Five Reasons Why Winter Is the Best Season to Visit Wine Country

Most people think of wine country in the autumn, with colorful grapes on the vines, golden hillsides, and clear blue skies. And that is a pretty great backdrop for a wine country visit. But I'm here to tell you that as excellent as the fall is, it's the winter that you should be looking to visit Paso Robles or really any California wine country. To give you a sense of why, a photo to start:

So why do I think you should schedule your next wine country visit in winter?

• No crowds. There's not really an "in season" and "out of season" period in wine country, but our weekly traffic numbers should give you a sense. In March, April, and May we averaged 584 visitors per week. The summer is a little quieter, and in June through August we averaged 496 visitors per week. September through November we averaged 544 people per week. But unless your visit is in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, or over either MLK or President's Day weekend, our average weekly visitors last December through February was just 321 people per week. That means that you'll likely have the tours to yourself and tasting rooms nearly so, especially if you come during the week.  
• The weather is lovely. You might think that people avoid Paso Robles in the winter because of the weather. Of course, there is the occasional rainstorm, but even in winter here we get on average five sunny days per week. And relative to other parts of the country, the winter climate here is downright glorious. On those sunny days, the average high here is in the 60s. About a third of days between December and March top out in the 70s. That sounds pretty nice to me. Nights are chilly, yes. It's not unusual for it to drop below freezing. But that's what sweaters are for. And if you're worried about snow, don't be. The last time we saw any out at Tablas Creek was in 2011, and it was gone an hour later.  
• Winemakers and proprietors are around. One of the charms of a place like Paso Robles is that most of the wineries here are locally owned, and there's a pretty good chance that when you visit you'll meet the people who run the place and who make the wines. But during harvest, winemakers are buried in grapes, working 60-hour weeks. Vineyard managers become nocturnal. And the owners who aren't also doubling as vineyard managers or winemakers are likely on the road trying to sell their wines before the holiday season. By mid-November the selling season is over, as is the grind of harvest. Wines are largely pressed off and quietly finishing fermentations in barrel. And the wholesale market doesn't really get going again until March. So the key people are around. 
• Animals are out in the vineyards. OK, this isn't applicable to every winery. But more and more, wineries around California are realizing that one of the best ways to increase fertility and biodiversity (and therefore soil health) in their vineyards is to integrate grazing animals, mostly sheep, in the off-season. You can get sheep in the vineyard as early as the end of harvest, but there's not much for them to eat until the grasses get established at this time of year. But starting in mid-December, the next four months are when the flocks are most important in the vineyard. Most operations time lambing for November or December, so the lambs are being weaned when there's the most food available. So this is the time of year to see this piece of regenerative farming in action. Come budbreak in April, the sheep have to be exiled to unplanted areas so they don't switch over to eating the new buds and leaves.  
• The beauty. Back to my first point. Winter’s beauty here in Paso Robles may not have the drama of summer's golden hills and deep blue skies, but it's profound nonetheless. This is a more subtle beauty: layers of clouds and sky, carpets of green growing over deep brown earth, and textures that seem like they change daily.⁠ Right now, you have the end of the fall colors as the last leaves hang on the vines, at the same time as the hillsides are turning from brown to green. The earth, dampened from the first rains, turns dark brown. As the winter goes on, the green of the grasses deepens, eventually in March bursting into wildflower glory.

I'll share a couple more photos to give you a sense. First, a look west across one of our many dry-laid limestone walls toward a section of Grenache Blanc with a few yellow-green leaves hanging on above the rapidly growing cover crop.

And finally one more photo that to me captures the atmospheric loveliness of this time of year. This is taken at my home vineyard looking east over the town of Templeton. You can see the winter fog that sit over the Salinas River Valley and the towns of Templeton and Paso Robles. You can see the wild tangle of bare but unpruned grapevines. And you can feel the warmth of the day approaching. That day started at 28°F and was probably 33°F when I took the photo around 8am. By 3pm it was 71°F.

If you're coming in the next few months, you're in for a treat. If you haven't yet made your plans, put it on your list. You won't regret it.

