd-numbered year since 2013. And we were far from the only ones. By the past few years, it seemed like every winery, wine region, and wine association was sponsoring a wine cruise somewhere. I don't think they will go away, but I do think that we'll see fewer of them, as I think it will take a long time for people's tolerance for close quarters and enclosed spaces to return to where it was pre-Covid.
• Wine and drinks to-go from restaurants. One of the relief measures that most states passed in the immediate aftermath of shut-down orders was to allow restaurants to sell beer, wine, and cocktails for takeout with their food. And it's been wonderful, with really no negative impacts on anyone that I can think of. While a few places might re-enact restrictions on this business, I think most of them will stay in place, not least because restaurants are likely to be struggling with reduced capacity or outside dining only for quite a long time. By the time things get back to normal, I just can't see state governments choosing to punish restaurants by taking away this revenue source. 

Things that likely won't endure

• The end of wine festivals. There just aren't going to be wine festivals, at least not as we know them, until there's a Covid vaccine. Sure, events will move online. (Along those lines, if you want to experience the famously exclusive Aspen Food & Wine Classic, you can do so online for free. One of our wines is even included in a seminar!) But I don't think that this spells the end of wine festivals, because the online experience is so far removed from what you get if you go to an event and can choose from hundreds of wines from dozens of wineries, and sample tastes from scores of restaurants. That doesn't translate online very well, and as soon as people feel safe in crowds, I expect these sorts of events to come roaring back.
• Virtual consumer tastings. We pivoted to offer virtual wine tastings during the three months when our tasting room was closed. And we enjoyed them, and got lots of positive feedback. But as things have moved toward reopening, we've seen demand fall pretty sharply. In April, we sold 58 of our virtual tasting packs per week. In May, that declined to 23 per week. In June, it fell to 8 per week. Some of that was other wineries jumping into that same space. But a lot of it was, I think, Zoom fatigue, and the fact that sitting in front of a computer is a pale reflection of a winery visit, no matter how engaging a winery tries to make it. We're going to plan to continue to offer virtual tastings, but I don't expect the demand to be huge. The sorts of virtual events that I do think will endure are those that offer experiences that aren't a knockoff of what you can get at a winery, like panel discussions including far-flung members of the wine community, and offering deep insights into regions, grapes, or techniques. 
• Cheap wine shipping. There were a ton of pressures, both short- and long-term, for wineries to offer free or discounted shipping during the first round of stay-at-home orders. And we did, offering $10 flat-rate shipping for more than three months. It seemed the least we could do to help people sheltering at home, and we were worried that the closure of restaurants would mean that a big outlet for our wines would disappear, leaving us with lots of extra inventory. As it turned out, we did lose most of that restaurant business, but the growth in direct sales mostly made up for it, though at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars in shipping subsidies. Boutique wineries can generally not easily replicate Amazon and other e-commerce giants' infrastructure of having warehouses around the country, and therefore being able to offer fast, cheap ground shipping. Many wines are made in tiny quantities, and the logistical challenges of splitting, say, 70 total cases of inventory of our newly-released 2019 Picardan among multiple warehouses and our tasting room are really thorny. Because wine is perishable, two-day shipping or faster is pretty much non-negotiable. And because wine bottles are heavy, air shipping is expensive. Even with the better rates that our fulfillment center can negotiate because of their volume, it's around $100 for us to send a case of wine to the east coast, and not much less to go to Texas or the Midwest. That's a lot of cost to eat if you're offering free or steeply discounted shipping, particularly if your wines aren't $50 or more per bottle. Essentially, nothing has changed since this Twitter thread I shared in February. All together, this means that I don't think that most wineries will be able to keep up free or nearly-free shipping indefinitely:   

A short thread on customer expectations and wine shipping. 12 years ago, we surveyed wine club members who had canceled in recent years to learn more about why. One response we got repeatedly was that people expected free or very cheap shipping. https://t.co/JwhKebLKdb 1/

— Jason Haas (@jasonchaas) February 21, 2020

So, I'm curious. What did I miss? Any big wine industry changes that you're seeing that you think are here to stay? Or that will be relegated to the dustbin of history as soon as we have a Covid vaccine? Please share in the comments.

When we reopen post-Coronavirus, things will look different. But safe and fun aren't mutually exclusive.

