Two things to celebrate: 2025 frost season ends with no damage and flowering begins under ideal conditions

This past weekend was the Paso Robles Wine Festival, our unofficial end to frost season. For the second consecutive year, it was a picture-perfect day, in the 70s and breezy, with both winter's below-freezing nights and summer's hundred-degree days feeling comfortably far away. And yet, as recently as 2022, we saw freezes at this time of year that cost us something like 30% of our crop of white grapes. So it's with a big sigh of relief that we've made it through the first and most dangerous quarter of the growing season intact. We had our first few 90°F days week-before-last, with more expected later this week. As you might expect, the vineyard is growing fast. And on cue, we're starting to see flowing in our early grapes. Here's Viognier:

If you haven't seen grapevines flowering before, you can be excused for finding it underwhelming. It's not a showy process. Still, the tiny white fuzz-like flowers that appear on the clusters are the first stage of development of the berries. From this point on, if the berries are fertilized successfully, they'll grow in size and mass until veraison, at which point they stop growing but accumulate sugar and ripen the seeds within. As with all parts of the vineyard annual cycle, there are grapes that enter (and exit) flowering earlier and later, with the early grapes being Viognier, Grenache, Grenache Blanc, and Vermentino. They are followed shortly by Marsanne and Syrah, and finally, as much as a month after the early grapes, Roussanne, Counoise, and Mourvedre bring up the rear. And there is variation between vineyard blocks as well, with cooler, lower-lying areas a week or two behind the same grapes at the tops of our hills. The other grapes that I could find flowering were the two Grenaches from our top-of-hill blocks. This is Grenache Noir; Grenache Blanc is the last photo in the blog:

Flowering is the second main marker point that we use to compare each vintage to others. First is budbreak (which this year was about a week later than average). Now we have flowering. From the first two markers of 2025, it seems like this year is following a somewhat later path, more like the past couple of wet vintages than most of what we saw between 2013 and 2022. We're at 402 degree days for the season, about 10% less than the average since 2011. Normally, you'd expect a cooler year to come with increased frost risk. Thankfully, that has not been true in 2025.  

Typically in April and early May we get a few nights that drop below freezing at our weather station, and another several that do so in our coldest pockets or get near enough that we need to be up at night turning on our frost protection. This year, remarkably, has managed to start cool without any frost nights, and with very few nights that even got close. We did have two nights in early April which dropped to 33.1°F and 33.4°F, but we dodged frost and most of the vineyard hadn't sprouted yet anyway. Since then we've only dropped below 35°F once, and only barely, to 34.8°F on April 13th. That has been a relief, I know, to Austin, Erin, and David, who are on call on spring nights to get up and turn on fans and water to protect us from freezes. For them to have to be up a dozen nights isn't unusual in a normal springtime. We turned everything on this year exactly twice, and for the first time since 2019 saw zero frost damage. Hallelujah.

Flowering is the second of the four viticultural markers that we use each year as markers: notable reference points that indicate where we are compared to other years. These are, in order:

• Budbreak (typically beginning late March or early April, and lasting three weeks or so)
• Flowering (typically beginning mid-May, lasting a month or so)
• Veraison (typically beginning sometime between mid-July and early August, lasting as much as 6 weeks)
• Harvest (typically beginning late August or early September, lasting two months or so)

You might notice that in the above list, the duration of each stage is longer than the previous one. That's because grapes start their growing cycle at different times, and also proceed at different rates. So, harvest stretches over a longer time than veraison, which takes longer than flowering, which takes longer than budbreak. Given we saw flowering begin the second week of May, we're likely to be enjoying the intoxicating scent of bloom until the sometime in mid-June.

What do we want now? We're hoping for consistent, sunny weather to hold through flowering, with only limited wind and no rain. Cold, wet, or windy weather at this stage can produce incomplete fertilization, or shatter, where a cluster has a high proportion of unfertilized berries, looking snaggle-toothed and (often dramatically) reducing yields. Some varieties, most notably Grenache, are prone to shatter, while others are less so. The Paso Robles weather forecast suggests that we're entering a warmer period, with highs over the next ten days between the upper 70's°F and the lower 90's°F, with full sun and no unusual wind. That's perfect. 

So far, so good. Full steam ahead.