November is the month for epic vineyard photos

Something about November just hits different. Maybe it's the lower sun angles. Maybe it's the clouds. Maybe it's the fall colors. Or maybe it's that daylight savings has ended, so I'm here at the vineyard as the sun sets each day. Whatever the reason, it's a month where I find myself grabbing my camera and walking west to chase the setting sun more often than any other. I wanted to share some of my favorite photos I've gotten recently, starting with the vineyard road I usually follow out into the middle of the vineyard:

The grapevines are starting to lose their leaves, especially in low-lying areas where we've gotten a few hard freezes recently, which makes for a nice contract with the olive trees. We've been harvesting olives this week, and are seeing a bumper crop:

The blocks that do still have leaves are typically on hillsides, where the cold air can drain away. Syrah is particularly pretty at this time of year, reminding me of maple leaves from Vermont where I grew up:

Other blocks can feel downright wintery already. This Mourvedre block has already lost most of its leaves, with the exception of a few tufts of green leaf growth on the canes' tips:

The grapevines aren't the only things losing their leaves. This peach tree seems to lose all its leaves almost at once, each year:

There's a view I come back to, season after season, because I love the depth that it shows, with lines of hills receding west toward the horizon. These are Counoise vines in the front, with Syrah behind:

The live oaks don't lose their leaves, so they stand out dark against the fading light: 

I'll leave you with one more photo, a classic sunset shot, with cotton candy clouds over Grenache vines. We spend so much of the year without clouds that when they do return it's always striking:

Speaking of clouds, it's looking like we're going to get our first real rain of the year at the end of the week. Although we won't see the potentially historic results that are being predicted for the coast between the Bay Area and Portland, Oregon, it looks like we'll get an inch or so of rain. And honestly, that's perfect. It's supposed to stay unsettled after, and getting an inch of water in the ground should allow our cover crop to germinate. Getting six inches might have meant it would wash away:

Remarkable view of #BombCyclone west of Oregon & Washington and associated #AtmosphericRiver west of California this PM. Fortunately, the strongest winds will remain well offshore, but very heavy rainfall is likely across portions of northern CA into weekend. #CAwx #ORwx #WAwx

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— Daniel Swain (@weatherwest.bsky.social) November 19, 2024 at 3:46 PM

Between several frosty mornings this week and the wind and rain from the storm coming on Friday, these views will likely look dramatically different by next week. And that's fine. Autumn has been lovely. Bring on winter.

A pilgrimage to a reimagined Beaucastel, built of the earth and with the Earth in mind

I just got back from two weeks in Europe. The first two-thirds of the trip involved visits to work with our importers in the UK (thank you, Liberty Wines) and Germany (thank you, Veritable Vins & Domaines). The last third of it I got to spend with the Perrins, checking in on their many projects in and around Chateauneuf-du-Pape. I've been visiting Beaucastel for my whole life¹, and the lovely cream-colored stone chateau with its cellar filled with foudres and unlabeled bottles has been the one relative constant among an ever-growing collection of estates, projects, and partnerships that the Perrin family have built over the last half-century. Now, Beaucastel, which has been run by the Perrins since 1909, has received its reimagining that manages to be ground-breakingly innovative while preserving a deeply traditional aesthetic.

I am excited to share with you the photos that I took of the new building and cellars at Beaucastel. It's jam-packed with the out-of-the-box thinking that the Perrin family is famous for. But first, an appreciation of the family that we've partnered with to develop Tablas Creek for the last 35 years. As a group they are so smart, and so innovative, and there are so many of them (nine family members at the moment all working on different aspects of the business) that their capacity to develop new projects and see them through is truly remarkable. They have been leaders in progressive farming since the 1950s, when Jacques Perrin converted the estate to organic before there was even a word for it in French. They've been innovating in the grape varieties they grow for just as long². They make some of the world's best wines under $10/bottle at La Vieille Ferme, a diverse collection of terroir-driven explorations of their Rhone Valley home through Famille Perrin, and some of the world's most collectible treasures at Beaucastel. They own and operate a Michelin-star restaurant, l'Oustalet in Gigondas.

Tablas Creek isn't their only foray into collaborative projects. The Perrins have developed partnerships with Nicolas Jaboulet to make the Les Alexandrins wines from the Northern Rhone, and with Brad Pitt to make Miraval rosé in Provence. They and Pitt partnered with renowned Champagne winemaker Rodolphe Péters to make Fleur de Miraval Champagne, with Master Distiller Tom Nichol to make Gardener Gin, and with two renowned French research professors on Beau Domaine Skincare, which uses the active ingredients in grape skins, sap, and trunks to make cosmetics. They recently purchased a woodworking studio that is allowing them to reimagine the wooden case boxes that they're famous for at a lower carbon footprint than cardboard. Internationally, they are one of twelve members of Primum Familiae Vini, one of the largest wineries to commit to membership in International Wineries for Climate Action, and founding supporters of the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation.

Is your mind reeling yet? Mine always is a bit after spending a visit with the Perrins. 

