Looking back with a decade's perspective on 2013: a "Goldilocks" vintage at a transitional moment for Tablas Creek

I'm not sure we've ever had consecutive years with as many similarities as 2012 and 2013. Both were warm, reliably sunny vintages with about 70% of normal rainfall. Both featured benign spring weather without frost damage. And both saw us produce wines that had early appeal and showed more red than black fruit character. The major differences were twofold. First, by 2013 we were two years into what would become a five-year drought, which somewhat reduced the vines' vigor and productivity. Second, we felt we'd been caught by surprise in 2012 by high yields in some blocks, which we thought had resulted in some lots and wines with less concentration and paler colors than we wanted. This experience made us more proactive in 2013 in thinning the crop to give us what we felt the vines and the vintage could handle. These two factors combined to reduce our yields from around 3.7 tons per acre in 2012 to around 2.8 in 2013.

The relatively dry second half of the 2012-13 winter (we received just two and a half inches of rain after January 1st) meant that the 2013 growing season got off to an early start, about 10 days ahead of our average to that point. The summer proceeded without any extended heat spikes (just eight days topped 100F) or cool-downs, and we began harvest roughly that same week-and-a-half earlier than normal, on August 25th. The weather the next six weeks turned consistently warm (lots of upper 80s and low-to-mid 90s) though never hot enough to force us to stop picking or to engage the grapevines' defense mechanism of shutting down photosynthesis, so we raced through harvest in just 44 days, nearly two full weeks shorter than the year before. Our October 7th finish stood alone as our earliest-ever completion of harvest until we tied it this past year.

When we got to blending we were excited to see that we'd achieved what we'd hoped: we'd captured the freshness and brightness we liked from the 2013 vintage while layering in more depth and tannic structure. We blended the wines that we always make and made several varietal wines, including our first-ever examples of two new grapes, Terret Noir and Clairette Blanche. And the 2013 wines have often been favorites over the last decade when we've included them in horizontal tastings. So it was with interest that I approached the opportunity to taste through the entire lineup of wines that we made in 2013 this past week.

This horizontal retrospective tasting is something we do each year, looking at the complete array of wines that we made a decade earlier. It offers us several opportunities. First, it's a chance to take stock on how the wines are evolving, share those notes with our fans who may have them in their cellars, and keep our vintage chart up to date. There are wines (like the Esprits, and Panoplie) that we open fairly regularly, but others that we may not have tasted in six or seven years. Second, it's a chance to evaluate the decisions we made that year, see how they look in hindsight, and use that lens to see if there are any lessons to apply to what we're doing now. Third, it's a chance to put the vintage in perspective. Often, in the immediate aftermath of a harvest and even at blending, we're so close to this most recently completed year that it can be difficult to assess its character impartially. Plus, the full character of a vintage doesn't show itself until the wines have a chance to age a bit. Finally, it's when we choose the wines that will represent the vintage in a public retrospective tasting, which this year we'll be holding Sunday, February 5th. The lineup:

My notes on the wines are below. I've noted their closures (SC=screwcap; C=cork) and, for the blends, their varietal breakdown. Each wine is also linked to its technical information on our Web site, if you'd like to see winemaking details, professional reviews, or our tasting notes at bottling. Because of their scarcity we never made a webpage for the Clairette Blanche or Terret Noir, so if you have questions about that leave them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer. I was joined for the tasting by our cellar team (Neil Collins, Chelsea Franchi, Craig Hamm, Amanda Weaver, and Austin Collins) as well as by Viticulturist Jordan Lonborg, Regenerative Specialist Erin Mason, Biodynamicist Gustavo Prieto and Director of Marketing Ian Consoli.