Celebrating the amazing 2025 wildflower season

I was hopeful that the conditions that have been so good for our cover crop growth and which helped keep our vines dormant until a couple of weeks ago would make for an amazing wildflower season. I'm happy to report that this is proving to be true. Witness the wall behind our winery, a riotous tangle of poppies, vetch, and mustard:

Spring is my favorite time in Paso Robles. The hillsides are green. The air is softer than it was during the winter, and the days warm and pleasant, but not yet the summer where everything feels like the contrast has been turned up too high. Nights can still be chilly, and we do worry about frost, but so far this spring we've been OK. Meanwhile, the vineyard is springing to life, with buds swelling, then opening, then bursting to leaf with remarkable speed.

But it's the explosion of color that is springtime in Paso Robles' calling card. The rain that came during the winter combines with the longer days to produce a month of proliferating wildflowers. The most visible of these flowers are the bright orange California poppies, our state's official flower. If you come to visit our tasting room, you can't miss them:

Purple vetch is an important part of our cover crop, providing protection against erosion and lots of biomass. Vetch's purple flowers are visible everywhere on the sides of the local roads, and even as we bring our cover crops under control, vetch vines rise to envelop the cordons:

In the areas we haven't yet tamed, purple flowers from phacelia and white flowers from daikon radish mingle with the oats, peas, and mustard to form head-high thickets:

The phacelia is supposed to be attractive to lacewings, one of our most important beneficial insects. I didn't see any of them but they were definitely attractions for the many bees I saw:

But as usual, the most impressive wildflower arrays are the lupines. These purple clusters can cover the ground, swaying rhythmically and producing an intoxicating scent. They're unmissable on the sides of the roads out in the Adelaida District this year:

You'll notice those lupines when you arrive, because we have groves of them on both sides of our entrance. The photo above taken looking north on Adelaida Road from our driveway, while the below photo looks at the driveway from the south:

It's not only the roadsides that lupine is found. Deep in the vineyard, it's everywhere that it hasn't been crowded out by taller plants. And yes, there are grapevines in all that greenery, that we'll be excavating in coming weeks:

This explosion of spring color won't last long.  Soon, the weather will heat up and dry out, and the color palette will shift from winter green to summer gold. We've already started getting the cover crop mowed, crimped, and spaded into the vineyard so the vines can benefit from its nutrition and we do what we can to preserve the winter's water resources for the summer growing season. But if you're coming in the next month, you're in for a colorful treat.

Budbreak 2025 Arrives a Week Later than 2024, Showing the Impact of Our Late Rain

As the last few sprinkles of what may be the last serious rain from the 2024-25 winter wind down this afternoon, it feels like an appropriate moment to highlight that the vineyard is also making a visible transition from winter to spring. After last week's warm, sunny days, we've started to see budbreak in our early-sprouting varieties and at the tops of our hills. Below are Syrah (left) and Viognier (right):

Although overall we're only at about 70% of normal rainfall for this point in the winter, when it has come has been pretty close to ideal. We got a nice dose of early season rain, which got the cover crop sprouted. December cleared up but the weather stayed relatively warm, which encouraged that cover crop to grow and allowed us to get our sheep into the vineyard earlier than most recent years. January was sunny and cold, with 18 below-freezing nights. As the calendar turned to February and we started getting seriously worried about lack of rain, the clouds rolled in and the skies opened up, and February and March have been wet, with 15 days with measurable rainfall totaling 129% of the precipitation we'd expect in these two already-rainy months:

The net result has been exceptional cover crop growth, to the point that you often couldn't see our sheep (or sheepdogs) when they entered a new block. All that cover crop growth will be returned to the soil either through the flock's manure or as we mow, disc, or crimp the grasses into the soil:

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. Like each of the stages, budbreak doesn't happen for every grape simultaneously. It usually starts in Viognier and Grenache. Other early grapes like Grenache Blanc, Vermentino, Cinsaut, and Syrah tend to come shortly thereafter, followed by Marsanne, Tannat, Picpoul, and Mourvedre a week or two later. Finally, often three weeks or more after the earliest grapes sprouted, Roussanne and Counoise get in on the game. As I write on March 31st, we've seen budbreak in all our early varieties and the top-of-hill blocks of the middle varieties, but are still waiting for the bottoms of the hills and for later grapes like Counoise (below), which doesn't look any different than it would have in January. But that sky and that landscape could only be March:

This year's last-week-of-March beginning is about average for us. Drought years tend to be early, since dry soils warm up faster than wet soils, so it's interesting that we're a week or so later than we were in the significantly wetter year of 2024. That suggests that, at least as far as the vineyard is concerned, we're not in drought conditions. For an overview, here's when we saw first budbreak the last dozen years:

2024: Mid-March
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

Further evidence that our late rainfall has helped keep soils wet and therefore cool is the presence of the edible water-loving California perennial miner's lettuce across much of the vineyard. This was a plant that the hopeful gold rush miners ate to ward off scurvy:

In addition to the variation by variety, there's variation by elevation and vineyard block. Grenache is a good example. I took the following three photos as I walked up our biggest hill on the edge of a Grenache block that stretches from the hill's top to its bottom. 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:

About halfway up the hill, you see the first leaves emerging:

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

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 this storm that's just passing through was a relatively warm one with origins in the South Pacific instead of one of the late-season winter storms that sweep down from Alaska. It's typically in the aftermath of the passage of a cold front that we see damaging frosts. We have our frost sprinklers and our mobile fans ready to go, for when they're needed:

That said, there's nothing particularly scary in our long-term forecast. 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 2025 vintage.

Why our glorious February weather is making us nervous

The past week has seen some of the nicest winter weather imaginable. Days in the 70s. Nights dropping into the 30s but warming up quickly. Ample sun. Combine that with the lovely rain we've received since the beginning of February (8+ inches in all) and it's no wonder it's incredibly green. You can see the results in a video that Ian filmed and edited showing our water catchment basins at work. As impressive to me is how lush the cover crop looks as the drone pans over the vineyard:

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A post shared by Tablas Creek Vineyard (@tablascreek)

While it's routinely sunny in Paso Robles in the winter, at least between rainstorms, the warmth that we saw last week and which is forecast to intensify this week is less common. January was typical for our dry winter months, with an average high of 64°F, an average low of 31.7°F, and 18 frost nights. The first half of February was typical of our wet winter months, with an average high of 57.4°F, an average low of 37.6°F, and only 3 frost nights. But since February 15th, we've seen just one more frost night despite that the skies have been clear. Over that period, our average high has soared to 69.4°F and our average low has only been 36°F. The last two days have topped out at 76°F and 77°F, and I was walking around the vineyard in a t-shirt. It might hit 80°F on Wednesday. A few photos will give you a sense of what it looks like now, starting with wildflowers blooming in the lush cover crop:

A look through our oldest Grenache block shows the appealing contours of the old vines set off against the deep green of the grass:

One result of this combination of rain and sun is that suddenly we have an ample supply of forage for our flock of sheep. They are looking fat and happy. And check out that sky:

What's the down side of this glorious weather? Well, too much more warmth and we could be looking at budbreak in early March. One of the principal stimuli that plants are waiting for to initiate budbreak is rising soil temperatures. We're mitigated from very rapid soil temperature rise because of the recent rain, as wet soils hold cool temperatures longer than dry soils do. But too many warm, sunny days and not enough chilly nights, and the grapevines are going to react.

Whenever it comes, budbreak begins our worries about frosts, which can come as late as early May. While a month or so of frost worries is normal, an early budbreak can double the duration where the vines are at risk. In the winter, when the vines are dormant, a frost isn't a problem and in fact is typically beneficial, as it forces the sap down into the roots and gives the vines more vigor when they sprout in the spring. But once new growth emerges from the buds, it can be damaged by below-freezing nights, as I wrote about in 2022. A bad frost can cost us as much as 40% of our production, which we saw in 2001, 2009, and most recently 2011. Even a localized frost can have a disproportionate impact on individual grape varieties. The one we saw in May of 2022 hit hardest a block that includes our largest block of Roussanne and additional acreage of Grenache Blanc, Picpoul, and Vermentino. The result was a dramatically reduced crop of whites, and a blending session where we ended up unable to make staples like Cotes de Tablas Blanc, Roussanne, and Picpoul. In any case, I'm not anxious to repeat the experience.

