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.

Introducing Alouette, a chillable Grenache for which we leave the glass bottle behind

While we make a lot of wines at Tablas Creek, we don’t make a lot of new wines at Tablas Creek. Yes, we’ve added a few varietal bottlings in recent years, and we launched the Lignée de Tablas series in 2023. Those are always exciting. Before that, you have to go back to our Le Complice, which we came up with in 2017. But if you read my red blending blog from a couple of months ago, you’re already aware that we’re adding a new wine to our portfolio: a chillable Grenache that we’re calling Alouette.

Grenache always produces a range of wines here at Tablas Creek, from the chewy, black cherry and licorice lots that we use in our Panoplie and Esprit de Tablas to the spicy, red cherry and chalky mineral lots that typically form the base of our Cotes de Tablas and go into our varietal Grenache. It’s also a famously great rosé grape, because it comes with good fruit and good acid, and doesn’t need a lot of skin contact to pick up that fruit character. In the vineyard, it’s vigorous and generally productive, making large clusters of large berries and ample canopy to shade and ripen them.

Grenache’s vigor can lead to wider swings in production than any other grape we grow. A moderate year might give us three tons to the acre, where with Mourvedre we might get two. A productive year might see Mourvedre increase to three tons an acre, while Grenache could double to six. That means that in order to have enough Grenache in the lean years we sometimes have to be creative in the productive ones. This year, when we began our blending trials, it was clear we would have to find a home for a lot of Grenache. In fact, we had nearly as much Grenache as we did all our other reds combined! So after we blended Panoplie, Esprit, En Gobelet, Le Complice, and Cotes de Tablas (all of which include a healthy chunk of Grenache) we still had enough Grenache left to make nearly 3000 cases. From that we decided to make two wines: our traditional varietal bottling of Grenache, from the more classic, structured, deeper lots, and a new wine from the highest-toned, palest, and juiciest lots that we’re calling Alouette. In character it’s somewhere between a dark rosé and a light red, with high-toned cherry and cranberry fruit flavors, bright acids, a hint of tannin, and a lightly herbal finish like all the parts of a wild strawberry, from leaves to flowers to fruit.

The name Alouette literally translates from the French as “lark”, with both the meanings that it carries in English. Yes, the songbird, but also something done on a whim, or for fun. It’s also the first line of a common French children's song that I learned in middle school French class and which (I’m sorry) I’m guessing many of you are already humming to yourselves. It’s a fun name to say, has a fun meaning, and should be a great fit for a wine that’s eminently fun to drink.

As for a package, we’ll be sharing this wine in two ways. For our sales from the winery, we’re putting it into our three-liter boxes. This is a red wine that is lovely served chilled, so a box, which you can stash in your fridge and pour a glass from whenever you want, will be ideal. For the restaurant and wine bar world, we’re putting it into our 19.5-liter kegs. From there it can be poured by the glass or carafe while maintaining maximum freshness.

You might notice what we’re not putting the wine in: glass bottles. While they are unmatched at holding wine that you want to keep for years or decades in your cellar, they’re not a great container for wine that’s going to be opened and consumed in the near team. As we’ve written about in our blogs on the Patelin de Tablas boxes we’ve been making, glass is heavy and fragile, and requires lots of energy to mine, melt, mold, and transport.

When you look at the carbon footprint of various packages, both boxes and kegs pencil out well ahead of glass bottles. Stainless steel kegs are essentially infinitely reusable, and despite the additional energy costs of having to ship them back to their point of origin, our partners at Free Flow Wines have calculated that they offer a 76% reduction in carbon footprint compared to the 26 bottles required to hold the same volume of wine, not to mention the two-plus cases of cardboard cases and extra labels, capsules, and corks. They’re also zero-waste, which appeals to us. The 3L bag-in-box offers something like an 84% savings in carbon footprint compared to four glass bottles, as well as four pounds of savings in weight and a nearly 50% savings in packaging volume.

Plus, once you open a bottle, oxygen starts its destructive work on the wine within, and you only have a matter of days, perhaps a week if you’re careful, before the wine is compromised. With boxes, you have several weeks of prime drinking if it’s living in your fridge. With a keg, you have months.

Not that we expect it to be around that long.

Look for an email announcing the release of the Alouette the week of August 12^th.