• 2013 Vermentino (SC): A great start to the day, with a nose of peppered citrus pith, wet rocks, and a slight petrol note showing the only real hint at the wine's decade of age. The mouth was vibrant, the same citrus and mineral notes that the nose hinted at except with more richness, like preserved lemon and oyster shell. The wine retained the electric acids it had at bottling, and would be a great discovery for anyone who finds a bottle in their stash.
• 2013 Picpoul Blanc (SC): A nose of dried pineapple, mandarin orange, and sweet green herbs like lemongrass. The palate shows more pineapple, but with a smoky grilled note, and creamy texture. Picpoul doing its best piña colada impression, even after a decade. The finish showed more green herbs, passion fruit, and sea spray minerality, with lively acids and lingering richness. A treat.
• 2013 Grenache Blanc (SC): A classic aged Grenache Blanc nose of petrol, green apple, potpourri, and crushed rock. The palate is both lush and electric with sweet spice that reminded me of crystallized ginger and cinnamon, kaffir lime and ripe apple, with creamy texture and a nice pithy bite cleaning up the long finish.
• 2013 Viognier (SC): The nose was Viognier's classic jasmine florality and peaches and cream, cut by a lemongrass herbiness and a petrichor minerality. The palate was a little less exciting than the nose, at least to me, with flavors of fresh pear and kneaded butter, rainwater and soft texture. I think we were all missing the vibrant acids of the three previous wines; Erin called it "a mist of a flavor". I've always been an advocate of drinking Viognier young, and this did nothing to change my mind.
• 2013 Marsanne (SC): Just our third-ever Marsanne, after we took 2012 off because we didn't think it showed enough focus. Outstanding on the nose, with grilled lemon, honeycomb, quince, and the distinctive sweet straw note I look for in the grape. The palate is also exciting, with salted honeydew and papaya flavors, and a fresh-ground cornmeal note, complex but fresh. The long finish showed notes of honeysuckle, grilled bread, creme brulee, and cardamom. A gorgeous wine in a gorgeous stage. 
• 2013 Clairette Blanche (C): We only made one barrel from our first-ever Clairette Blanche harvest, and when we got ready to release it we found it a little thin and unexciting, not compelling enough to introduce a new grape to our audience. So we stashed it hoping it would become something more interesting. It never did. In this tasting, we found a nose showing some oxidation: scotch tape, hazelnut and bruised apple. The palate was better, like a fino sherry: salted nuts, strawberry, and red apple. The wine thinned back out on the finish, with more of that bruised apple character. In future years we'd bottle it under screwcap, which I think was a good idea, but we were hoping that the cork would enrich the wine. It didn't, or at least not enough. In retrospect, we should have included it in a blend rather than bottling it on its own.
• 2013 Patelin de Tablas Blanc (SC; 54% Grenache Blanc, 25% Viognier, 13% Roussanne, 8% Marsanne): Pretty on the nose, with gooseberry, fresh sage, chalky mineral, and newly-cut grass aromas. The palate was fresh, with sweet mango and fresh apricot flavors, gingersnap and candied orange peel depth, and a long, soft finish with sweet spices and fresh herbs. This was meant to be opened and drunk young, but if anyone has any around, it's still going strong.
• 2013 Cotes de Tablas Blanc (SC; 39% Viognier, 29% Grenache Blanc, 20% Marsanne, 12% Roussanne): A very appealing nose of oyster shell, fresh mandarin, meyer lemon, honeysuckle, and white pepper. A slight hint of petrol is the only sign of its age. The palate is round and luscious, like baked honeycrisp apple and lemon drop. Outstanding length, balance, and tenacity on the palate. A treat at this age.
• 2013 Esprit de Tablas Blanc (C; 71% Roussanne, 21% Grenache Blanc, 8% Picpoul Blanc): A nose of toasted marshmallow, graham cracker, coconut, golden delicious apple, and lacquered wood. The mouth is luscious, with flavors of pears in syrup, butterscotch, toasted almond, and white pepper. The finish is long with flavors of marzipan and poached pear cut by fresh herbs and butter mint. But for all these sweet descriptors, the wine is dry and precise. Seemingly right at its peak.
• 2013 Roussanne (C): A nose of warm honey and crushed shells, and lots of intriguing herbal notes: chamomile, pine resin, and gin botanicals. On the palate, deep and soft with flavors of creme brulee and salted caramel, but finishing dry with citrus pith and nice tannic pithy bite. Delicious.
• 2013 Patelin de Tablas Rosé (SC; 73% Grenache, 22% Mourvedre, 5% Counoise): Our second-ever Patelin Rosé was still a beautiful pale color. A little plasticky screwcap-influenced nose at first blew off to show salter watermelon and wild strawberry aromas. The palate was in outstanding shape: strawberry preserves, rhubarb compote, green herbs and a sour cherry finish. No one would have intentionally kept this wine this long, but it was showing better than any 10-year-old rosé could reasonably expect. 
• 2013 Dianthus (SC; 57% Mourvedre, 28% Grenache, 15% Counoise): A little rustiness in the color. The nose showed Campari, dried rose petal, and orange bitters aromas. The mouth continued our cocktail-like descriptors: a note of singed citrus peel over gardenia flower and a salty umami note. It didn't speak much of a rosé at this stage, but could be a cool gastronomic wine with something like grilled quail or rabbit. 
• 2013 Full Circle (C): Our fourth Full Circle Pinot Noir from my dad's property in the Templeton Gap, and the first vintage that I thought really was showing well at a decade. The nose had notes of bay, new leather, black cherry, baker's chocolate, and sweet clove. On the palate, black plum, sarsaparilla, and a little sweet oak with cooling notes of juniper and sandalwood. Seemingly right at its peak, complex yet fresh.
• 2013 Terret Noir (C): Only slightly darker than the Dianthus. The nose showed a hard candy note over molasses and wet leaves. The palate was a little medicinal with cherry cough syrup notes over tree bark, then a short finish. The wine has lost the minty, herby notes that made it fascinating when it was young, without replacing them with anything similarly rewarding. I feel good about our recent decision to put Terret Noir under screwcap and think it should probably be drunk within 5 years of vintage, despite its tannic grip. 
• 2013 Grenache (C): A nose of sugarplum, black licorice, coffee grounds and cherry fruit leather. The mouth is pretty, fully mature, soft and luscious like a flourless chocolate cake with raspberry reduction poured over it. The finish shows a little oxidation, with flavors of hoisin and stewed strawberry and a little tannic bite. Time to drink up if you have any; it feels like this is about to start on the downslope.
• 2013 Mourvedre (C): A nose of cassis, mocha, dry-aged meat and iron. The palate is chocolate and cherry with a little minty spice and a grilled portobello earthiness. The finish was classic Mourvedre: loam and plum skin and salty dark chocolate. In a nice place, if without the mouth-filling intensity of our best Mourvedre vintages. 
• 2013 Syrah (C): A dark, spicy nose of graphite, black licorice, blackberry and crushed rock. The palate is similar, youthful black fruit and dense texture, lots of dark tannin and chalky mineral. The finish showed luxardo cherry and persistent crushed rock minerality. Syrah at its essence, in a good place but with plenty left in the tank.
• 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon (C): From the two rows of Cabernet vines we have in our nursery, which most years gets tossed into our Tannat. An immediately recognizable Cabernet nose of eucalyptus, blackberry, black olive, and pencil shavings. The mouth was outstanding: blackcurrant and new leather, salty dark chocolate and firm tannic bite. A cedary oak note came out on the finish. Absolutely on point for the grape, and fun to taste since we make it so rarely.
• 2013 Tannat (C): A gamey nose of pork fat and plum skin, wood smoke and brambly fruit. The palate is juicy with blackcurrant and cola flavors and full body. The finish is lushly tannic with notes of teriyaki, blackberry, venison jerky and salted caramel. I've always liked how the 2013 vintage treated Tannat, giving it some needed elegance, and this showing confirmed that it's one of my favorite Tannat's we've ever done.
• 2013 Patelin de Tablas (SC; 45% Syrah, 29% Grenache, 22% Mourvedre, 4% Counoise): Surprisingly, as the only screwcap-finished red in the tasting, the nose on this was on point as soon as it was poured: spicy and meaty like soppresata, chaparral, black raspberry and dried herbs. The palate showed muddled blackberry flavors and nicely resolved tannins with black licorice and herbes de Provence accents. Soft, pretty, and what a value for anyone who bought and stashed a case at the $20/bottle this was on release. 
• 2013 Cotes de Tablas (C; 55% Grenache, 30% Syrah, 10% Counoise, 5%Mourvedre): The nose was lovely: dried roses, kirsch, sugarplum, and a little gamey umami lurking underneath. The mouth is lively and light on its feet, with flavors of strawberry preserves, sweet star anise spice, and a little tannic powdered sugar bite. Thankfully, after a 2012 rendition that was starting to tire at age 10, this felt right at peak. 
• 2013 En Gobelet (C; 34% Grenache, 31% Mourvedre, 19% Syrah, 11% Counoise, 5% Tannat): A nose of creamy red raspberry fruit, coffee grounds, leather, and candied violets. The mouth is like salty raspberry preserves, with sweet/spicy notes of Mexican hot chocolate, butter pastry, and Spanish chorizo. There's a nice tannic bite on the finish. Seemingly right at peak too.
• 2013 Esprit de Tablas (C; 40% Mourvedre, 28% Syrah, 22% Grenache, 10% Counoise): The nose was showing more age than we were expecting, with aromas of soy sauce, dried meat, pomegranate reduction, and bread pudding. The mouth had flavors of chocolate-covered cherry, with a chorizo-like meatiness and a nice salty note coming out on the richly tannic finish. When a wine shows a disconnect like this between the nose and the palate, I often take it as a phase that it's going through. I tend to think that's the case here and will look forward to checking back in a few times over the next year. Meanwhile, build in time to give this a bit of a decant if you're drinking in the short term.
• 2013 Panoplie (C; 75% Mourvedre, 15% Grenache, 10% Syrah): An exuberant nose of cassis and new leather, an alpine foresty spice, dark chocolate, and crushed rock. The palate is lovely, poised between red and black currant, black tea, white pepper, and candied violet. A little cedary oak and more dark chocolate come out on the long finish. In an outstanding place.
• 2013 Petit Manseng (C): Our fourth bottling of this classic southwest French grape known for maintaining great acids as it reaches high (and occasionally extremely high) sugar levels, which we make each year in an off-dry style. After making this both drier (in 2011) and sweeter (in 2012) we triangulated to a style that I think was just right in 2013. It showed a nose of grilled pineapple (or pineapple upside-down cake, if you prefer), golden raisin and cumquat. The palate is sweet and lush but with electric acids, showing flavors of pistachio and lychee, smoky and wild with a lively lemon-drop finish. A great way to reawaken the palate at the end of the tasting. 

A few concluding thoughts

In terms of vintage character, there were a lot of non-fruit descriptors that transcended red, white, and even rosé categories. These included saline/mineral notes like oyster shell, sea spray, flint, or crushed rock, and woodland descriptors like sandalwood, cedar, and juniper. This was not a vintage for people who wanted (or want) maximum fruit concentration, but instead one where fruit elements were in balance with more savory elements. After a series of vintages in the late-2000s where we got outstanding fruit intensity but in retrospect felt that we'd let the ripeness pendulum swing too far toward jam, and three years starting in 2010 where a combination of weather and a hands-off approach to our vineyard gave us wines that (again, in retrospect) had good savory elements but tended to be a bit shy in concentrated fruit, 2013 was our opportunity to set a middle course. I felt like I saw a clearer path between the wines from the 2013 vintage to those we're making today than I'd been able to in any of our previous horizontal tastings. That's exciting. 

I was hoping that the balance that the 2013s have had all their lives would mean that they'd hold up well in bottle, and generally, they did. There were only a couple of wines that were tasting like they were past their prime, and the wines that are usually peaking at around a decade (like Grenache, or Cotes de Tablas) felt squarely in their sweet spots. But unlike with some earlier tastings, we didn't find any wines that weren't yet ready to go. Even the wines that I suspect will be the longest-lived, like Syrah, Tannat, and Panoplie, all seemed to offer outstanding drinking right now.