Six weeks ago, I wrote a blog thinking about what reopening might look like post-Coronavirus. At that time it seemed far away. Now, we're getting down to the details of reopening, which I'm anticipating will happen sometime in June.

[Editor's Note June 9, 2020: We have received permission from the state and county to reopen. Our first day open will be Wednesday, June 17th. Thank you for your patience!]

When I wrote that blog, three weeks into most stay-at-home orders, the idea that businesses would reopen into a very different reality hadn't hit most people yet. The hope was that we could crush the curve in a month or two, and then reopen more or less as we were before. Now nearly every state has begun reopening, to some degree at least, and California has entered stage 2 of its Resilience Roadmap. In this stage, restaurants (and wineries who serve meals) can reopen for in-person dining under distanced guidelines.

At Tablas Creek, we're not a restaurant, and don't feel it's wise for us to try to become one just to reopen a few weeks early. Food, after all, changes how wine tastes. There's a reason that professional tasters don't evaluate wines over a meal. And great food (as well as great food service) is hard, particularly if you have to provide "bona fide meals" as specified in the state protocols.

If I thought we were looking at months before we could reopen, I might evaluate, but I really do think that we're in the home stretch, and reopening tasting rooms under new safety protocols is a matter of weeks away, not months. After all, as a recent letter from CA regional wine associations to the governor points out, if serving food and wine can be done with an acceptably low level of risk, serving just wine is (if anything) safer. There's less prep, fewer utensils, less cleanup. Less to sanitize.

We don't know exactly when that will happen. But we do know that when it does happen, we want to be ready with plans that we're confident will provide a great experience, safely. So, what can customers expect? Much of what I predicted in my April blog, but a few additional things. Here's what we're planning:

• Tasting by appointment only, so we can regulate traffic flow, make sure that we don't have people building up in our parking lots, and be sure that we can take great care of the people who do make the journey.
• Get to know our patio. We'll be doing all our tastings outside for at least the next few months. We have a great patio space with several shaded levels, and we're making some alterations to ensure that everyone has their own space. Why outside only? I dive into why we think that's so critical below.
• Plenty of time between groups to clean and sanitize spaces. We're leaving roughly double the time that we figure most guests take for a tasting with us between bookings. We want to make sure we have enough time for a relaxed tasting, and to clean and sanitize spaces, with no one having to wait.
• All seated flight tastings. We're planning tastings of six wines, which we'll serve in two flights of three. We're getting cool no-touch carriers to bring the wines to guests' tables. That way we don't need to stay in guests' space as long. That level of spacing just isn't possible across a tasting bar.
• No groups larger than six. Large groups in and of themselves encourage people to abandon physical distancing, even if you ask them to maintain it at your facility. Plus they're inherently chaotic at the winery. I feel like this is a part of not encouraging behavior that is likely to have negative consequences.  
• Face coverings for us, and for you until you're seated. Our team will be wearing face coverings, and we'll ask guests to as well until they're seated at their tables. We'll have disposable masks for anyone who needs one.
• Education and health checks for our team. We're working with our team to help them monitor their own health. No one who is showing any symptoms will be allowed to come to work. We have always granted paid sick leave for our team members, so they have no economic incentive to work while they might be ill.
• No merchandise browsing or picnicking. We'll be restricting our merchandise to a few items that we can display on the wall behind our check-out table, and then getting items from boxed stock as requested. And because we'll be using our whole patio to properly space out our tastings, we won't be able to accommodate picnicking. We apologize!

As we learn about how Covid-19 spreads, it's clear that the most important thing to avoid is creating spaces where virus particles accumulate and stay. That's why the rates of outdoor transmission are so (happily) low, particularly with distancing guidelines observed. Earlier this month I shared on Twitter this terrific piece by UMass epidemiology professor Erin Bromage. In it, he investigates where significant spread occurs and where it doesn't. Because infection becomes much more likely as sustained contact with virus particles occurs, the risks are high in enclosed indoor spaces without much fresh air flow, low elsewhere. And while I love our tasting room, and feel confident in our cleaning protocols, it's not a space I'm comfortable welcoming guests in right now. There's not a ton of air flow. It's surrounded by our cellar (a space without much air flow, for obvious reasons). We only have one door. It's just not feasible to match the level of air circulation we can get outdoors.