For all the change and growth in the Perrin world, Beaucastel has been relatively unchanged over the last thirty years. The central chateau, which houses the offices for the estate, was until about a decade ago the home of Jacques Perrin's widow Marguerite. A collection of outbuildings had grown up in a rough quadrangle around the back of the estate, housing a collection of workshops, tractors and equipment. The cellar, with its dramatic array of foudres and stacked bottles, was one of the most recognizable in the world. One of the major challenges of this construction project was doing it around this treasure of aging wine. It was great to see that this centerpiece was unchanged even as it had been surrounded by entirely new access and infrastructure:

In their reconstruction project, the cellar's viability in an ever-hotter world and the desire to minimize the resources required to make their wines were of paramount importance. Everything other than the original chateau was taken down to the ground and a new cellar excavated two stories below the surface. At the bottom of this newly-excavated cellar is a series of four reservoirs that together hold nearly half a million gallons of water, refilled naturally with rain harvested from the building's roof. Because of their depth, these reservoirs maintain a constant year-round temperature of 14°C (58°F). One of the reservoirs:

These reservoirs are more than just a supply of water. Their principal purpose is to cool the rest of the cellar. The building was reoriented so that on the north face it includes a series of wind towers that catch the prevailing wind (the famous Mistral that blows more than 100 days each year) and directs it down over the water to cool it. That air is then used to cool the cellar. The view from the north, from where most guests will arrive, shows the five towers taking up both stories of the left half of the building's facade:

The materials used in the construction are a big part of what makes the building so exciting. Instead of sourcing virgin concrete or quarrying new stone, the vast majority of the building is made either out of the stones and concrete that were deconstructed from the previous building, or from rammed earth and site-made concrete from the materials excavated to dig the cellar. And the textures of the new building's materials are one of my lasting memories of my visit. In the below photo, you can see the rammed earth walls that surround the olive courtyard, with another repeated element of the construction: views of one element from another (in this case, the vineyards outside):

A second example of that same idea -- to connect the different spaces visually -- is shown in the next photo, looking from the entrance into the cellar:

One more photo of textures and materials, before I move to the fermentation and aging spaces. This is the entrance stairway, showing the site concrete, which absorbs CO2 as it cures. I read a review of the architectural style that described it as "monastic" which I thought was evocative. There's a timelessness in the spaces, a connection between cool, dark insides and warm, earth-colored exterior courtyards, that hearkens back to the monasteries that dot the Mediterranean landscape.

The ecclesiastical feel to the architecture isn't restricted to the materials. The underground rooms are vaulted like Gothic cathedrals, and the lighting is marvelous. This room will be an aging room, with bottles stacked on each side of a central corridor:

The old bottle storage space has been reimagined as the cellar dedicated to their barrel-fermented whites. The vaulted ceilings are highlighted by new lights:

One of the goals was to create multiple spaces where guests could taste. They don't have a traditional tasting room at Beaucastel, but welcome thousands of visitors, mostly trade, to the property each year. I spent a summer there in my youth where helping with these visits was one of my responsibilities. I can attest to how valuable it will be to have different areas with different ambiance where they can bring different groups for their tasting. They even have small vault dedicated to their Hommage a Jacques Perrin wines, like a royal chapel tucked away on the edge of a larger cathedral:

In the lower level of this cellar they have left a window through the walls into the layers of soil -- a mix of calcareous clay, loam, and pebbles -- that makes Chateauneuf-du-Pape such a coveted terroir. I framed the photo with the edges of the window in view in the hopes that you can feel how much the materials of the construction are in fact the earth in which it was dug:

The exit back to the surface is dramatic as well. The warm Mediterranean light suffuses the stairway back to the Olive Courtyard, reconnecting you with the region's famous color palette:

Back in the courtyard, work was proceeding like a hive of activity, with a team of Portuguese tile specialists installing the walkway around the olive garden:

For me, it was inspiring to see Beaucastel be reimagined in a way that feels so timeless. I spent the beginning of my visit trying to remember what had been in a particular place before the construction, but I have a strong feeling that once everything is done and the interiors complete it will be almost impossible to imagine it having been put together any other way. That this renovation was also achieved in a way that is so conscientious about its use of resources also feels fitting. From construction materials repurposed from the construction itself, to the cisterns that will keep the cellar cool with minimal use of refrigeration, to the water harvesting and reuse that will allow it to use less of scarce resources, all this feels appropriate for an estate with such a long tradition of environmental sustainability.

Most importantly, the building feels appropriate for Beaucastel. The Perrins are remarkable in the degree to which they balance a reverence for tradition with a relentlessly innovative approach. And this building embodies that duality. It thinks about the next century while embracing an aesthetic that feels of the region and appreciative of its history. It is of the earth while also being light in its impacts on the earth. It should be a marvelous place to make wine, and to experience its magic.

How cool. 