Beyond the potential negative impact of frost damage, we need to complete our pruning before the vines sprout. We're about 70% done, but were hoping for another month where we could slowly work our way through the vineyard. As it is, we're likely to have to bring in extra crew to make sure we finish on time. We're finishing up our trellised blocks (like the Syrah you see below, with the newly pruned canes piled up between the rows) and getting started on our head-trained sections.

As to why we're thinking we might see early budbreak, there are signs, if you know where to look. One of them is the sap flow into the grapevines that are newly pruned. As the vines start to awaken from their winter slumber, sap flow increases. When you make a cut (typically to prune) you see that sap welling out for a few days before the cut hardens over, as in this photo captured by Director of Winemaking Neil Collins:

And, of course, grapevines aren't the only plants waking up for spring. On my drive out today I snapped this photo of an almond orchard in full bloom:

Thankfully, it seems like this unusually warm, dry weather is only going to stick around through the end of the week. By next week, we should see a wetter, cooler weather pattern resume, according to the National Weather Service:

I asked Austin Collins what his predication was for when we'd see budbreak and he guessed roughly two weeks. That wouldn't make it our earliest-ever (that honor goes to 2016, when January and February were both dry and warm) but it would still be on the early side with years like 2014, 2015, and 2022. Whenever we do see budbreak, we'll start on our frost protection program, deploying our fans and our micro-sprinklers where we can. We can't do much about the date of budbreak, but we do have some ability to limit the damage on frosty nights. We'll have a month at least when we'll have to be on watch. I'm just hoping it's not two months.

Meanwhile, if you need us, we'll be out here, enjoying the spring-like weather and the warmer evenings. Spring is a beautiful and hopeful time, even if it is sometimes scary.

Experimenting with Tradition: Vine Training

By Austin Collins

There is no doubt that most everything we do in the vineyard has been done before. The invention and implementation of new technology, equipment, and products (fungicides, etc.) bring some novelty to viticulture, but the methods used on the ground and in the vines are age-old. The pruning and training of vines is no exception to this. Due to the varying climates, varietals, and traditions, each region throughout the world has its preferred method of training vines. The most common pruning styles we see here in Paso are: spurred cordon, guyot (cane pruning), and goblet (head-trained). These are of course the most customary methods globally. In Burgundy and Bordeaux, the guyot is most frequently used. Chateauneuf du Pape allows three styles, with the goblet being its most famed. The deeper you dive, the more methods you will find—the Taille Chablis in Champagne, the Echalat in Condrieu, or the elusive Palmette in Provence.

Each pruning method is tailored to the region, some even having rules for what is allowed. Here, we are free to go off the book and find unique ways to prune that suit our needs, but doing so in a conservative manner as to protect our end goal. That being said a majority of our vines fall in these main categories. The most common you will see here is the double-cordon:

This vine was one of the first Grenache vines to be planted on the property in 1992, even before the Beaucastel cuttings were approved to be planted. One of the few blocks planted to non Beaucastel clones.

We use the spurred double cordon for its production efficiency and ease of management. This trellising system turns a three-dimensional plant into something more two-dimensional, allowing for the freer flow of air through the vine and the exposure of both sides of the vine to the sun’s light. These factors reduce mildew pressures, allow even ripening, and make it easy to see the crop at a glance. For this reason, it is our most widely used training method. Once the plant has gained enough strength after a few years in the ground, you can begin to "train" it down onto the wire. This wood will serve as the structural and vascular system, supplying each spur with everything it needs to support each year’s growth. As you can see, we average three to four spurs on either side and strive to allow them to grow slowly upward with time. As the canopy grows, it is kept in place with the catch wires above. Now, this is the ideal specimen, and no vine looks the same. Part of the beautiful divergency of nature.

We do employ another common method that utilizes the VSP system: the Guyot or cane-pruned method. Like the spurred cordon, this can be done as a single side or double. This is one example of the double guyot on a hilltop Syrah vine.