Fortunately, we've got our patio. We did the math and figure that we can easily seat 50 people at a time, with plenty of distance between groups. Plenty of shade (and yes, we know there will still be some hot afternoons and are installing both fixed and portable misting systems to help ameliorate this).

On our patio, with our other safety and cleaning protocols, I feel that we can open with exceptionally low risk to our guests and team. And that's critical. This is a marathon, not a sprint. I'm expecting that we'll need to operate in a Covid-19 environment for a long time. If you feel you can operate each day 99% safely, that sounds like pretty good odds. And if you're just open a few days, that's probably OK. But if you have to be successful every day for a month, your likelihood of zero mishaps drops to 74%. If it's six months, it drops all the way to 16%. A year, and your chances are just 2.5%. That's just the relentlessness of exponential math. But it drives home what the stakes are as we contemplate how to reopen. Each additional step that we can take to reduce our risk of catching or transmitting the virus, even if it's minor and incremental, makes a big difference over time.

For years, we've gotten requests for outdoor tastings. This wasn't the situation in which I'd hoped to add them to our lineup, but I do think it's going to be a great experience for our guests, and I'm confident that we can sustain it as long as we need to, safely.

What do you think? Are you ready to go back wine tasting? And under what conditions? Are there things you're particularly concerned with? Please share in the comments.⁠

A Wine-Themed Pandemic Reading List

By Ian Consoli

Part of my role as the marketing coordinator for Tablas Creek is to stay connected with people in every department. With the recent stay-at-home order and our transition to working from home, I am missing that role and the conversations that come with it.

As I thought back through those conversations I recalled a common thread: a whole heck-of-a-lot of us love to read.  Whether it’s the latest book that we’ve picked up, a recent article, or a blog, if you’re a reader you’ll understand how exciting it is to say, “I’m reading so-and-so right now,” and inevitably someone in the room says, “I’ve read that book, it’s amazing!”

With that in mind, I reached out to our team to gather a wine-themed reading list. It seems like the whole Tablas Creek community could use a good book or seven right now, to complement the binging of Netflix and the rehearsing of TikTok dances (don’t ask) we're all doing. And maybe by the next time you visit us in our tasting room, after this whole thing is over, you’ll bring up the wine book you’re reading and the person on the other side of the bar will say, “Hey, I’ve read that book. It’s amazing!”

Enjoy the recommendations from the members of our Tablas Team in alphabetical order, in their own words. Anything look familiar? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Something missing on this list? Please share it with us in the comments.

Neil Collins, Winemaker

First book that comes to mind is Adventures on the Wine Route by Kermit Lynch, I read this book very early in my career and found it very inspiring in fact I still do.

The other book that I would recommend is Devil in the Kitchen by Chef Marco Pierre White. Although this is actually not a wine book rather a book by a chef, I find the lengths to which he went in pursuit of perfection very inspiring. He is also out of crazy!

Sandi Crewe, Wine Educator:

He said Beer She said Wine by Marnie Old and Sam Calagione

It is about “beverage options from more than one angle.” Sam is a brewer and owner of Dogfish Head (which sold to Boston Beer Company last year). Marnie is a sommelier, author and wine educator.

My son and I became seriously interested in the beer and wine worlds at about the same time. As he became a professional brewer and more passionate about beer, it made me cognizant of the similarities with wine. I wanted to share his passion and the book helped me to better speak his new language. On the other hand, he attended a few of my wine classes. Now we share beer and wine tastings whenever we can find the time. I particularly enjoyed the beer and wine food pairing information presented.

I recommend the book because it is a great source for beer and wine lovers alike. It gives very basic information on flavors and styles of beer and wine. Best of all, I feel closer to my son because of our common ground.

Darren Delmore, National Sales Manager

Wines of the Rhone Valley by Robert Mayberry

I somehow savored this dusty tome like a divorcée on a Provence-bound train reading "Eat Pray Love". This circa-1987 book got me through the later stages of my broken foot in January and into the first part of this other crisis. Anyone interested in how the Rhone Valley was set up and governed, or its personalities and history of the grape varietals, will find this book more than alive today. The winemakers give away most of their secrets, and the section on Tavel alone had me buying a couple cases from Domaine de la Mordoree on presale. The author's jazzy, matter-of-fact take on good and bad bottles and vintages reveals a true wine enthusiast who was well trusted by the profiled vignerons. In between the Cornas and Crozes Hermitage chapters an old, unsmoked cigarette fell out of the pages, which I contemplated lighting alongside a bottle of Domaine des Alexandrins.