Footnotes:

1. If you're unfamiliar with how our two families got together back in the late 1960s, my dad tells the story in a blog from 2014.
2. I think it's very likely that some of the thirteen traditional Chateaueuf-du-Pape grapes would have gone extinct if not for Jacques' efforts to find all the ones that had survived into the 1950s and bring them back to plant at Beaucastel. I chronicle those stories in my Grapes of the Rhone Valley series on this blog.

Paso Robles Is Ridiculously Beautiful Right Now, Autumn Transition Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harvest 2024 ramps to full speed, then cools down. Our vines (and our people) appreciate the respite.

On Monday night, I was snuggling under a blanket reading in our living room when I realized that it smelled like snow. No, it was never actually going to snow. Snow happens only once every few years in Paso Robles, and never in September. But that didn't change the fact that after a two month stretch that has ranged from warm to hot, the air felt different. It was already down in the 40s just after 10pm, and the crisp, electric air and the north wind would have sent me, if it were April, to check on our frost protection. In the end, it didn't come all that close to freezing. At my house it bottomed out at 38.7F, and at the vineyard it was a couple of degrees warmer. But that night, and the chilly, breezy day that followed and topped out only at 67.4F, definitely felt like a harbinger of the changing seasons. You can see from the chart below how different the last week has been compared to the beginning of September: 

As for the Tablas Creek harvest, this cooldown is giving the team a chance to catch their breaths after a rapid escalation of harvest. The first couple of weeks started slow, as we brought in 44.8 tons across those two weeks. The next week was a doozy. We brought in over 115 tons including one lot each of Viognier, Marsanne, Roussanne, Clairette Blanche, Grenache Blanc, and Vermentino, four lots of Grenache Blanc, seven lots of Grenache, ten lots of Syrah, and two co-harvested lots. Nineteen of these lots came off the estate, nine will go into Patelin, Patelin Blanc or Patelin Rosé, and one will become our newest Lignée de Tablas wine: a white blend from the Fenaughty vineyard in the Sierra foothills. The harvest chalkboard is filling up:

A few scenes from around the cellar will help give you a sense of things. First, the bins sitting on our crushpad, in this case Mourvedre (left) and Grenache (right):

Next, the daily chart that keeps track of our cap management for all our fermenting reds (notice the division into "pump over", "pulse air", and "punch down") as well as what's being received and pressed that day:

I'm guessing you're likely less familiar with what "pulse air" is than you are with pump over or punch down. For us, it's an important part of our program, and a way to keep the fermenting reds mixed without extracting harsher tannins. You need to do this mixing daily, at least, because the carbon dioxide bubbles that form during fermentation lift the berries to the surface, forming a "cap" or cake of mostly-whole berries at the top of a deeper pool of fermenting juice. You want the juice in contact with the berries because that's how you get the flavor extraction. In addition, leaving the berries to dry out at the surface invites problems such as spoilage yeasts. So typically you either push the berries down into the juice manually (that's a punch-down) or you pump the juice out from the bottom of the tank and spray it on the cap (that's a pump-over). But both have the potential to extract more of the harsher tannins than you might want: punch-downs because you're physically crushing the skins with each punch, and pump-overs because the pump's machinery ends up grinding up seeds that may have fallen to the bottom of the tank. The pulse-air, on the other hand, uses an air compressor and a long wand to release bubbles of air in the fermenting liquid. As that bubble escapes to the surface, it splashes apart the cap. This typically results in a gentler extraction. You can see the pulse-air in action below on one of our 1500-gallon wooden upright tanks, wielded by harvest intern Rachel:

In the vineyard, things have progressed rapidly, and everywhere you turn there is a jewel-like cluster of grapes, hanging enticingly. I particularly like the white clusters at this stage, as they pick up their first hint of honeyed tones. These Bourboulenc clusters should come in sometime in the next week or two:

At the same time, there are still clusters that are a long way from being ready to harvest. And that's just fine; we don't expect to bring in the last fruit until the end of October. This Grenache cluster is still going through the final stages of veraison:

I've been enjoying trying to come up with new perspectives on the ever-changing vineyard. One of my favorites has been to get underneath the vines and use a wide-angle to try to get the hanging clusters, the canopy, and the horizon line. Below you can see the results with Grenache (left) and Bourboulenc (right):

This week's cool-down hasn't meant that we've stopped harvesting. If you look at the harvest chalkboard above you'll see that we brought in nine different lots already this week. But it does take the pressure off. We were able to take yesterday and get our presses a much-needed servicing. We used some down time on Tuesday to get our recently-arrive 600-gallon foudres stacked and settled in our white room. We didn't harvest either weekend day last weekend. And we've been able to get the cellar team home by 4pm the past few days. That may not seem like much, but a week like last week meant 60 work hours for much of the team. Having a mellower week to recharge everyone's batteries is most welcome. 