The whites were across the board excellent. From the high-acid screwcapped wines that we suggested people drink in the first few years to the richer Roussanne- and Marsanne-based wines, every one but the Clairette was pretty and vibrant. It's worth noting that nearly all of the screwcapped wines improved in the glass, and I thought that most of them would have benefited from a quick decant. A lot of people don't think of decanting older whites, but I think it's often a good idea, and for any wine that has been under screwcap for more than a few years. There's a clipped character that most older screwcapped wines have that dissipates with a few minutes of air. It happens anyway in the glass, but a decant speeds the process.

When I asked everyone around the table to pick their three favorites, 14 different wines received at least one vote, with the Roussanne and Cotes de Tablas red leading the way with five votes each. That diversity is a testament to the quality of the vintage. The very strong showing of the Cotes de Tablas wines (both received more favorite votes than the Esprits did in this showing) was interesting. I felt like it spoke to our process, which gives each of our blends a different lead grape and helps us identify lots in blending that are right for each wine, not just a simple hierarchy of good-better-best. It also means that you shouldn't sleep on our "lesser" red blends if you want to lay down some bottles, and maybe that we should stop thinking of them as "lesser" at all. After all, even the Patelin red was outstanding in this tasting.

We're very much looking forward to sharing the vintage's highlights with guests at our public retrospective tasting on February 5th. If you'd like to join us, we'll be tasting the following ten wines: Marsanne, Roussanne, Esprit de Tablas Blanc, Syrah, Tannat, Patelin de Tablas, Cotes de Tablas, Esprit de Tablas, Panoplie, and Petit Manseng. I can't wait. For more information, or to join us, click here. 

If you liked 2007, try 2021: a quarter-century of vintage doppelgangers at Tablas Creek

It's hard to believe, but 2021 was our 25th harvest here at Tablas Creek. What began as a simple model to make two wines, one red and one white, in the style of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, has blossomed into nearly thirty wines each year, across three colors, nineteen grapes, and a range of inspirations. We've had hot years (like 1997, 2009, 2016, and this year). We've had cold years (like 1998, 2010, and 2011). We've had "goldilocks" vintages where we hit the sweet middle ground. And yes, every vintage is different. But with a quarter century under our belt, and in response to the questions I get regularly trying to put our recent vintages in context, I thought it would be fun to dive in and talk a little about the vintage character of each of our 25 vintages, and try to give some comps for people who might have worked through their favorite and be looking to restock.

So, from the top. Note that I didn't put anything in for 2022, since we don't know what the wines' characters are like yet from this vintage, though as you'll see there is a year that has some eye-opening echoes to how this vintage is shaping up:

• 1997: A juicy, appealing vintage that showed surprising depth given that it came from vines at most five years old. Also the warmest year of the 1990s, with weather that is more common now, which led to a mid-August start to harvest. These wines are at the end of their lives at this point, but the red is still sound if well stored. Similar vintages: 2003, 2013.
• 1998: Pretty much the polar opposite to 1997, with persistent on-shore flow, regular cloud cover all summer, and an October start to harvest. A relatively austere vintage in its youth, it has aged surprisingly well, and both red and white have shown well in recent tastings. Similar vintages: 2010, 2011.
• 1999: Powerful, rambunctious wines that were the product of a warm, dry year. Whites were good from the get-go, while reds were notably tannic in their youth, though with the fruit to carry it. These wines aged well, and the red was still excellent in a recent tasting. Similar vintages: 2005, 2009.
• 2000: The first vintage that I think we started to approach the model that we use now, including the debut of the Esprit de Beaucastel. The white showed what a lovely year it was for Roussanne, soft and appealing. The reds were earthy and meaty. Both red and white were ringers for Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Similar vintages: 2005, 2013, 2018.
• 2001: A year with great promise and ample winter rainfall was derailed by April frosts that cost us nearly half our production and led to us declassifying most of our red production into Cotes de Tablas. An outstanding year for whites, though. The low yields and warm summer led to a relatively short hang-time, producing reds with modest concentration and a bit of a tannic edge. Similar vintages: no true comps (thankfully!) though 2009 is probably the closest overall.
• 2002: A collector's vintage, with dense, ageworthy red wines and powerfully textured whites. The product of the first year in a drought cycle, which typically makes outstanding wines with a balance of concentration and freshness thanks to the vines' stored vigor and the intensifying effect of low rainfall. Similar vintages: 2006, 2016, 2019.
• 2003: A joyous vintage that we underestimated at the time because it was so appealing and friendly that we thought it wouldn't have the stuffing to age. Then for 15 years we kept picking 2003 out as among our very favorites in vertical tastings. The wines are maybe not among our longest-lived, and are starting to tire a bit, but what a ride they've had. Similar vintages: 2008, 2014, 2020.
• 2004: A vintage that I remember Francois Perrin calling "square": precise, tidy, well-structured, and classic. Very long ripening cycle, with some rain in October that delayed the picking of our latest-ripening grapes. The wines have generally aged well, and I think of them as being precisely on point for what we were going for at the time. Similar vintages: 2013, 2019.
• 2005: A juicy, luscious, exuberant vintage in which I feel like you could taste the health of the vineyard, which got 40+ inches of rain after three years of drought. We dodged frosts, had a moderate summer and a long, beautiful fall. The grapes spent an extra month on the vines, and the vineyard was healthy throughout. We saw high yields but excellent concentration and quality. These wines have aged in outstanding fashion, gaining meatiness to balance their fruit, spice, and tannin, and the 2005 Esprit de Beaucastel is the wine I pick right now when I'm trying to show off. Similar vintages: 2007, 2017.
• 2006: Similar overall conditions (ample rainfall, no frost) to 2005, but a later spring and a hotter summer led to wines with a bit more structure and a little less vibrancy. That seriousness meant it was a little overshadowed by the blockbuster vintages around it, and so it was a little bit of a surprise when it produced our first wine (the 2006 Esprit de Beaucastel) to be honored in the Wine Spectator's "Top 100". The low acids meant that while it has turned out to be an outstanding red vintage, it was a less strong white vintage. Similar vintages: 2002, 2016.  
• 2007: A blockbuster year, with ample fruit, structure, spice, and meaty/earthy richness. This was a product of the previous winter, which was the coldest and driest in our history. The resulting small berries and small clusters gave outstanding concentration to everything, and the moderate summer meant that the grapes retained freshness. The reds from this year got some of our highest-ever scores, and many of these are still youthful. The whites were good but at the time we were picking riper than we do now, and I find their elevated alcohols have meant that they aged less well than the reds. Similar vintages: 2005, 2021. 
• 2008: A challenging growing season, bookended by frosts in both April and October, led to wines that didn't have the obvious early juicy appeal of 2007. But they've turned out to be beautiful over time, with whites showing both texture and lift and reds a lovely chocolate note. This is consistently one of Winemaker Neil Collins' favorite vintages in our vertical look-backs. Similar vintages: 2015 and especially 2018.
• 2009: The apex of the concentrated power we saw in the 2000s, with low yields a product of our third straight drought year and a damaging frost in April. Then the growing season alternated between warm and cold months until a severe heat spike in September brought many of our grapes tumbling in. We were mostly harvested when an early atmospheric river storm dumped 10 inches of rain here on October 13th, though the three weeks of warm, dry weather that followed allowed us to bring even those grapes in. The wines were so dense that it took me most of a decade for them to feel approachable, but they're shining now. Similar vintages: none, though these conditions sound a lot like what's happening in 2022.
• 2010: An outlier vintage for us in many ways, unlike anything we'd seen in the previous decade. Ample winter rainfall and no spring frosts combined to produce a very healthy vineyard and good yields. A very cool summer followed, with harvest less than half complete on October 15th. Warm, sunny weather in late October and early November saved the vintage, and our November 13th last-pick was exceptionally late. The wines showed that coolness in their youth in minty, high-toned flavors, though we were still able to get good ripeness thanks to the friendly late-fall weather. An exceptionally good white vintage. Reds I'm less enchanted by, as they're tasting a little tired right now. I'm hopeful that this is just a stage. Similar vintages: 1998. 
• 2011: Another outlier, just as cool as 2010 (and much chillier than any vintage since) but with low yields thanks to hard frosts April 8th and 9th. That combination of low yields and cool-vintage character made intensely savory wines, much more reminiscent of the northern Rhone than the south. The wines have aged well, too, while preserving the savory character they had when they were young. Similar vintages: none, though choose 1998, 2010, or 2015 if you want the cool-vintage character, or 2001 or 2009 if you want the concentrated structure.
• 2012: A friendly, juicy vintage with big yields and modest concentration and structure, as one block after the next came in heavier than we'd estimated, even though rainfall was only about 70% of normal. The accumulated vigor from two previous wet winters and the limited demands on the vines' resources in the frost-reduced 2011 crop meant that it didn't act like a drought year. The wines were friendly and open from day one, and while the ageworthy reds have deepened in tone a bit, they're still medium-bodied and a touch on the simple side, and seem to be on a faster aging curve. Whites are lovely. Similar vintages: 2013 for reds, 2010 and 2014 for whites.
• 2013: Similar growing season and similar wines as 2012, but we learned from our experience the previous year and proactively reduced our crop levels both to increase concentration and to reduce the stress on our vines in this second year of drought. A moderate summer (very few days over the low 90s) maintained lift and translated into a leafy, herby note on top of the fruit. Warm weather during harvest and low yields led to an early start and our earliest-ever finish to harvest, as we made sure that we picked early enough to maintain freshness. Similar vintages: 2012 (but with a bit more concentration), 2018. 
• 2014: Our third consecutive drought year plus a warm summer produced wines in the classic, juicy Californian style, with a bit less alcohol than those same wines we were making in the 2000s. We got good concentration with yields similar to 2013, though we needed to drop less fruit to get there. The wines are juicy and luscious, with enough structure to keep them balanced and pretty, high-toned red fruit flavors. Similar vintages: 2003, 2017.
• 2015: A lovely, ethereal vintage that produced wines with intense flavors but no sense of weight. With the drought at its most severe, yields were already low and further reduced by a cold, windy May that particularly impacted our early grapes. The summer alternated between warmer than normal (June, August, October) and cooler-than-normal (May, July, September) months, and resulted in a slow, extended harvest, with many of our late grapes coming in with tremendous expressiveness at low sugar levels. My dad called the vintage "athletic", which I thought was a nice way of getting at its weightless power. Similar vintages: none, really, though 2008 and 2013 have some traits they share.
• 2016: Even though we were still in the drought, rainfall was a bit better than the previous years, and the vineyard healthier under our new Biodynamic protocols. Yields recovered to relatively normal levels from 2015's punishingly low totals. A warm summer produced intense wines, both reds and whites, with dark colors and the structure to age. Similar vintages: 2002, 2006, 2019. 
• 2017: We felt like we saw a replay of 2005, where 40+ inches of rainfall broke the drought with a bang and the vineyard tried to do three years of growing in one. We dodged frosts, had a moderate summer before a dramatic heat spike in late August, but just as things got critical it cooled in September and finished under perfect conditions in October. Good yields but outstanding concentration and colors, juicy early appeal but the structure to age. Similar vintages: 2003, 2005, 2021.
• 2018: As played out a decade earlier, a strong vintage that was overshadowed by blockbuster years on either side, producing elegant wines that were easy to underestimate. The growing season was slightly cooler than average except for a scorching midsummer (July through mid-August). Things cooled back down for harvest, and we picked with outstanding acids, solid concentration, and slightly above-average yields. This appears to be one of our greatest white vintages, and a strong red vintage though maybe not with the long aging of our best years. Similar vintages: 2008, 2013.
• 2019: A classic vintage for us, strong for both reds and whites, a product of good rain the previous winter, a cool first two-thirds of the ripening cycle, then consistently warm last third that accelerated the late grapes. The resulting compressed harvest had slightly above average yields, high quality across the board, pronounced varietal character, and good structure on the reds. A classic vintage for cellaring. Similar vintages: 2004, 2016, 2017. 
• 2020: A year that many of us would like to forget, but which looks like it produced wines we’ll want to remember. The growing season was challenging, with below-average rain, a cool early summer followed by record-breaking heat in early August and mid-September, wildfires to our north and south, and, oh, a pandemic. The heat produced an early, compressed harvest. Whites turned out to be outstanding, with a lusciousness bolstered by good acids. We're still getting to know our reds, but they appear strong as well, with intense fruitiness and good tannic bite. Similar vintages: 2003 and 2014.
• 2021: It's our most recent vintage, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think 2021 has produced wines that rival the best we've seen in our history. Yields were reduced by a dry, chilly winter, with 13 of the 16 inches of rain coming in one January storm. The summer was lovely except for a July heat spike, and harvest unfolded in ideal conditions, with each warm stretch followed by a cool-down to give the vines (and us) some time to recover. The resulting wines have concentration and freshness, juicy appeal but structure, and (as we often see in our best years) well defined varietal character. Seemingly equally strong for both whites and reds. Similar vintages: 2017, 2019, and especially 2007. 

One of the most fun things about what I get to do is to come to know wines (and years) almost as people, with personalities and life journeys that add depth to the things we perceive on first impression. Opening an older vintage can be like revisiting an old friend, and sometimes it makes me realize that years have what are in essence sibling relationships with other years. Of course, not every year has a comp. There are some years like 2001, 2009, and 2015 whose unusual combination of factors leads to vintages we just haven't seen before or since. Perhaps that will change when we have a half-century of  years under our belt. I'll report back. Meanwhile, I hope that some of you found this helpful, or at least interesting. If this just raises new questions, leave them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer. 

The red wines from the 2013 vintage come into focus

Blending is always an exciting time for me.  Up until that time, the different wine lots in the cellar have been potential, and we're looking at them principally in terms of the problems that they might present.  One might not be through fermentation.  Another might be a little oxidized, or a little reduced.  Yet another might still be spritzy.  In each case, we're trying to round these component pieces into form so that we can make our evaluations on them and aim them at the appropriate wine.  This period can last as long as six months, starting with harvest and not concluding until April.

Once the lots are behaving, blending can happen startlingly fast, and these components that we have been regarding as potential problems (or, if you prefer, as diamonds in the rough) can in a week become the young wines that we'll spend the next years or decades getting to know.  In addition, that week provides our best opportunity yet to get to understand the personality of the vintage and try it next to its predecessor for context.  The finished products:

When we blend, we start by tasting every lot from each varietal, blind.  This year, we had 14 Grenache lots, 12 Mourvedre lots, 8 Syrah lots, 3 Counoise lots and 3 lots that we'd blended early in the fermentation process (including the Scruffy Hill lot that forms the base of our En Gobelet each year).  Each lot is given a grade between 1 and 3, with 1 being the best.  My notes from this year are below; note how many 1's there are and how few 3's: the sign of a good vintage and one that is polished enough to evaluate:

Once we've graded and discussed each lot, we start from the top, blending the Panoplie first from the lots that received "1" grades and exceptional comments.  [In the notes above, I use an asterisk to identify the first Mourvedre lot and the sixth Syrah lot as clear Panoplie candidates.]  We taste a handful of possible blends blind against one another until we reach consensus. Once we're satisfied with the Panoplie, we remove the lots that went into it from our calculations and start the same process on the Esprit, and so forth through the Cotes de Tablas and our varietal wines and eventually to the estate lots that will be declassified into our Patelin de Tablas.