Meghan Dunn, Publications

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Perhaps only tangentially related to wine, but I recommend A Discovery of Witches (and the rest of the All Souls trilogy), by Deborah Harkness. It defies easy categorization, but combines fantasy, historical fiction, and romance -- witches and vampires unite to trace a missing alchemical manuscript through history. The main character is a vampire who is extremely knowledgeable about wine, and there are evocative passages about wine pairings and historic vintages, all described by a super-human taster with centuries of experience. It's great escapist fiction! (Harkness is a history professor at USC who published an award-winning wine blog for several years, so she knows her stuff!)

Chelsea Franchi, Senior Assistant Winemaker

The Quick Read (with solid, useful information):

The New Wine Rules by Jon Bonné

This book is completely without pretense and a fun, easy, fast read (it’s a thin book) but it’s chock full of great, easy-to-digest information.  I wouldn’t necessarily say this book is for a wine professional, though I wouldn’t say it isn’t; sometimes it’s good to be reminded of certain things!  For someone looking to increase their wine drinking confidence, this is a well-written collection that will make you (even more) excited about your next glass of wine.

The Historical Account That Reads Like Fiction:

The Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine by George M. Taber

This is an exciting, hopeful story about the (then) young-guns of California wine and how they opened the eyes to the rest of the world that California (and, as an extension, other parts of the world) can produce world-class wines.  It’s a true story, but it has everything that a fiction lover like myself could want: character development, recognizable locations (not just Napa, but specific wineries that are now household names) and drama.

The “There Is A Lot Going On In The World And I Just Want to Read Something That Will Make Me Smile”: French Lessons:

Adventures with Knife, Fork and Corkscrew by Peter Mayle

This is not a wine book.  This is one man’s stories from his time spent living in France (if the name sounded familiar, he’s the author of A Year in Provence) and the hedonistic and delightful experiences that follow.  Each chapter is a different story, so it’s technically possible to read a little bit and then walk away – though I couldn’t put it down.  I especially loved the chapters devoted to the Bordeaux Marathon, the black truffle Catholic Mass, and the Michelin Guide.  If you’re looking to read something that will keep a grin on your face, this is my pick.  Unfortunately, it will definitely give you some wanderlust.

Jason Haas, Partner and General Manager

Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace.

The true story of the unraveling of a complicated con, set in motion with the 1987 auctioning at Christie's of what were purported to be bottles of 1787 Chateau Lafite owned by Thomas Jefferson and discovered in a sealed Paris cellar. The book reads like a mystery novel, and takes you inside the world of collectors, auction houses, and the shadowy figures that keep both supplied with ever more incredible discoveries. Of course, it becomes clear, if it's too good to be true, it's probably not.

Proof by Dick Francis.

OK, this is a mystery, not a wine book. But I've been looking for escape in my reading in recent weeks. Dick Francis is my favorite mystery writer. His novels usually revolve around the world of English horse racing, but for this book he chose a main character whose occupation is the owner of a neighborhood wine shop, and a plot that involves a fraud of replacing famous wines and whiskeys with cheap, generic plonk. The glimpses into the world of European wine are spot on, the description of blind tasting and the difference between adequate and great wine explained well, and the storytelling and prose have the crystal clarity the author is famous for. Appropriate for an author who is supposed to have said that he could give a confident character description of anyone after a five minutes look at their wine cellar.

Haydee McMickle, Wine Educator

Red, White and Drunk All Over: A wine Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass by Natalie MacLean, 2007

12 years ago this was a refreshing alternative to dry information. It assuaged my inner voice of awkwardness and insecurity as it pertains to wine and the culture. I found the poetic quirkiness curiously enjoyable.

MacLean, a sommelier, takes a journey from vineyard to cellar to retail shop, restaurant and dining room, she also travels with her insecurities. Imagine her tasting with Aubert de Villaine, the proprietor of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

This is a fun book, nothing stuffy here yet you pick up a few tidbits.

This is in the category of summer beach read. It’s funny and approachable. The jacket says it all, it reads “...this bodice-ripping wine book.”