Similarly, the cooler weather gives the grapevines a chance to recuperate and gather energy for their next push. The weather looks like it will warm up next week, not to any noteworthy level, but back into the 90s. Then things will get back on track.

One thing I'm going to be keeping my eyes on is yields. We're starting to get signals, mostly from our Patelin growers, that certain varieties are coming in much lighter than people expected. This seems to be particularly true with whites, although given that whites are mostly ready before reds, it's possible we'll see that reds will end up lower too. On our own property, it seems like Syrah, Grenache, and Grenache Blanc have pretty healthy yields out there. Viognier and Vermentino definitely look light. Roussanne, Counoise, and Mourvedre seem average to a bit below. But given that we haven't finished picking anything off our estate yet, it's hard to have the full picture. But I think we can conclude that our hopes of a truly plentiful vintage aren't going to come to pass. Look for more details in our next harvest update.

Meanwhile, I'm going to leave you with one more photo, taken by Vineyard Manager Jordy Lonborg at 4am yesterday. That's the nearly-full moon behind some high clouds, with the stacks of empty picking bins in the foreground. I'm not sure I can remember a more atmospheric harvest photo. There are moments of beauty every day out here. At this time of year, most nights, too.

Harvest 2024 begins under ideal conditions as moderate temperatures return

At around 5am today, we kicked off the 2024 harvest with six bins of Viognier from the top of our tallest hill. Conditions were perfect; it was in the low 50s, which meant that the fruit got into the cellar chilly. As we were finishing up, the sun started to rise over the eastern hills:

As we’d expected, this was neither a particularly early beginning harvest (like 2022, when we started on August 17th) nor was it a late start (like 2023, when we didn’t bring in estate fruit until September 14th). That’s not surprising given that the first half of the summer was quite cool, though not as cool as 2023, while for six weeks starting early July it’s been hot. Now it looks like we’ve settled into an ideal pattern. Check out the temperatures compared to average (and compared to the previous six weeks) since August 12th:

The first pick is always a milestone, with the cellar team joining the vineyard crew out in the field. The crew, many of whom have been here for decades, always get a kick out of this. David Maduena, our long-time Vineyard Manager (pictured below at the back of the bin trailer) is starting his 31st harvest here.

In the cellar, we’ve been spending the last few weeks washing everything and checking that all our equipment is working properly. It’s all so empty that it feels like we’re working in a new facility. It won’t feel like that for long.

The team has already done a bunch of sampling today, and we expect some reds in tomorrow. Nothing off the estate yet (and maybe not for a week or two) but we should get the Pinot Noir from our place in the Templeton Gap and some Syrah for Patelin de Tablas. We’re thinking that yields are likely to be similar to last year, maybe a little better in grapes like Roussanne and Syrah. We’ll know more, obviously, in a few weeks. 

One thing that is clear is that we're looking at a harvest that seems more like a marathon than a sprint. There isn't any major heat in the forecast, with a minor warm-up this week (highs likely topping out in the low-to-mid-90s) followed by a weak low pressure system likely cooling things down so that our highs will be in the mid-80s. All of the red grapes on the estate, with the exception of some of the hilltop blocks of Syrah, are still in the middle of veraison. In some blocks it’s barely started. These photos of Grenache (left) and Counoise (right) were taken late last week.

All this is normal, and good. Ripening conditions appear ideal. The vines look healthy. An extended harvest always allows us more time to sample and to make better use of our tanks. It’s always good to ease into harvest rather than have it start like an avalanche. We’ll have lots more to share with you soon. Stay tuned.

Why we're glad for the wet 2023-24 winter and glorying in the (so far) cool 2024 spring

This past weekend was Memorial Day, and we spent Saturday evening with friends on their patio. I wore jeans and a long-sleeve shirt and brought a quilted Tablas Creek pullover for after the sun went down. It turned out I needed it starting around 6pm, and the friends broke out their collection of blankets to keep us warm while we hung out and chatted as the light faded and the stars came out. It was lovely. But it was also weird. This is late May! Where was the heat?

We usually assume that Paso Robles Wine Festival, always the third weekend in May, is going to provide the first summer weather of the year. Our goal was always to get a prime table under a big spreading oak tree so we had shelter from the 90° heat. Not this year. The day was sunny but breezy and cool, and as the afternoon drew to a close and the wind started whipping, we were looking for patches of sun to warm our backs. I'm not complaining; I would always prefer conditions like this to it being sweltering for a wine festival. But take a close look at the fleece and denim among our pouring crew:

Those are just two anecdotal examples, but looking at the weather since the beginning of April bears out that it's been cooler than normal. The average high has been about 4°F cooler than normal, and the average nighttime low about 3°F cooler than normal. That may not seem like much. But six days haven't made it out of the 50s. Another 13 days haven't made it out of the 60s. And we have yet to hit 90°F even once. 