Since each blend may contain 20+ lots, each of which themselves might be composite blends of dozens of barrels, it takes the cellar a while to blend the wines we have to taste, and it's nearly impossible to make decisions on more than one tier a day.  So, the seven blending days that we took this year is just about the minimum possible, and another sign that the components were in good shape for blending.  Below are my notes from last Wednesday's tasting of the finished blends.  At this tasting, I was joined by my dad, my brother Danny and our winemakers Neil, Chelsea and Tyler.

• 2013 Patelin de Tablas: A spicy, meaty nose with leather and mineral notes.  In the mouth, Syrah is at the fore: creamy, with chalky texture, very savory, with charcuterie and tobacco coming first, then brambly black fruit, and some welcome black licorice on the finish. Final blend: 45% Syrah, 29% Grenache, 22% Mourvedre, 4% Counoise.
• 2013 Cotes de Tablas: The nose is juicy, generous, raspberry and spice, with a little leather lurking behind.  The mouth is clearly marked by Grenache, with juicy wild strawberry and chalky tannins that balance the lushness. The finish is long and silky, with red licorice notes lingering.  Neil said he thought it was "the deepest, most thoughtful Cotes we've made".  55% Grenache, 30% Syrah, 10% Counoise, 5% Mourvedre.
• 2013 Esprit de Tablas: A nose of dark red fruit, currant and plum, black cherry and meat drippings, and a loamy minerality that Neil called "after a rain out in the vineyard". The wine is mouth-filling, rich with bittersweet chocolate and blueberry and the powdered-sugar tannins that are for us a sign of great Mourvedre. Danny called it "classy and refined". 40% Mourvedre, 28% Syrah, 22% Grenache and 10% Counoise.
• 2013 Panoplie: The nose is rich, inky and inviting, with spicy purple fruit, a meaty note that someone identified as reduced beef stock and I thought was like a leather armchair.  In the mouth, plums, black raspberry and black cherry vibrate between red and black and the texture is rich and chewy.  Despite only being 10% Syrah, it was the darkest color, with an exceptionally long finish showing off grilled meat, licorice and chalky tannins.  Wow.  70% Mourvedre, 20% Grenache, 10% Syrah.
• 2013 Grenache: The nose was immediately identifiable as Grenache: milk chocolate and cherry, with a little white pepper adding spice. The mouth was open and generous, with more red cherry and strawberry fruit and a nice chocolatey note.  Tangy acids come out on the finish to keep things balanced, but the impression is of lusciousness and baby fat right now.
• 2013 Mourvedre: The nose has an appealing, classic cedary, foresty, loamy note on top of mint and currant fruit.  The mouth shows very similar flavors, with nice chunky tannins at the end. It's serious, dry, and long, and should be fun to watch evolve.
• 2013 Syrah: Classic Syrah nose, with chalk, black olive, coffee grounds and squid ink predominant. Not much fruit showing yet, but a little sweet oak.  In the mouth, you find the fruit: blackberry, with big tannins that suggest it will benefit from the next year-plus in barrel, and likely additional time aging in bottle.  Very chewy and dark.

One of the things I was happiest with was the definition between the different blends, between the different varietals, and between the varietals and the blends that were led by those grapes.  It's important to us that the Cotes de Tablas not taste too much like the varietal Grenache -- and that it not taste too much like the Esprit or the Patelin.  This year, I think we nailed it: each varietal wine is a classic expression of its varietal characteristics, and each blend shows the signature of its leading grape but is, as we typically find, more than the sum of its parts.

It will be a pleasure to get to know these wines over the coming years.

Vintage Hollywood

I have recently been finding myself contrasting two recent vintages primarily in terms of their personalities, rather than (or at least, in addition to) their flavors.  Our 2011 vintage produced wines that are tense, wound-up, powerful and brooding, that make you make an effort to get to know them.  The wines from our 2012 vintage are sunny, open, friendly, and easy to like without being simplistic.  Yes, these are notably anthropomorphic descriptions, and I have described each without mentioning anything about sweetness, acidity, flavors or texture.  And yet, don't you have a sense of what the two vintages' wines are likely to taste like?

That got me thinking of which movie stars might correspond to those two vintages, and once I got myself started, I couldn't stop.  So, I present to you the last ten vintages, with a female and male movie star who will help you get to know them, and a little explanation as to why. Images courtesy Wikipedia.

• 2004: "We didn't know they had it in them".  The 2004 vintage struck us at the time as likely to produce friendly, appealing wines without perhaps the structure and depth to age into elegance.  We were wrong, and the vintage has had remarkable staying power and has become something we didn't think it would be.
• Female star: Mila Kunis, because when you saw her in That 70's Show, did you think she would be an A-list talent, as well as one of the most genuinely funny interview subjects in Hollywood?  Me neither.
• Male star: Matthew McConaughey. Wooderson didn't seem likely to graduate to Dallas Buyers Club.
• 2005: "Came through a few rough patches".  2005 wines were big and brawny when they were young, obviously with potential, but they shut down hard in middle-age and got downright difficult, to the point that we actually had to delay including the 2005 Esprit de Beaucastel in our Collector's Edition Wine Club because it wasn't ready.  But now?  They're the wines I pick when I want to impress.
• Female star: Drew Barrymore, who as a teenager didn't seem likely to mature into the funny, self-possessed star she is now.
• Male star: Robert Downey Jr., whose transformation from talented tabloid regular to master of multiple genres has been remarkable to see.  Did you realize he's the most valuable movie star in Hollywood, and has been for two years running?
• 2006: "The overachiever".  A little like 2004, except that the wines seemed more solid and less friendly at the start, likely to be respected and admired but unlikely to be loved.  Then they steadily put on substance while rounding off rough edges, until they were stars in their own rights.  It happened so gradually we were actually surprised when our 2006 Esprit de Beaucastel became our first wine to make the Wine Spectator's annual "Top 100" list.
• Female star: Amy Adams, who seemed destined for typecast roles as the funny sidekick but who has pushed her boundaries until she's one of the most marketable women in Hollywood.
• Male star: John C. Reilly, the consummate character actor who parlayed strong work in a steady stream of sidekick roles in great indie films into juicy lead roles in blockbusters like Chicago and Gangs of New York.
• 2007: "The star".  Big, glossy, powerful, clearly A-list material, our most impressive vintage suggests the classic Hollywood star, at the height of his or her powers, who can play any role successfully.  Yet, you never forget you're watching a star conscious of his or her own power.  No one would describe the 2007 vintage as "cozy".
• Female star: Catherine Zeta-Jones.  A-list lead.  Talented singer.  One of the most beautiful women of her generation.  Would I be terrified to meet her?  Absolutely.
• Male star: George Clooney.  Ridiculously talented, funny, self-deprecating and successful in a number of different roles, but you never forget you're watching a movie star.  That's what 2007 is like.
• 2008: "The quiet pro".  This vintage, sandwiched between the showier 2007 and 2009 vintages, was excellent in its own right, but didn't demand a lot of attention.  It's like the star you're always happy to see in a movie, but whose name probably isn't on the marquee.  Yet at the end, you're glad to have spent the time with them.
• Female star: Julianne Moore: classy, elegant, always appealing, and often in roles that show off her acting rather than her beauty.  Always an asset to a cast.
• Male star: Jake Gyllenhaal: ditto.  Can lead a major production, but it doesn't seem to happen as often as it could.
• 2009: "The dark side".  Powerful, tightly wound, the 2009 vintage is like 2007 with some added menace: an a-list star willing to go without makeup in pursuit of a meaty role.  We're expecting the 2009's, which are a bit forbidding and tannic now, to unwind only gradually, but to reward patience handsomely.
• Female star: Angelina Jolie, the classic female action hero, whose depth is promised and only gradually revealed. A powerful presence, alluring and intimidating in equal measure.
• Male star: Daniel Craig, whose take on James Bond is darker than previous iterations, played straight rather than with a wink, still plenty suave while adding more muscle and an introspective streak. A Bond who doesn't let you inside.
• 2010: "Classic elegance". The comparatively stress-free 2010 vintage, a wet year coming after three years of drought, produced wines that have to me always come across as effortlessly appealing, not notable for their power but beautifully delineated and in perfect balance, like a movie star who ages gracefully.
• Female star: Gwyneth Paltrow, charming in whatever role she takes on, from the big screen to the kitchen, but seemingly most at home playing a version of herself.
• Male star: Denzel Washington, whose quiet confidence and air of class allows him to imbue humanity into characters who in other hands would be straightforward villains or saccharine heroes. Watch Training Day and Remember the Titans and marvel that he starred in these back-to-back.
• 2011: "A little intimidating". 2011 turned up the volume on 2010, gaining intensity from a spring frost and retaining bright acids from our second consecutive cold year.  All the wines have a brooding darkness and the promise of great depth. At the same time, they require a certain investment on your part as their consumer to meet them on their terms. They're not interested in pleasing the crowds.
• Female star: Halle Berry, who could have settled into a comfortable role as model and actress playing beautiful people, but seemed to search out troubled characters that were impossible to pigeonhole.
• Male star: Hugh Jackman, who inhabits Wolverine's character comfortably: funny and sociable in short, bitter bursts, but ultimately inward-focused and intense.
• 2012: "Pleased to meet you". In dramatic contrast to 2011, 2012 comes to greet you with a smile. This isn't to say that there's not depth behind this happy facade, but the first impression I have with all the wines from 2012 is that they're charming, with generous fruit, engaging and enticing.
• Female star: Reese Witherspoon, recent arrest notwithstanding, plays characters with an easy smile who you want to root for and for whom joy seems a regular emotion.
• Male star: Tom Hanks, whose wide range never seems to include dour or unappealing characters.  Of course, if you were casting for an unappealing character, would you cast Tom Hanks?  Exactly.
• 2013: "The prodigy". In our as-yet-limited experience of the 2013 vintage, it seems to combine the appeal of 2012 with the depth and intrigue of 2011.  We're not sure where it's going yet, but we know it's going to be fun to follow and get to know.
• Female star: Jennifer Lawrence, whose range at age 23 is already staggering, and whose career arc is likely to be meteoric.
• Male star: Leonardo DiCaprio, circa 1997.  There isn't really a current equivalent to the promise that a 22-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio showed, already nominated for an Oscar (at age 19) for his role in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and within a few months of becoming the biggest star in the highest-grossing movie ever.