2023 Red Blending: Dazzling Wines from a Cool Year... including a Chillable Grenache

Last week we finally got to sit down and taste the eighteen (!) red wines from the 2023 vintage we'd built around the blending table over the past month. The tasting highlighted the incredible combination of vibrancy and depth that we'd all remarked upon during the blending process. From the peppery blood orange and bay-like herbiness of the Terret Noir to the boysenberry, red licorice, and sweet tobacco appeal of Grenache, the soy, melted licorice, black raspberry and graphite umami of the Le Complice, and the pure currant, black plum, and sweet earth depth of the Panoplie, each wine was somehow like itself, but moreso: both deep and expressive, with refinement and lovely high notes. What a pleasure. 2023 was a vintage unlike any that we've seen in a long time, in which we saw record-breaking rains, late budbreak and veraison, the coolest growing season since 2011, and a delayed harvest that didn't finish until mid-November. And unlike the white blending that we finished in April, where yields were still depressed from the residual impacts of 2022's frost, there was good supply of most of our reds, and especially Grenache. So, what a relief that there was such outstanding quality to go with healthy quantities. 

As usual, we got a visit from Cesar Perrin. Unlike usual, Cesar brought two other members of the Famille Perrin cellar team, Valentin Castaneda and Christian Reboul, which meant that we had that many more perspectives and an additional five decades of blending experience around the blending table. Like the Perrins' own system at Beaucastel, we take the blending process in steps and build consensus rather than relying on one or two lead voices to determine the wines' final profiles. After all, when you have nine family members involved in a multi-generational business, as they do at Beaucastel, it's a good policy and good family relations to make sure everyone is on the same page before you go forward. The same is true with a partnership like Tablas Creek where both founding families have equal ownership. Mornings we would taste. Each afternoon, we'd explore different pieces of what we're working on in the vineyard or cellar:

From left, Christian, Valentin, Cesar, Neil, Jason

We try to do most of our tasting in the morning because that's when everyone's palates and brains are freshest. Afternoons are for the aforementioned explorations, or brainstorming, or chances to visit with other local winemakers. We began the week, as we always do, by tasting each of the different red lots in the cellar, which in 2023 numbered a substantial 68. On Monday we tackled Cinsaut, Counoise, Muscardin, Mourvedre, Vaccarese, Syrah, and Tannat. Tuesday we dove into Grenache, which encompassed an amazing 24 lots, and then cleaned up some of the trace varieties, including Terret Noir, Pinot Noir, two co-fermented lots and the blended lots that will become our 2023 Patelin de Tablas and Lignée de Tablas wines. We keep our different harvest lots separate until they've finished fermentation so we can assess their quality and character before we have to decide which wines they fit best in. After all, a Mourvedre lot could potentially go into any of six wines: Panoplie, Esprit, En Gobelet, Cotes, Patelin, or the varietal Mourvedre. So our goal at this first stage of blending is to give each lot a grade that's reflective of its overall quality, and to start to flag lots that we think might be particularly suited to one wine or another. This component tasting is also an opportunity for us to get a sense of which varieties particularly shined or struggled, which helps provide direction as we start to brainstorm about blends.

We grade on a 1-3 scale, with "1" being our top grade (for a deep dive into how we do our blending, check out this blog by Chelsea from a few years back). We also give ourselves the liberty to give intermediate "1/2" or "2/3" grades for lots that are right on the cusp. For context, in a normal year, for every 10 lots we might see three or four "1" grades, five or six "2" grades and one "3" grade. As you can see from my notes, this year we saw a lot of "1" grades and very few "3" grades:

How I graded each variety, in the order in which we tasted them:

• Cinsaut (2 lots): An outstanding beginning, with two quite different lots of Cinsaut both excellent. One was plush and spicy, with great acids and fruit. The other was deeper, with less acid but more texture. I gave them both "1" grades.
• Counoise (7 lots): Several of these lots showed the pale, pretty, spicy Gamay-style juiciness that our varietal Counoise bottling typically reflects, but unlike in 2022 there were also richer options, culminating in one stunning lot from our new Jewel Ridge plantings with the darker blueberry fruit and rich texture that we look for in Esprit. I gave out one "1" grade, two "1/2" grades, two "2" grades, and two "2/3" grades for lots I thought were pretty enough, but a little on the thin side.
• Muscardin (1 lot): Progress! Not only did we have a barrel of 100% Muscardin to taste, but it was delicious: spicy and floral, with flavors of raspberry and green herbs. I gave it a "1/2" and we decided to make it our first-ever varietal Muscardin bottling.
• Mourvedre (10 lots): If we were pleased by the first three wines, we were blown away by Mourvedre. This was the most structured collection of Mourvedre lots in recent years, but they all also showed a vibrancy and a refinement that was just lovely. Six lots got "1"s from me, with three others getting "1/2", one "2"s and nothing lower than that. The only downside is that quantities were barely improved from the punishingly low levels of 2022, so we were going to be constrained in blending.
• Vaccarese (2 lots): In this darker, higher-acid year, Vaccarese stood out a little less from the wines around it than it has the past few vintages. Still, the grape showed why we're so excited about it, with candied blackberry fruit and vibrant acids. I gave one lot a "1" and the other, which felt perhaps a touch too tannic for Esprit, a "1/2".
• Syrah (11 lots): Syrah at this stage is easy to appreciate, with its plush dark fruit, spice, and powerful structure. And the lots we tasted had that in abundance, with my main question being whether lots were too monolithic for Esprit. I gave out five "1"s, two "1/2" grades to lots I thought were more medium-bodied and therefore good candidates for varietal Syrah, and four "2" lots split between two with such big tannins I wanted to keep them out of Esprit, and two that were just a little on the quiet side.
• Tannat (4 lots): Exuberant, with Tannat's normal density but leavened by acids even more vibrant than usual. We didn't bother grading the lots, since they're all getting blended together, but they were all strong. 

What a first day. Of the 33 lots we graded, I gave out fifteen "1" grades and nine "1/2"s. That's unprecedented. And it was strong across lighter-bodied and richer grapes. But would it be just as strong in Grenache, when yields had gone up by an amazing 85% compared to 2022? That was the question for Tuesday. It turned out I needn't have worried:

• Grenache (24 lots): Grenache can be difficult to taste this early in its evolution, as it is slow to finish fermentation and some lots are just rounding into form. And in recent years we've found Grenache tending toward a pale, spicy profile more like Counoise rather than the darker-fruited, more licorice note found in the Rhone. But led by the growing number of head-trained Grenache blocks, we saw plenty of lots with lushness and sweet fruit, and even some with significant structure. I gave eight lots "1" grades, six others "1/2" grades, nine "2"s and one single "2/3" lot that would end up being the only one declassified into Patelin. If you're going to have so much Grenache that you have to figure out what to do with it, it's great that it's delicious! 
• Terret Noir (1 lot): The year seems to have treated Terret well, with a little extra darkness in this often-pale grape and nice herby grip. I gave it a "2" and thought it would be great for Le Complice. 
• Pinot Noir (1 lot): From the small vineyard in the Templeton Gap that my dad planted outside the house he and my mom built in 2007, where my wife Meghan and I live now. It's planted to a mix of different Pinot Noir clones. Unlike in past years, we didn't keep the different clones separate through fermentation. So there wasn't much to discuss, though we very much liked the assembled wine and thought it would make a compelling 2023 Full Circle.
• Blend Lots (2 lots): These were impossible to generalize, with one blend of Mourvedre, Grenache, and Counoise outstanding (I gave it a "1") and the other blend of Mourvedre and Grenache pretty and juicy but a little simple. I gave it a "2".

We finished day two with our normal round-table discussion about what we wanted to try in the next day's blending of Panoplie and Esprit and came to the conclusion that given the overall strength of the vintage we should start the blending trials with three test blends, each one leaning a little heavier into one of the big three of Mourvedre, Grenache, and Syrah, and see where that took us. In terms of quantity, the improved yields meant that we felt confident we could bump our Esprit production to around 3500 cases and our Cotes production to around 1500 (an increase of 500 and 300 cases, respectively) while still leaving ourselves room to make some outstanding varietal bottlings. Which ones, and how much, would be determined by the makeup of the blends we chose. 

Wednesday morning was Cesar's last day with us, as he had committed to hosting a dinner that evening in Long Beach and would be returning to France from there, although we got to keep Valentin and Christian for the rest of the week. So we decided to try to come up with some direction for both Panoplie and Esprit while Cesar was here, and then figure we could work out the details later. As always, we tasted our options blind, not knowing what was in each glass.