Looking at it a different way, the first two months of the 2024 growing season have seen high temperatures been slightly cooler than the same stretch last year, which was by far our coolest year in more than a decade. The net result is that we're just starting flowering at a time of year when in a more typical year (like 2021) we'd have been at its peak.

This slow progression is consistent with the winter that we saw. Now that we're likely past any more rain, we can compare the winter of 2023-24 with normal. First, total rainfall compared to previous years, where you'll notice that it was above average at more than 29 inches, but nothing close to the crazy rainfall we got last winter:

Looking by month, you'll see that we got pretty close to our average rainfall most months, with the exception of a somewhat dry beginning to the winter (which we're thankful for given the lateness of the 2023 harvest) and a February that produced roughly double normal rainfall:

The rain also came more gently than we often see in winters here, where most of the rain comes in a few big storms. We had 49 days with measurable rainfall, which means that we averaged only 0.59" of rain each rainy day. By contrast, in the winter of 2022-23, we had somewhat more rainy days (62) and those days averaged 0.8" of accumulation. They were also more concentrated in January and March, which were the months where we saw flooding.

While it's generally a solid rule that in California, there's no such thing as too much rain, we were just fine with this most recent winter. It takes about 15" of rain to saturate our calcareous soils and provide sufficient water for our dry-farmed vines to make it through the growing season. It takes another 10" of rain to refill our wells to capacity and start to refill the reservoirs. Anything beyond that flows off and becomes extra capacity. If the state is in a drought, extra water helps replenish critically low reservoir levels. But given that the ample rainfall last winter already did that, we didn't need another 40" year, and we were grateful not to have to deal with creeks jumping their banks or customers dealing with washouts or closures.

The moisture did help keep our soil temperatures low and delayed budbreak to a normal time. Since then, the cool weather has mostly meant that we're having to keep mowing since the grasses between the rows keep growing and with the new growth in the vines it's too late in the year for the sheep to help. That means we're living with a shaggier-than-normal vineyard profile:

In the mornings, we're seeing weather that wouldn't be surprising in a place like Santa Barbara or San Diego (where they have terms for this: "May grey" and "June gloom"). But in Paso Robles, what is normally a once- or twice-a-month phenomenon has been pretty regular. I took a few photos on my way into work last week in our Scruffy Hill block that will give you a sense. The atmosphere is lovely for photos, and it's relatively rare here:

A close-up of one of the vines, with others marching away down the hill in the fog, is one of my favorite recent vineyard photos:

Finally, in the afternoons we've been getting another pretty but usually rare phenomenon: a fog bank massing over the Santa Lucia Mountains to our west. That fog has burned off during the day, but you can see it looming there, ready to roll back in when the sun goes down:

We're not worried about any of this. The vineyard looks amazing and the lack of stress is a great thing for vine health. The wet winter and cool spring mean that you can reach into the soil anywhere and just an inch or two down you get to damp, dark earth. Plus, it always warms up in Paso Robles, and even in a cool year like 2023, we have a long enough growing season to get the grapes ripe. It looks like we might not have long to wait; the forecast for the next couple of weeks looks like we'll be getting into the 80s pretty regularly, with some low-90s possible Thursday and Friday. Meanwhile we'll enjoy the unusual scenery and glory in the lovely daytime weather. If you're visiting in the coming weeks, you're in for a treat.

What separates a great wine dinner from the many good ones?

I've hosted a lot of wine dinners the last few months. Restaurants, understaffed and overwhelmed in the aftermath of Covid, are starting to have the bandwidth to refocus on special events. Add to that the fact that after a few years where yields were low and demand was high, we finally have wine to sell, so I've been traveling more. And sprinkle on top some invitations that I thought were too cool to turn down, including the Paso Robles Asia tour and the Tasting Climate Change conference in Montreal. At each city I visit, I try to set up a dinner, because I think they are the best way to share the wines and story of Tablas Creek. 