I'm sure any list like this is going to create controversy, and would love to know your nominations for the characteristics of our different vintages.  Or maybe I'm totally off base and you've only made it this far because you're wondering if I've lost my mind.  In any case, let me know what you think in the comments.

Reining In Harvest 2013

By Chelsea Franchi

I was standing in the entrance of the cellar on Monday with my hand wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee, watching as a storm rolled over the hills of Paso Robles and finally touch down on our vineyard.

And I had a smile on my face.  

I have a certain fondness for inclement weather, but typically at this time of year, weather like that can be panic inducing.  This year's a bit different, though, as all of our fruit is off the vine and resting comfortably, tucked away safely in tank and barrel.  You can almost feel, and sometimes hear, the soft, gentle crackle as the wines finish up their fermentation.

This cozy, mellow scene feels a world away from where we were just a few weeks ago.  We all knew harvest was going to be early, and it seemed as though we were all parroting the words "harvest is starting soon!" without thinking about what that actually meant.  And then harvest really did start early, and when it started, it was in earnest.  One moment we were leisurely prepping the harvest equipment and suddenly we were hit with a deluge of fruit, with the bulk of it flooding in at once and filling each of our available tanks in the blink of an eye.  We were forced to put our heads down and focus on the tasks directly in front of us and only on October 10th (the last day of harvest) did we dare to glance up and marvel at all we had accomplished in a rather short amount of time.

Cleaning up after a long day of pressing the pomace (or solids) of red wines

Hand sorting fruit before it gets pumped into a tank to ferment

Draining off juice to add to Dianthus rosé

Not only is everything picked, it's also pressed, and so last Friday, the cellar crew grabbed a thief and a handful of glasses to taste through the wines of 2013.  Initially, we were giddy to be tasting through the cellar so early.  However, after the first few wines, the full weight of the situation settled in. Harvest 2013 is in the books.  And you know what?  It's good. The whites seem to have an exuberant quality. They dance across the palate with both brightness and gravity.  The reds are a bit more tricky to read at this stage. Across the board, during punch downs and pump overs, the lots of red were smokey, meaty and rich.  Now, in barrel, many of them are starting to show promise of an unfurling of fruit, spice and depth.  

I'm going to miss harvest a little bit (but trust me when I say that I can definitely wait until fall of 2014 for the next one).  The easy comraderie that comes with working with people so closely (and for so many hours) is a pretty unique perk of the job.  And this harvest, we had a cast of invaluable characters working alongside us.  I'd like to offer them a public thank you for all their hard work.  We couldn't have done it without them.

Winemaker Neil Collins pulls samples from a barrel of Grenache Noir

Viticulturist Levi Glenn takes a break from the vineyard to feed the pigs

Vineyard Manager David Maduena enjoys a much deserved glass of Mourvedre - in a block of Mourvedre

Cellar Master Tyler Elwell pumps over a fermenting Syrah lot

Lab Technician Madeline Vanlierop-Anderson collects a day's worth of coffee mugs

Cellar Assistant Craig Hamm demonstrates what forklifts are really for (lifting forks)

Harvest Intern Erich Fleck fills barrels with espresso in hand

Harvest Intern Jordan Collins pumps over a fermenting tank of red under the watchful (but sleepy) eye of the cellar mascot, Millie

Above, Harvest Intern and Tasting Room Employee Gustavo Prieto takes a Tannat shower.  Below, Jordan and Madeline celebrate in a stop animation film of the last bin of Harvest 2013.

 

For the moment, I'm looking forward to the halcyon cellar days to come.  We'll finish cleaning up the mess that harvest left behind and then move forward with looking closely at what we have in the winery and monitoring the fermentation progress of our wines.  The storms have cleared - both the proverbial storm that came crashing through our cellar in the form of fruit, as well as the actual storm that came Monday.  I'm anxious now to see what those two storms yield. 

A Tale of Two Rosés

For the last two years, we've been making two rosés.  If that sounds nuts, it kind of is.  But it's in keeping with using our wines to try to express something fundamental about the grapes that go into them.  The first of our rosés, which we've been making since 1999 under one name or another, is the Dianthus.  It's designed to showcase the richer, more substantial side of dry rosé, and it's based on Mourvedre and spends 24-48 hours on the skins, giving it a darker pomegranate color and a bit of bite.  Think Tavel and you won't be too far off.

The second rosé we make debuted in the 2012 vintage, and is called the Patelin de Tablas Rosé.  It is an homage to the higher-toned rosés of Provence and like those rosés is based on Grenache.  It is largely direct-pressed, which means that the grapes are picked, destemmed, and pumped directly into the press, where they're pressed before they can leech much color or flavor out of the skins.  [I took a cool video of this process last year.]  This base is later given a smaller addition of Mourvedre and Counoise that has spent about 24 hours on the skins, giving a pale salmon color.

Of course, right now, neither is the color it will be when it's clear, but the 2013 vintage of both rosés is dry and we're at the point where we're starting to assess their progress.  I love this photo of Assistant Winemaker Chelsea Franchi holding up a glass of each, Dianthus on the left and Patelin Rosé on the right:

The cloudiness of the wines is typical at this point; those lees will drop to the bottom of the tanks over the next month or so and leave the color we want.  It should be similar to what we saw in 2012:

We were worried last year that adding a second rosé to our portfolio might result in each selling half as well.  But we found that they sold in different places and didn't compete with each other.  The Dianthus has always been a little too expensive for restaurants to pour by the glass, and so we typically sold most of it in our tasting room.  We released the Patelin Rosé at a slightly lower price, and it found a very receptive audience, mostly in restaurants, to the point that we sold out of our 1000-case national release in mid-July.  And the Dianthus didn't suffer; as usual we sent it to our VINsider wine club members in March.  The other 500 cases were gone from our tasting room in August, the fastest sell-out ever. 