We lay down one-year old growth with about 15 buds on each side along with one to two "renewal" spurs for next year’s cane. Ideally the renewal is positioned on the main branch below the cane being laid down. This is both for the production of the "branch" and balancing the growth of the vine, each year only laying down one-year-old wood. We use the Guyot method on Syrah and Viognier due to their growing habits of producing long and plentiful vegetative growth and the fact that their most productive buds are at the end of the previous year’s canes.
Around 40% of our vineyard is pruned in a head-trained manner. In these blocks, we are farming without irrigation (also known as dry farming) and do so in a style much like that of walnut growers in the area. You might be expecting that we use the conventional “gobelet” style popular in Chateauneuf du Pape but we’ve realized that our conditions are better suited for a modified head-trained style more like a vertical cordon, also known as the Lodi Ladder to some in the Central Valley. A traditional gobelet pruning cuts a vine back to 6 or 8 arms that reach up from a central trunk and are cut back relatively close to the ground. That’s great in a place like Chateauneuf where you’re trying to make use of the radiant heat absorbed by the rocks during the day to allow more ripening in their more northerly latitude, and when you can plant dry-farmed vines closer together because you get rain year-round.

In Paso Robles, we get plenty of heat, so getting the ripening fruit further from the ground is preferable, and our rain is so concentrated during the winter months that having fewer, more robust vines is better than having more but smaller vines. So we plant our vines farther apart to limit competition and train them up higher, producing more spur positions and more production per vine. This creates a stronger vine that is less susceptible to disease, therefore allowing it to live longer. Hence the fact that the oldest vineyards in the world are head trained! Here is a look at a Grenache vine in our westernmost block Crosshairs:

These vines are trained to stakes that are around five feet tall. Ideally, they are trained up vertically year by year creating spur positions (branches) along the way. We try not to push them too hard, especially when they are young, but once mature, they average between 9-12 spurs per vine. This method suits our farming practices and keeps the vines out of the way of the tractor, not growing too far into the space between vines. It also allows the vine to grow more naturally and less restrictedly, allowing it to grow where it wants to. We have actually converted vines from the traditional goblet method to a vertical cordon in an effort to grow out and above the frost zone. Here is a look at the hybridized style in a Tannat vine:

As you can see on the bottom half of the vine, there are a handful of spurs all around the trunk that are a similar height off the ground. This was the old structure. We were getting hit with frost more often than we liked, so we decided to try and raise the vine out of the low-lying area. We still experience frost damage from time to time on the lower branches, but the growth on top tends to remain untouched.

There are many ways to prune a vine (you can use that instead of the old "to skin a cat"), and it depends on where you are and what you are trying to accomplish. We will continue experimenting and mixing different methods when the opportunity presents itself. I believe it is good to question everything, especially when we are too comfortable with it, it may lead somewhere better, it may not. But continuing to wonder is part of the progression and fun of what we do. I will leave you with a photo of a TRIAL of a hybrid between a single cordon and single guyot, we will see how it goes!

Putting the cool, dry start to the 2024-25 winter in context

With the terrible fires in Los Angeles still top of mind around the country, I'm guessing that most of you won't be surprised to hear we've had a dry start to our winter here in Paso Robles too. You might be surprised, though, to hear that Northern California regions like Napa and Sonoma are well above their normal rainfall to date. This is as a result of several atmospheric river storms that hit the Bay Area and north starting in late November, while leaving the Central Coast mostly dry and Southern California entirely so. My favorite California weather expert Daniel Swain explained in a post on Bluesky just before the fires broke out:

A major offshore wind & fire weather event will develop this week across much of Southern California. Essentially no rain has fallen so far this season in SoCal, and a high-end "atmospheric blowdryer" wind event will greatly increase wildfire risk by Tue/Wed. #CAwx #CAfire [1/3]

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— Daniel Swain (@weatherwest.bsky.social) January 4, 2025 at 3:48 PM

The net result of this wet-in-the-north, dry-in-the-south pattern has been that we're only at about 35% of normal rainfall. But if you drive around town -- or around our vineyard -- it doesn't feel like we're particularly dry. The rain came at the ideal moment, just after we got our cover crop in the ground, and an unusually sunny and warm December meant that the seeds sprouted and grew rapidly. In fact, it's greener here now than it was in mid-January 2023 and 2024, both winters where we got above-average rainfall. This photo of the Mourvedre block behind the winery that I took this morning will give you a sense:

While December was comparatively mild (average high 66°F, average low 38°F, and only two frost nights), since the calendar flipped to January our nights have gotten colder. In the first 19 days of the month we've had the same average high of 66°F but have seen an average low of 32°F and racked up 10 frost nights. Before you worry, winter frosts here aren't unusual. We typically get 30-40 nights a year that drop below freezing, and grapevines benefit from being forced into dormancy.