John Morris, Tasting Room Manager

There’s nothing like giving a shout out to one of our own, and recommending a book that’s a lot of fun at the same time. Slave to the Vine: Confessions of a Vagabond Cellarhand, by Tablas Creek National Sales Manager Darren Delmore.

Darren invites us along on a rollicking trek of a wonderfully chaotic crush.  I love how the real story of harvest is told: dirty, wet, exhausting yet exhilarating.  Darren has a deft comic touch, and the writing gets better and more engaging as the book unfolds.  I look forward to follow-up, Lucky Country: Confessions of a Vagabond Cellarhand.

Monica O’Connor, Direct Sales Manager

Real Wine by Patrick Matthews

It’s about history and natural wine making, and Bob Haas is mentioned I believe on the very first page!

Gustavo Prieto, Tasting Room Lead and Head of Biodynamic Practices

The Botanist and the Vintner by Christy Campbell,

This book is about the history of phylloxera in France. It covers how and when it was  brought from the US to France, all the efforts people took at the time to try to understand what was happening to their vineyards, and the experiments they first used to try to control the problem. All leading up to how they finally were able to discover the solution with the use of rootstocks. It’s interesting that phylloxera started right next door to Chateauneuf It’s a great read and a great story.

Another great book that I use all the time and is a great source for anything wine related is The Oxford Companion to Wine by Jancis Robinson. I think this was the first wine book that I ever owned.

Deborah Sowerby, Wine Educator

American Rhone by Patrick Comiskey

Mr. Comiskey did a fantastic job of tracing back to the roots movement of the Rhone varieties and their hosts. To start he shares the genesis relating to the three leading red varieties, an emphasis on Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre and how (up to the point of release of the book) the other Châteauneuf-du-Pape varieties were received. He shares with us the cast of characters (with historic photographs) that played a role in introducing us, the American public, to these hallowed grapes. He shares with us their belief, vision, tenacity and fortitude to bring these varieties to the U.S. through avenues of transportation in one’s suitcase or the path and patience through quarantine. As well as the work devoted to propagation, and years invested in the annual harvest and making of these Rhône varieties, resulting in the fine wines we enjoy today all thanks to the Rhône Rangers and those that followed.

My favorite photo's: Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, Robert Haas and Jean-Pierre Perrin, our old friends John Alban, Mat Garretson and Gary Eberle and the group pictures of the gathering of French and American producers at the International Colloquium event held in 1991 organized by Robert Haas. Historic.

My favorite chapter: 15 - Tablas Creek the Validator (of course).

Nathan Stuart, Shepherd

The Wine Bible by Karen MacNeil

MacNeil keeps you interested and is constantly recommending pairings and cuisine from each region to go with the wine of the area. Still to this day when I open a bottle of white from the Loire Valley or a Syrah from Hermitage I go back to the images and stories from her book.

At a time like this when travel is impossible this book will let you explore the world from your living room and leave you with a great foundational understanding of the world of wine.

I recommend this book if you’re new to the world of wine. She does an amazing job of drawing you in and taking you to the major wine regions of the world.

Jim and Debbie Van Haun, Wine Educator and Accountant Respectively

The Global Encyclopedia of Wine by Peter Forrestal

This was a great resource for us when we bought our Alicante Bouschet 10-acre vineyard back in late 1998.

The history of growing grapes & wine making around the world is fascinating. Alicante was replaced with several of the Rhône varietals in France & Spain and that is exactly what we eventually did. Alicante was very popular during prohibition because of its dark juice.

This book is a great source of information.

Ian Consoli, Marketing Coordinator

So what am I reading?

Natural Wine: An introduction to organic and biodynamic wines made naturally by Isabelle Legeron

This book clearly lays out the natural wine making process, identifies icons in the industry, and helps you find natural wine producers throughout the world.

I purchased Natural Wine early on in my wine career from a local biodynamic estate and I am so glad I did. While the focus is obviously on natural wine, the really lasting knowledge I gained from the book was insight into the wine making process. It was the first time the whole process clicked for me. I gained a high level of respect for low-intervention winemakers.

I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about winemaking or wants to know more about natural wine. Reading this book literally changed my palate.

Conclusion…

Of the 20 books listed above (including my own) I was shocked to learn that I’ve only read five of them. On top of that, I assumed there would be many people selecting the same favorites; however, there was only one instance of this (Billionaire’s Vinegar) and it was listed along with a second recommendation in both cases. We also had multiple more recommendations that were left out. Perhaps we’ll save those for another post.