I think that the growing acceptance of dry rosés is one of the happiest developments in the American wine market.  These are generally great food wines, quite inexpensive in the grand scheme of things, and not easily conducive to pretense or overworked, overblown styles.  And producers love rosé; if you bring one to a party in wine country, you can watch the winemakers make a beeline toward it.  Here at Tablas Creek, it's my mom who deserves the credit for having encouraged us to make a little rosé back in 1999 -- to drink ourselves, if nothing else -- because of how essential a part of the culture of Provence dry rosé is, and because of how well suited these Rhone grapes we grow are for it.

That first year, we made two barrels, or 50 cases of rosé.

This year, we're making 2700 cases.

If that's not progress, I don't know what is.

Harvest 2013 Recap: Down 21% in Yields; Quality Excellent

On Monday, October 7th we picked the last fruit off our estate.  On Thursday, October 10th we brought in our last purchased lot for our Patelin de Tablas.  And just like that, we're done.  Viticulturist Levi Glenn and harvest assistant Jordan Collins clown in front of the last bins (of Mourvedre):

Having everything in the cellar means that we can look cumulatively at the harvest and make some comparative assessments on things like yields, sugars and pH.  Taken together, these give us a way of assessing measurable differences between our most recent vintage and others we've seen.  Of course, there are differences that are not easily measured by this numerical data; one difference that we note between 2013 and 2012 is that 2013 shows more intensity of color. But even on difficult-to-quantify judgments like this one, the numbers can help shed light: lower yields mean higher skin-to-juice ratios and, other things being equal, produce more intense colors and flavors.

The final yields are definitely down from 2012, though not to the frost-diminished levels of a year like 2011 or 2009. For our principal grapes:

Grape	2012 Yields (tons)	2013 Yields (tons)	% Change
Viognier	21.2	16.7	-21.2%
Marsanne	12.6	8.2	-34.9%
Grenache Blanc	45.5	25.4	-44.2%
Picpoul Blanc	6.4	5.2	-18.8%
Vermentino	22.6	15.1	-33.2%
Roussanne	46.4	44.5	-4.1%
Total Whites	154.7	115.1	-25.6%
Grenache	72.8	48.7	-33.2%
Syrah	37.1	32.5	-12.4%
Mourvedre	57.3	57.3	unchanged
Tannat	17.1	12.3	-28.1%
Counoise	17.5	13.9	-21.6%
Total Reds	201.8	164.7	-19.4%
Total	356.5	279.8	-21.5%

Most varieties are down, with the exceptions of Mourvedre and Roussanne, both essentially flat compared to 2012.  That we're generally down in 2013 is attributable to a combination of our second consecutive dry winter, a hangover from the large crop that the vines set in 2012, and our efforts to better control the yields on some grapes that set crops larger than we wanted (and larger than expected) in 2012 like Grenache, Grenache Blanc and Vermentino.  The comparative tonnages of Mourvedre and Roussanne look better, but that's more of a function of their relatively lower yields in 2012 -- most notably Mourvedre's 20% loss last year to sunburn -- than it is to them showing unexpected vigor in 2013.

Overall yields ended up at 2.66 tons per acre, which is on the low side of average for us.  Our ten-year baseline is 2.9 tons per acre, with a high of 3.6 tons/acre in 2006 and a low of 1.9 in 2009.  Other years in which we've seen yields between 2.5 and 3 tons per acre have included 2003, 2004, 2007 and 2008, all of which have been excellent and have been aging very well.

Looking at average sugars and pH at harvest gives a quick way of measuring a year's ripeness.  Since 2007:

Year	Avg. Sugars	Avg. pH
2007	24.42	3.67
2008	23.87	3.64
2009	23.42	3.69
2010	22.68	3.51
2011	22.39	3.50
2012	22.83	3.65
2013	22.90	3.63

Both of these measures show 2013 quite close to 2012, and it's probably not surprising, as the two years were broadly similar, both warm and dry.  The darker colors and more intense flavors, particularly in Grenache, that we're seeing compared to 2012 seems likely due to the yields, rather than ripeness at harvest.  It's also interesting (and positive, from our perspective) that we're seeing the intensity of a year like 2007 with sugars a full point and a half lower.  This fact supports our experience that as vines age they are better able to achieve full intensity at lower sugar levels.

As I noted in my last mid-harvest report, this year's harvest is both the earliest to end (by nearly three weeks) and of the shortest duration (42 days) since 2001.

Finally, the harvest has been exciting because we've gotten to work with two grapes that are new to us, each celebrating their first harvest anywhere in America.  We haven't yet learned much about Clairette Blanche or Terret Noir (except that the "noir" in Terret Noir is a bit of a misnomer) but we have a barrel of each fermenting in the cellar and it's going to be fun to see how they turn out.  Here's a peek at the not-very-noir Terret we picked:

Next up for us is the Paso Robles Harvest Festival, which will for the first time in my memory be conducted sans harvest.  Maybe this is better; we'll have time to focus on our guests in a way we wouldn't have in recent years.  Heck, in both 2010 and 2011 we were less than half picked as of today, and genuinely worried about whether our late-ripening grapes would make it into the cellar.  Instead, two of our excellent cellar team members (Madeline Vanlierop-Anderson and Craig Hamm, below) get to have some fun modeling this year's shirts.

We're looking at some frosty nights in the next week, which might mean an early end to the nascent fall foliage.  So, I thought I'd leave you with a couple of shots of the vineyard in its autumn colors.  The most colorful this year is Syrah:

But it's the contrast in colors which is the most fun, I think.  I take this shot nearly every year because it's a great perspective to see two grapes with dramatically contrasting autumn colors: Grenache Blanc, on the left, stays yellow-green until frost, while Syrah, on the right, colors up like a maple tree (Tannat, in the foreground, is kind of in-between)

We'll be enjoying the fact that these colors don't mean the clock is ticking on us... or at least that we're safely across the finish line and don't need to worry about our time.

We cruise toward the end of the earliest Paso Robles harvest since 2001

It's getting hard to find a vineyard block with fruit still on it.  As of the beginning of October, we'd harvested all of our non-Roussanne whites and our Syrah, and nearly all of our Mourvedre, Grenache and Roussanne.  The only grape that's hanging a majority of its fruit still out is Counoise, and we only have 3 acres of that.  We're something like 90% done as of this morning, and expect to be completely finished by early next week.  The Counoise, looking pretty in yesterday's late afternoon sun:

The last two weeks of September we brought in most of our Grenache, Mourvedre and Roussanne.  It's normal these days to have us pressing reds that are dry or nearly so and moving them to barrel, cleaning the tanks they were in and filling them right back up with newly de-stemmed reds that have just been picked, all while also picking and pressing whites.  The cellar dance is remarkable, often with multiple forklifts moving bins of grapes around.  We've been using our entire 7-person team most days.  A shot from yesterday shows three different red lots (our last Grenache lot for the Patelin, and Mourvedre and Counoise from our estate vineyard) organized on the crushpad while the red press works to make space:

For us, the quality of the harvest is always most determined by the quality of the Mourvedre we pick, as that is our most-planted grape and the showcase variety in our Esprit red.  What we're getting this year looks marvelous: rich and meaty, with very thick skins and enough acidity to keep things in balance.  It's amazing that the grapes are this complex given that we're picking them nearly a month earlier than normal.  One of yesterday's bins:

It really has been a compressed harvest.  The only year since 2000 that we finished harvest before October 28th was in 2001, when a frost-reduced crop was ripened quickly by a very warm summer.  This year, it looks like we'll pick our last grapes sometime around a week from now, which would make our last picking October 9th.  That would make the harvest just 44 days long, about 23% shorter than our 57-day average over the last decade.