All the dinners I've had the pleasure of hosting this year have been good. Most have been very good. But last week, I hosted a dinner with Chef Spike Gjerde at Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore that was one of the best I can ever remember, and it got me thinking about what it was that separated it from others. I think the event nailed all five of the elements of a great wine dinner:

• Inspiration. A great menu requires creativity. After all, a great pairing is not as simple as making a dish have similar flavors to the wine it's supposed to pair with. There are times where what a dish (or wine) needs is contrast. And then there's the talent that the greatest chefs have to make dishes that pull subtle notes out of the wines they're paired with and make it somehow taste more like itself. In my experience, great pairings are created by chefs who sit down with a wine and build the dish around it. After all, the wine isn't something that can be changed. The food has to have the right flavors and the right volume to have presence while still allowing the wine to shine. That's not an easy balance to strike. And the wines themselves should be selected because the chef found them inspiring to pair with. It’s hard to make a truly great dinner with, for example, the four wines your distributor may happen to have in quantity.
• Execution. It should go without saying that it takes more than a great menu to have a great meal. The food needs to be served promptly, and get to the diners hot. That's not easy when making the same dish for 20 or 40 or 70 people. That takes a chef with a good team and good organizational skills, and a front-of-house staff that can keep up.  
• Atmosphere. That doesn't need to be luxurious. The Woodberry Kitchen dinner was served outside on their brick patio on a drizzly evening. But the chairs were comfortable. The lighting was great. And the three large communal tables meant that the conversation was lively and everyone engaged. Restaurants often try to keep their standard table seating for wine dinners, and place each group at its own table. But in my experience that's a mistake. Bringing people together into larger tables creates a special sort of energy. It also means that solo diners aren't left by themselves.
• Pacing. A great wine dinner is like Goldilocks and the three bears: not too fast, not too slow. You need space for people to learn about the wines and hear from the winemaker. It's frustrating when people are poured a new wine, you start to talk about it, and then the food is served right away. You're left to talk over the hubbub of service while everyone’s food gets cold. Not ideal. But these multi-course affairs (typically 4 or 5 five courses, and sometimes more) can also drag if the kitchen can't keep up or there's too much time between courses. I finished one dinner at 11pm recently. That dinner started with a reception at 6pm. That's a marathon, and can often result in people losing energy (or drinking too much) before the last few courses are served.  
• Personality. Guests come to a wine dinner for more than a good meal. They come to learn about the winery, and about the restaurant. They want to hear the inspiration for the different courses, and come away with a new idea or two about food and wine pairing. That requires both a winery representative and a chef interested in sharing their stories and their inspiration and with the talent to keep an audience engaged and bring them along on a journey.

One complicating factor is that it's a surprising but true fact that most chefs aren't all that into wine. Some don't drink at all, or drink liquor or beer. Others like wine, but think of it as an accessory to their food rather than an equal partner. And these chefs can produce good, even very good wine dinners. After all, how wrong can you go with a delicious dish and a delicious wine? But the best wine dinners, in my experience, are designed and executed by chefs who love and are intrigued by wine's mysteries. And at last week's Woodberry Kitchen dinner, Chef Spike's love for the food he was cooking, the pairings he created, and the wines that were featured came through with clarity. 

These photos (thank you to Woodberry Kitchen for taking and sharing them) should give you a sense. The menu was remarkable, and included dishes like asparagus and crab en croute with caviar beurre blanc (left, paired with our Esprit de Tablas Blanc) and filet of beef en valise with smoked oysters and sauce treize cepages (right, paired with two older vintages of our Esprit de Tablas). And critically, all the courses got to the table in great time and at the right temperature.

The selection of wines included some unusual treats like 2012 and 2015 Esprit de Tablas, our 2022 Dianthus rosé, and the 2018 Vin de Paille Quintessence, which we shipped specially out from the winery.

The long, communal tables meant that the conversations were lively all night. Everyone had enough space without feeling isolated:

The pacing meant that I had a chance to tell the story of each wine. As if by magic, as soon as I was done speaking the next course appeared. Of course, that's not magic, that's planning and a great team:

Finally, at the end, Spike came out to accept a well-deserved ovation and talk about the inspiration for the dinner. He talked about a few of the courses, but like any good storyteller focused on the personal side of things: his own formative years as a young chef where he was invited by my brother to participate in a food and wine showcase in the Caribbean, and ended up between Jean-Pierre Perrin and Jean-Louis Chave listening to them dissect a meal and the pairings that went with it. Some thirty years later, we all were the beneficiaries of the lessons he learned, then and later.