Until then, happy reading!

Why we're going to be a better business after this Coronavirus shutdown

Last week, I made a small appearance in Eric Asimov's excellent assessment of how the various disruptions caused by the Coronavirus are impacting American wine producers. If you haven't read For American Wine Producers, Fear, Uncertainty and Hope go read it now. OK, welcome back.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The article included a photo (right) from Eric’s last visit to Tablas Creek, in the depths of the 2012-2016 drought. The 2015 article that resulted noted that at Tablas Creek, "the vineyard has managed to thrive despite the drought." And that's true. We had a string of excellent harvests as the drought really took hold, with each of 2014, 2015 and 2016 producing memorable wines across three different vintage signatures.

Re-reading the article today, I don't think I emphasized to Eric enough that we made it through that drought not principally because of our location (though we do get more rain here than much of the Central Coast, thanks to our location at altitude, in the Santa Lucia foothills, and relatively close to the Pacific) but because of a series of extraordinary actions we took to reduce our demand for water.

These included rethinking how we planted new vineyard (much more widely spaced) so that we could set them up for success dry-farmed. It included new, deeper-rooting rootstocks. It included micro-emitters for frost protection. And it included investing in cover crops and a much larger animal flock. The flock and cover crop together increase our soil’s carbon content, which allows it to hold more moisture. In Paso Robles, we don’t have a water table at root-available depth, and it doesn’t rain for six months every year. The soil is our reservoir, if we allow it to be. [For a deep dive into how our farming changed during the drought, check out my 3-part series Dry Farming in California's Drought.]

Why mention this now? While the outside shock is different, we’re in the middle of another shock right now that is forcing us to rethink how we operate. Coronavirus is a demand shock rather than a supply shock like a drought, but we’re having to reinvent ourselves as a business the way we did as a farm last decade.

Without many of the ways we’ve always interacted with customers (tasting room, events, festivals) we’re investing in new technology. The first things we rolled out utilize the live interactive capabilities of our social media platforms. I've been hosting Instagram Live broadcasts every Wednesday at noon PDT, inviting a guest to dive into the world of Tablas Creek. Neil has started hosting weekly tastings on Facebook Live, also with a guest, of two wines each Friday at 5pm PDT. Our tasting room has launched virtual Zoom tastings, where customers can choose a pre-made pack of half-bottles, order wines they want to open and discuss, or just taste through wines they have on hand, led by one of our senior tasting room team members. We've ramped up our investment in video; we've been adding a deep-dive into a recently released wine to our Chelsea and the Shepherd series each week, and now have a YouTube channel to collect them all.

What do all of these initiatives have in common? We're meeting customers where they are, instead of asking them to come to us. We didn't really have a choice; with our tasting room and restaurants closed, and events canceled both here at the winery and around the country, the typical avenues through which we'd interact with our customers are unavailable. But I'm convinced that many or most of these new initiatives will remain valuable enough to keep doing them even once we can reopen our tasting room, resume pouring at festivals and reschedule those restaurant wine dinners that we'd planned to host this spring. After all, we’d discussed doing, or even made starts on, many of these new initiatives before the arrival of Coronavirus, but this crisis made us attack these new programs with urgency.

All of these new initiatives have in common that they are location-independent. Of course, when you're stuck in your house, it doesn't really matter whether Tablas Creek is 30 miles away or 3000. But I'm convinced that the lessons we're learning will allow us to better connect with customers near and far. Even our local customers weren’t making weekly trips to visit us. What's more, the majority of our current customers and an even larger share of our potential customers don't live an easy drive from Paso Robles. In the periodic surveys we do to former wine club members, we always see responses that they weren't able to take advantage of the events we offered because of their distance from Paso Robles. We think of limitations like that as constant, but they're really not. We weren't utilizing the tools we had to offer opportunities to learn about and become more connected to what we're doing. But we are now.

After the drought ended, we realized that the new things we’d learned to do in the vineyard led to healthier vines, better fruit, and wines with more character even when they weren’t existentially necessary. I don’t think it’s coincidence that 2017-2019 is maybe our best-ever run.

I think we're going to see something similar here. Just as we emerged from the drought better farmers, so too will we come out of this crisis a stronger business and industry.