Panoplie is always overwhelmingly Mourvedre (typically around 60%) and we try to cap the Syrah percentage at no more than about 25%, because Syrah's dominance often threatens to overwhelm the Mourvedre character of the wine. That said, the trial Panoplie with the most Syrah (26%, along with 58% Mourvedre and 16% Grenache) got about 60% of the first-place votes in round one, with the blend that maxed out Mourvedre (66%) and reduced both Grenache (19%) and Syrah (15%) got the other 40% of the first choices. No one preferred the blend with the most Grenache (31%, along with 58% Mourvedre and 11% Syrah). After some discussion, we decided to try a blend which split the difference between the two favorites and ended up with something that everyone loved. Final blend: 61% Mourvedre, 23% Syrah, and 16% Grenache. 

Panoplie decided, we moved on to the Esprit. With the relatively scarce vintage for Mourvedre, we didn't have the option of truly leaning hard (like 50%) into our lead grape. So we tried Mourvedre ranges from 33% to 37%, Syrah ranges from 22% to 31%, and Grenache ranges from 26% to 33%. Somewhat to our surprise, the blend with the most Syrah was again our favorite, with a nice balance of brightness and lushness and youthfully powerful tannins. Unlike the Panoplie, we couldn't think of an obvious way to tweak it to make it better, so we decided we'd table that and come back later to decide which trace varieties we wanted to use. 

After one last lunch together, Cesar headed south and we turned our attention to our remaining wine club blends, starting with En Gobelet. With the easing of the drought and the new production off of Jewel Ridge and other new head-trained blocks, we have more options for this wine than ever before, even after using some of our favorite head-trained lots in Esprit and Panoplie. For the third wine in a row, we chose the blend with the least Grenache (49%) and most Syrah (14%) to go along with 31% Mourvedre and 3% each of Tannat and Counoise. That's still a lot of Grenache, and we felt that the relatively higher percentages of Syrah and Mourvedre gave the pretty sugarplum fruit more density and seriousness. 

For Le Complice, which celebrates the kinship we feel Terret Noir shows with whole cluster Syrah, we dismissed the blend with the most Grenache (41%) and least Syrah (51%) as pretty and luscious but not structured or wild enough, and split between the power of a blend with 65% Syrah, 29% Grenache, and 6% Terret and the herby vibrancy of a blend with 58% Syrah, 29% Grenache, and 13% Terret Noir. As with the Panoplie, splitting the difference made a wine that everyone was happy with: 62% Syrah, 28% Grenache, and 10% Terret. Note that we made less of this (just 360 cases, vs. 750 cases in most recent years) so we can increase the flexibility of what we send out to VINsider club members.

At this point, we'd made four blends and had the following quantities of wine left of our main grapes. Do you notice the outlier?

• Mourvedre: 1230 gallons
• Grenache: 9173 gallons
• Syrah: 2555 gallons
• Counoise: 2199 gallons

Given those quantities, Friday was going to be a deep dive into Grenache, and it was something of a relief when we convened to taste the Cotes de Tablas first thing in the morning, we had universal consensus that our favorite wine was one that used the most Grenache: 66%, along with 18% Syrah, and 8% each Counoise and Mourvedre. Still, that left us with about 6800 gallons of the grape, enough for nearly 3,000 cases. I have been wanting us to make a more substantial amount of varietal Grenache, enough to release nationally, so I asked Chelsea to blend the best 4800 gallons into what would become a 2,000 case lot for us to taste. We did, and loved it. It was juicy and spicy, with pure cherry and plum fruit, good acids, and appealing sweet spice. It was so good, in fact, that I wondered aloud if adding another 1200 gallons (500 cases) was viable.

We decided that after lunch we would blind taste the 2,000-case varietal Grenache we'd tasted that morning against a potential 2,50o-case Grenache. I went into this expecting that I'd like the smaller lot (with, after all, higher-rated components) and was just hoping that the two blends would be close enough in quality that we'd all be content. Instead, it seemed like the extra lots that we added, which tended to be higher in acid and less ripe, brought out a lovely saline minerality and expressiveness while giving the fruit more focus and taming the little bit of alcoholic heat that we'd been perceiving on the nose. Done, and done. There really is nothing like tasting blind to tell you what the right solution is. 