 

April in Paso Robles is Peak Green

If you asked me to pick my favorite month in Paso Robles, it would be April. The days are longer, and the sun warmer. You get your first days in the 70s and by the end of the month probably touch 80 once or twice, but the nights are still chilly and you're coming out of the winter season which makes the warmth all the more welcome. The grapevines burst out of dormancy and come to life. And the combination of green hillsides, blue skies, and puffy white clouds is remarkable:

Of course, April isn't without risk. The new growth is vulnerable to frosts, and days that top out in the low 60s can freeze at night. We saw some light damage from a cold night last weekend, and were grateful that it didn't come three weeks later, when the whole vineyard would have sprouted. These last few weeks of dormancy provide a striking contrast between the dark brown vine trunks and the electric green of the cover crops, as in this view of our Scruffy Hill block:

The flowers you see in the above photo are the daikon radishes from our cover crop. After our flock of sheep passes through, the plants that were grazed are stimulated to reproduce, sending up a carpet of flowers and seeds. That's even more dramatically in evidence in the head-trained Tannat block below:   

It's not just the growth of the cover crops and grapevines that make it feel so alive in April. Standing in the middle of the vineyard the buzz of bees and the chirping of birds envelop you. And looking down you can see the life in evidence everywhere:

In April, there's still enough moisture in the air to provide a nice sense of distance, as visible in this view over the western edge of our property toward the peaks of the Santa Lucia Mountains roughly eight miles away:

We'll be getting all this growth under control in coming weeks, with the goals of retaining the lovely moisture we got this winter, allowing cold air to drain and so reducing our risk of frost, and leaving the soil as undisturbed as possible while doing so to protect the soil networks. So the picture is going to change by the day.

I'll leave you with one photo, from a perspective easily visible if you approach Tablas Creek on Vineyard Drive from the south. As an introduction to Tablas Creek, I don't feel like we could do much better:

Happy April, everyone.

Budbreak 2024: Right on Time

This winter has continued to follow a pattern something close to the platonic ideal of a Paso Robles winter. Some November rain to get the cover crop started. A cold December, to force the vines into dormancy. Regular and plentiful rain January through March, to keep soil temperatures down, but with sunny and warmer intervals, to encourage cover crop growth. And then a turn in April toward spring-like weather. And as we'd expect, as we passed the spring equinox we've started to see budbreak in our early-sprouting varieties. Below are Viognier (left) and Syrah (right):

The rainfall-by-month graph for the winter so far shows the classic nature of what we've seen:

Budbreak, as you probably guessed from the name, is the period when the grapevine buds swell and burst into leaf.  It is the first marker in the growing cycle, a point when we can compare the current season to past years.  Upcoming markers will include flowering, veraison, first harvest, and last harvest.  And like harvest, budbreak doesn't happen for every grape simultaneously. Early grapes like Viognier, Grenache Blanc, Grenache, Vermentino, Cinsaut, and Syrah tend to go first, followed by Marsanne, Tannat, and Picpoul, and finally, often three weeks or more after the earliest grapes sprouted, Roussanne, Counoise, and Mourvedre. We've seen budbreak in all the early varieties, but are still waiting even for the middle varieties like Marsanne, which I was surprised to find still fully dormant on a ramble around the vineyard yesterday:

This year is about average for us, significantly later than most of our drought years, though a couple of weeks earlier than 2023. The timing that we're seeing comes despite that we haven't recorded a below-freezing night here at our weather station since February 12th. That budbreak waited some six weeks after our last frost reinforces the importance of wet soils, which hold cool temperatures better than dry soils do. For an overview, here's when we saw budbreak the last dozen years:

2023: First week of April
2022 Mid-March
2021: Last week of March
2020: Last week of March
2019: Second half of March
2018: Second half of March
2017: Mid-March
2016: Very end of February
2015: Second week of March
2014: Mid-March
2013: First week of April
2012: Mid-April

In addition to the variation by variety, there's variation by elevation and vineyard block. Grenache is a good example. I took the following four photos as I walked up the hill. The first photo is from the bottom of the block, where cool air settles at night. You can see the buds swelling, but no leaves yet:

A little further up the hill, you see the first leaves emerging:

At roughly two-thirds of the way up the hill, you see some buds unfurling larger leaves:

And at the top of the hill, nearly all the buds are out:

It will be another few weeks before we see much sprouting in late-emerging grapes like. This is Roussanne (left) and Mourvedre (right), both looking more or less as they would have in mid-winter:

Now our worries turn to frost. Before budbreak, the vines are safely dormant, and a freeze doesn't harm them. But once they sprout, the new growth is susceptible to frost damage. April frosts cost us roughly 40% of our production in both 2009 and 2011 and a May frost cost us 20% of our production in 2022, with Mother's Day marking the unofficial end of frost season. So, we've still got more than a month to go before we can relax, and I'm thankful that it will be a few weeks before our later-sprouting varieties and our lower-lying (read: more frost-prone) areas are out enough to be at risk. 

That said, there's nothing particularly scary in our long-term forecast. We're supposed to get one more late-winter storm later this week, but it doesn't seem likely to drop below freezing. After that, we're expecting drier weather as the storm track shifts north. But there's a long way to go.

Meanwhile, we'll enjoy the rapid changes in the vineyard, and the hope that always comes with the emergence of new buds. Please join me in welcoming the 2024 vintage.