But it is unusual to see so many frost nights in a single month, and even more unusual for so many of those days to be warm. Last Wednesday, we had a day that dropped down to 28°F and then rose to 71°F that afternoon. That's a 43°F swing! We'd expect a diurnal temperature variation like that in November, before it has rained and when our humidity is typically at its annual low. But not usually in January, and not usually when you have all that green growth and the moisture it both necessitates and retains. The result has been frosty mornings and then afternoons with deep blue skies and not a cloud to be found. We've been taking advantage of this weather to get ahead on our pruning. One of our goals this winter was to prune our entire vineyard with our full-time team and not need to bring in any supplemental crew. So far, we're ahead of pace and roughly halfway done. You can see the progress and the crazy blue of the skies in the two photos below. On the left is an unpruned Grenache vine. On the right are two newly pruned Mourvedre vines:

The early rain and the sunny weather has also been great for our flock of sheep. There has been plenty for them to eat and we've been able to keep them in the vineyard instead of having to pull them out because we were worried about soil compaction:

The sheep are shedding, leaving wool on the vines as they rub against them while passing through the block. Each spring, we find birds' nests made from this wool. Sounds cozy!

The impact on the vineyard is likely to depend on what we see in coming weeks and months. Typically at this point we'd expect to have accumulated 11.45" of rain, or about 45% of what we'd expect in a normal winter. Looking at it another way, we're about 8" of rain behind what we'd expect to have at this moment, with about 14" more of rain expected between now and the end of the winter.

Winter rainfall typically has three critical impacts on our operations:

• First, to sprout and sustain the cover crop, allowing us to build organic matter in our topsoil and create a healthy network of microbial and fungal activity.
• Second, to saturate the deeper soil layers, from which our grapevine roots will draw water later in the growing season when the topsoil has dried out.
• Third, to replenish the wells and aquifers.

Looking need by need, we're fine on the first concern. The rain we've gotten so far was timed perfectly from a cover crop and topsoil standpoint, and because of the sun, we're seeing plenty of growth. The second concern is the most pressing. While the top few feet of soil has benefited from our rain, deeper layers are still dry. As for the third concern, our aquifers and wells, you might think that this would be our biggest worry, but it's not. Our wells are in good shape thanks to the last two wet winters. That said, they haven't yet benefited from this year's rain. Las Tablas Creek has not yet flowed. And the aquifers will be important to 2026 and beyond.

Happily, for the first time in nearly a month, the forecast is calling for some wet weather, with a storm system are forecast to impact the Central Coast toward the end of this week. The other weather expert I consider a must-follow for the Central Coast is John Lindsey, and he shared a hopeful post a few days ago that is now starting to show up in mainstream weather forecasts:

The weather models have occasionally suggested cutoff lows bringing rain to the Central Coast since late December, only for those predictions to be removed in subsequent model updates. The current 18Z projection features a 996-millibar parent low-pressure system off the Oregon… pic.twitter.com/vgvBODEbSk

— John Lindsey (@PGE_John) January 16, 2025

We hope he's right. Meanwhile, we'll be enjoying the winter beauty, both the chilly mornings and the sunny afternoons. Fingers crossed, please, everyone.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You may have noticed the outlier in late October, which I hinted at in my opening paragraph. That surprise consisted of four more tons of Mourvedre, Grenache, Counoise and Tannat from an unusually plentiful set of "second crop" clusters. ⁠A second crop sets in maybe a month after initial flowering in the spring. Evolutionarily, these additional berries offer vines a chance to reproduce if the primary crop gets eaten or otherwise destroyed. But for a grapegrower, it's usually not worth going back and picking these clusters, which have less sugar and are typically smaller in size. But this year was different for us because in this relatively early harvest we had plenty of good ripening weather at the end. So clusters that in a later year, or one with an earlier onset of wet weather, wouldn't have gotten ripe, got the extra hang-time they needed to get into our sweet spot.⁠
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We had extra incentive to go pick this fruit because it became clear during harvest that despite our wet 2023-24 winter we were seeing lower-than-normal yields. So we decided to let the second crop hang (instead of dropping it) in case we got lucky with late-harvest-season weather. And we did!⁠ Finally, second crop clusters are generally more prevalent in blocks with higher vigor. For us, that comes from head-trained, wide-spaced blocks with extra long cane growth. Tannat produces a decent quantity of second-crop clusters every year. This year, we noticed that the young, vigorous Mourvedre, Grenache, and Counoise vines on Jewel Ridge also had enough second crop clusters to be worth revisiting. We're happy we did!⁠ The lots that we got off Jewel Ridge seem like they're sure to be some of the highlights of the year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Roussanne's 2024 Comeback Tour