That left about 1100 gallons of the Grenache that the cellar was calling "the rest". I figured we should taste it so that we'd know, if we were looking to sell it to another winery, what it was like. That happens from time to time. So we did. And while it didn't have the power (or the color) of the 2,500-case varietal Grenache we had just blended, it was pretty, spicy, with a little crushed stone minerality on the nose. The palate showed lovely strawberry fruit and bright acids. We were all admiring it when Chelsea spoke up: "You know, I would love to have a box of this in my fridge this summer." And the last piece fell into place. It turned out that the lots we'd marked down for not being dark or structured enough made the perfect chillable red. We'll have enough to make something like 900 3L boxes to sell here and 65 kegs to sell to restaurants and wine bars around the country to pour on tap. Look for that release (which we're tentatively planning to call Alouette¹) in August.

At that point, Christian and Valentin had to return to France, and I had to hit the road for a week of work in Washington DC. When I got back we had a pre-scheduled bottling run, and then a few people had other commitments that kept us from all getting together. So it wasn't until week-before-last that we sat down to put the finishing touches on the Esprit and then taste the full lineup. We'd blocked out, we felt, the right proportions of Mourvedre, Grenache, and Syrah for Esprit, but hadn't been able to dive into the trace varieties to our satisfaction. So back to the blending table we went, and tried three different approaches to fill the 10% of the blend that we'd left for Vaccarese, Cinsaut, and Counoise. And we were grateful that we did. The "baseline" proportion that we'd used in the first round (6% Counoise, 3% Vaccarese, and 1% Cinsaut) turned out to be our least favorite, and the one we liked most maxed out our Cinsaut at 6%, with Vaccarese and Counoise dropping to 2% each. That meant we wouldn't have a varietal Cinsaut, but would have a little more varietal Counoise and Vaccarese. And that's fine. You have to know what your priorities are when you go into blending, and for us, what the Esprit wants, it gets. In this case, what the Esprit got from the additional Cinsaut was more plushness and length, and a touch of licorice-like sweet spice. It felt somehow appropriate that finishing touch on our most important wine came from the first grape that we tasted on the first day of the component trials.

Those decisions made, all that was left was to taste the full lineup of blends and varietal wines, and to add in the non-estate wines like Patelin de Tablas and Lignée de Tablas. It's important for us to make sure everything is properly differentiated. We don't want, for example, a Grenache-dominated wine like Cotes de Tablas to taste too much like our varietal Grenache, or the Esprit and Panoplie, both of which are based on Mourvedre, to feel too close to each other or our varietal Mourvedre. We also were looking forward to tasting our Syrah against the Lignée de Tablas Shake Ridge Syrah. The wines:

My quick notes on each of the eighteen wines we made, and their rough quantities: 