Each ripening and harvest marker point has gotten farther and farther ahead of normal: flowering, a few days; veraison, a week; first picking, 10 days; last picking, 3 weeks).  We attribute this to the consistently warm but not hot summer we've seen.  Grapevines ripen their fruit optimally on days that top out between 85 and 95.  On hotter days, they stop photosynthesis and close the pores in their leaves to conserve moisture.  On cooler days, they spend too much of their time (late evening, night and mornings) under the 70-degree threshold below which ripening is very slow.  This year we've seen optimal ripening conditions, with an average high temperature since mid-July of 88 degrees, only one day that topped 100, and only seven that failed to reach the 80's.  This level of consistency over this long a stretch is unprecedented in our experience.

We have seen things cool down over the last week or so, with nights generally in the low 40's and a couple that even squeaked into the 30's.  We're pleased to see the cooler weather, with the vineyard nearly all ready to pick and us tight on space in the cellar.  The cool nights also encourage the vines to color up for fall.  Click on the Roussanne (left) and Mourvedre (right) photos below for a larger illustrations of the different fall colors we're starting to see.

Quality really does look tremendous.  We're starting to hear comparisons to 2007, which is the best vintage here in the last decade, and I think they're warranted.  The wines are remarkably deep in both color and flavor, with good acids and substantial but ripe tannins.  It's going to be a pleasure putting the blends together.

Yields are coming in lower than we expected, down perhaps a third from 2012's large crops, and will likely fall just below 2.5 tons/acre.  That's in keeping with 2007, too.

When we're done next week, I'll have a more complete recap with year-over-year comparisons by grape and by block, and will step back to look at some bigger picture questions.  Until then, we'll enjoy the beautiful days and cool nights, our last chance to see grapes on the vine for 2013, and make sure that there's actually space in the cellar for the last grapes we're picking. 

Final question: if there's no more harvesting to do during Harvest Festival, is it still a harvest festival?

Mid-September Harvest Report: Vibrant Whites and Dark, Electric Reds

What a difference two years makes.  As of September 15th in 2011 (and 2010, for that matter) we were looking at each other and re-sampling the vineyard, trying to figure out what to do with ourselves as we waited for the delayed harvest to begin.  Even last year, as of September 15th we'd only brought in 52 tons (14%) of the eventual 370 tons we'd harvest off of the estate.

Fast forward one year, and we've picked 119 tons off of our estate (43% of the roughly 275 tons we're expecting).  The numbers are even more dramatic when you include the Patelin harvests; because the Patelin Blanc is based on the early-ripening Grenache Blanc and Viognier, and the Patelin red on Syrah -- and because the majority of the vineyards are in warmer parts of the appellation than we are -- the Patelin harvest skews earlier than our estate fruit.  We brought in the last Patelin Blanc lot on Saturday and have already picked 75 tons for Patelin red, roughly three-quarters of what we're expecting to get in all harvest.

The cellar is a beehive of activity, with white grapes being pressed, red grapes being destemmed and moved to tanks, and other red tanks being pressed off.  It smells amazing: the unique, yeasty, juicy, tangy aroma of fermenting grapes. 

A few photos will give you a sense of what's going on.  First, a photo of bins of Grenache Noir assembled at the cellar door, waiting to be de-stemmed for fermentation:

We make tank space for these new arrivals by pressing off the tanks that have reached the level of extraction we want.  Leave grapes in too long and they start breaking down the seeds, which adds bitterness.  I love this next photo of red juice (a Syrah/Grenache co-ferment that will go into Patelin) splashing into the pan below the press, from where it's being pumped into tanks to complete its fermentation:

At the same time, we have white grapes arriving, which need to be pressed right away and then moved to tanks or barrels to ferment.  Our last Picpoul Blanc arrived yesterday:

The harvest chalkboard is growing, to the point that we're running out of space:

Quality looks strong, and yields appear to be down by some 20% - 25% compared to last year, confirming that we're in the range of 2.5 tons/acre or a touch more.  The dark, electric colors and rich flavors we're seeing in our early lots suggest we're looking at something special.  If you don't think a color can be dark and electric at the same time, check out the Syrah -- Still fermenting! -- that Cellarmaster Tyler Elwell is holding:

The weather forecast for this week (cooling off to highs in the lower 80's, and cool, perhaps foggy nights) should give us a bit of a respite.  But with most everything ready or nearly so, we're not planning on much of a break.  We've still got most of our Roussannne and Grenache Noir, and all of our Mourvedre and Counoise, out on the vines.  Grenache is first up.

Harvest 2013 begins, fast and slightly less furious than 2012

In my last pre-harvest assessment, written the first of August, I predicted that based on our veraison dates we'd start between August 25th and September 4th.  And I was right, but only barely.  It was August 26th when we brought in our first estate lots: two different Viognier blocks.  That was followed by our first Syrah the next day, Vermentino the day after that and suddenly (bam!) we were in the thick of harvest. 

August was consistently warm, which produced the relatively short time between veraison and harvest. Average daily high temperatures were 90°.  Only one day (August 6th) failed to make it at least into the 80's, and it topped out at 79.9°. At the same time, it hasn't been hot enough to force the vines to shut down; we've only topped 100° once, on August 14th, and only barely, at 101.1°.  The result has been perfect ripening conditions, and the vines responded.

We've reconstituted our cellar team over the last few months and think it's the strongest we've ever had.  From left, below, veterans Assistant Winemaker Chelsea Franchi, Cellarmaster Tyler Elwell and Winemaker Neil Collins are joined by our two newest additions: Craig Hamm and Madeline Vanlierop-Anderson.

This week, the second week of our harvest, we've brought in the rest of the Viognier and Vermentino, more Syrah, our first Grenache Blanc and Picpoul, and the first-ever picking off our tiny Clairette Blanche block.  We're trying to be more organized, and have been keeping an old-school chalkboard busy with our daily updates.  Note the Clairette Blanche at the bottom; it's California's first:

We've also been working to harvest more at night and early in the morning, when the grapes are cooler and the oxidation pressures are minimal.  This has turned out to be better in unexpected ways as well; our crew is happier because it's cool out and the many vineyard insects are dormant, it makes for better flow in the cellar because the first press load is in the press and running before the bulk of the winemaking team even arrives, and the staggered shifts we've been working mean everyone isn't here the same long hours driving each other crazy.  Long hours, sure... but varied ones.  A few photos (taken by Marketing Coordinator Lauren Cross) will give you a sense of the feel of a nighttime harvest. We pick using LED head lamps and the lights of the tractors.  No tower lights for us:

The hand-harvested grapes are dumped into bins which our vineyard tractor then delivers to the crushpad.

To work in the cool and dark rather than the baking sun, and to do so knowing that the result will be wines that are fresher and more vibrant, is great.

Our sense all along has been that our yields will be down some from last year, and with two grapes finished, we have some confirmation: Viognier is down 21% and Vermentino down 33% compared to last year.  Of course, last year wasn't normal; we harvested the most total tons off our property ever, although because we've brought a few additional blocks into production, our tons per acre were slightly behind the record levels of 2005 and 2006.  Vermentino was even more unusually productive than our other grapes last year, but the Viognier seems representative, and we're estimating a decline from last year's 370 tons to something around or just over 300 tons this year.  Over our 109 acres in production, that will give us something right in our target zone of just under 3 tons per acre.  Recent years where we've ended up right around that yield per acre have been very strong, and include 2000, 2003, 2004, 2007 and 2008.

With 57 tons in off the property, we're something approaching 20% of the way done with harvest.  That's a full two weeks ahead of last year, and it seems like we might be mostly done by early October.  If so, it will be our earliest finish since 2001, when we finished a frost-reduced harvest on October 3rd.  Since then, our earliest harvest end date was October 28th, and we've stretched into November as often as not.

The quality looks tremendous.  The grapes are coming in with ideal sugars and pH levels, and looking and tasting juicy and intense.  It's early days, to be sure, but we're excited to be where we are.