If you’re a fan of our Roussanne, we’re sure you’ve noticed it’s been in short supply. Last decade we were regularly making between 500 and 1000 cases of our varietal Roussanne while also using it as the lead grape in our Esprit de Tablas Blanc and a supporting player in the Cotes de Tablas Blanc. That was possible because between 2010 and 2020 we harvested an average of 41 tons of Roussanne.

Since 2021, the story has changed. We pulled out a block that was under-performing that summer, but thought we’d be OK because we’d grafted about an acre of Roussanne to established rootstocks on Jewel Ridge the year before. In addition, we planted additional acreage on Jewel Ridge and new acreage on Cote Maduena to replace it. Unfortunately, our timing was bad. The three-year drought that began in 2020 had reached critical levels by 2021, and spring frosts that hit us in 2022 pummeled our largest remaining block of Roussanne and set back the new vines we had planted. Roussanne production, which had declined to 28.1 tons in 2021, cratered to just 10.5 tons in 2022. We weren’t able to make a varietal Roussanne at all, and using every drop of the Roussanne we did harvest in our Esprit Blanc only resulted in an Esprit Blanc with 33% Roussanne, our lowest total ever.

Thankfully, the Roussanne that we harvested those years was exceptional, and the wines that we did make are some of our favorites. If you missed this week’s Instagram Live focusing on the release of the 2022 Esprit and 2022 Esprit Blanc, Neil, Chelsea, and I were all wowed by the intensity and purity of the Roussanne character in the Esprit Blanc.

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Roussanne production bounced back somewhat in 2023, but less than we’d hoped as the frost damage from the year before proved serious enough that it impacted crop levels the next year. We harvested just 26.2 tons of Roussanne, but on a positive note, that included the first Roussanne from our Jewel Ridge plantings from the 2020 grafts. Although it only came to 1.23 tons it was remarkable. In total, we were able to increase the Roussanne percentage in the 2023 Esprit Blanc and will be bottling a small (260 case) varietal Roussanne in December.

Fast-forward to 2024. One of the grapes we’re most excited about in the vineyard is Roussanne. It’s a low-vigor vine in general, and often by this point in September, the vines can look pretty ragged. This year, they’re looking full of life. This is particularly evident on Jewel Ridge, where the young head-trained, wide-spaced vines are so bushy that Neil described them today as an "octopus". You can see from the below photo what he means:

Below those enormous canopies, Roussanne clusters are sheltered from the direct sun:

We’ve already harvested our first pick off of Jewel Ridge and at 1.45 tons are already above last year’s total with roughly two-thirds of the block still to go. The fact that this Roussanne is coming in so much earlier than we're accustomed to it ripening here is a great indicator of the health of this block. That wine is currently sitting in barrel in our cellar:

It's not only the Jewel Ridge Roussanne that is looking better this year. Even our older blocks are looking vigorous, at least by Roussanne standards. The block that we call "New Hill", where I photographed this vine (left) and two of the clusters on it (right) was planted in 1999, so this is 25-year-old Roussanne, looking good:

And there’s more good news for Roussanne on the horizon:

Roussanne, while susceptible to drought, seems to respond well to rainy years. With the 80” of rain we received between the last two winters, and another year separated from the ferocious frost event of 2022, Roussanne seems recovered and ready to put maximum effort into its fruit this year.

The 7 acres of Roussanne we planted between Jewel Ridge and Cotes Maduena in 2021 will reach their 3^rd leaf this year, and while we’re not going to let them hang too much crop, we’ll get some, and will get more for sure in future years.

We planted another 5 acres last summer, so additional reinforcements are on their way.

Roussanne, our most important white variety, seems to be on its comeback tour.