• Counoise (1015 cases): A juicy brambly nose with notes of wild strawberry, rhubarb, and rose petals. Clean, pure, and bright on the palate with flavors of ripe red raspberry, cranberry and pomegranate, bright acids, and a spicy chaparral note on the finish. Like springtime in the woods.
• Terret Noir (90 cases): A peppery nose of blood orange, pink peppercorn, and sweetgrass. The palate is tannic and pithy with a bay-like herbiness, black raspberry fruit, and a finish of watermelon rind and sagebrush. Fascinating and fun.
• Muscardin (25 cases): A nose of aromatic bitters and Aperol, spice cabinet and potpourri. On the palate, like cherry Jolly Rancher, but fully dry with fresh green herbs and a nice saltiness on the finish. I have to believe that this will be most people's first exposure to Muscardin, and it should be memorable and fun.
• Full Circle (260 cases): A distinctively Pinot nose of cherry cola, milk chocolate, leather, and a little sweet oak. The mouth shows cherry skin, sweet earth, and a little oregano-like herbiness from some well-integrated stems. There's a kiss of oak on the finish.  
• Vaccarese (250 cases): A nose of dark chocolate, black pepper, mint, and black raspberry. On the palate, black cherry, graphite, and cocoa powder, good acids, and then a finish with black tea and black licorice notes over healthy tannins.
• Grenache Alouette (1080 gallons): A high-toned nose of peppermint stick, cranberry, and grenadine. On the palate, juicy and appealing with flavors of watermelon, red cherry, and candied orange. Medium-bodied, with gentle tannins and refreshing acidity. Should be delicious lightly chilled.
• Grenache (2500 cases): A nose of boysenberry, red licorice, and potpourri. The palate is full-bodied with flavors of fresh fig, grape jelly, pipe tobacco, and sweet spice. Good structure, with chalky tannins coming out on the finish. I'm so excited to have so much of this.
• Cotes de Tablas (1500 cases): An umami-rich nose, especially compared to the Grenaches that preceded it, of grilled portabella, black raspberry, cinnamon bread, and dry autumn leaves. On the palate, like all the parts of a plum, from the sweet juice to the bite of the skin, with additional flavors of luxardo cherry, clove, and cocoa powder. The finish brings out a nice bite of tannin and more sweet, earthy spice.
• Mourvedre (330 cases): A lovely focused nose of red currant, sugarplum, new leather, and an enticing meaty, herby complexity like a leg of lamb that has been rubbed with bay and thyme. On the palate, currant and milk chocolate, red apple skin, and loamy earth. Pure and lovely.
• Lignée de Tablas Fenaughty Vineyard (560 cases): This blend of 67% Grenache and 33% Mourvedre is one of two new entries into our Lignée de Tablas program. A savory, classically Sierra Foothills nose of dusty blackberry, juniper, and caramel. On the palate, flavors of sweet cream butter, elderberry, and a licorice note that dances between red and black. The finish becomes more savory again, with notes of flint, iron, and black raspberry. More on this wine soon. 
• Patelin de Tablas (7000 cases): A pretty, savory nose of black pepper and teriyaki marinade. Lovely on the palate with black fruit and black licorice in front leavened by plum skin acids and a finish with sweet sarsaparilla and smoky oolong tea notes. Somehow both serious and playful, and should be a great introduction for people into the category of California Rhone-style blends. The blend ended up 45% Syrah, 30% Grenache, 23% Mourvedre, and 2% Counoise.
• Syrah (800 cases): A nose of warm dark leather, baker's chocolate, and dark roast coffee. The mouth is plush with flavors of dark chocolate, blackberry, prosciutto, and black licorice, with rich, powerful tannins, minty spice, and an iron-like mineral note coming out on the finish.
• Lignee de Tablas Shake Ridge Syrah (350 cases): The second new entry into our Lignée de Tablas program. A higher-toned nose than our Syrah, reflective of the high elevation of the Shake Ridge site, of blackberry preserves, brown sugar, bramble, and pencil shavings. The mouth is lively and herby with black raspberry and toasted walnut flavors, and the finish shows more dark fruit and graphite. More on this wine soon too. 
• Tannat (980 cases): A generously juicy, minty nose of black cherry, graham cracker, and cocoa powder. The mouth is vibrant too, with a lovely chocolate-covered cherry note, salted butter, and boysenberry pie flavors . The finish shows Tannat's characteristic good acids, grippy tannins, and a lingering floral note like violets.
• En Gobelet (760 cases): A pretty, refined nose of cinnamon toast and strawberry preserves. On the palate, flavors of strawberry-rhubarb pie, baking spices, sweet earth,  and candied orange. Nice lift on the long, gentle finish. Elegant and expressive.
• Le Complice (360 cases): A lovely umami nose of soy, crushed rock, mint, sweet tobacco, and melted licorice. On the palate, more translucency than the nose suggested, with flavors of tangy black raspberry and plum skin and a clean mineral note reminiscent of wet stone. The long finish shows both sweet and savory herbs, and tannic grip cloaked in black fruit with a graphite-like mineral impression at the end. Memorable and impressive.
• Esprit de Tablas (3500 cases): A serious nose of pipe tobacco, both red and black currant, licorice, and a little minty lift. The mouth is on point with flavors of black raspberry, mint chocolate, meat drippings, and loamy earth. Deep and full but structured as well, with fine-grained tannins and a finish of sweet spice and dark red fruit. 
• Panoplie (800 cases): A deep, pure nose of plum pudding, chocolate mousse, meat drippings, hoisin, and leather. On the palate, the purity of the Mourvedre fruit shines: currant and black plum, sweet earth and duck fat. The finish has chewy tannins and a lovely saline persistence with notes of spun sugar and mocha. This should be a great Panoplie to lay down, though it may be so appealing young that a lot of it won't get that far.   

A few concluding thoughts. 

• What a treat to have both Christian and Valentin around the blending table, and to see their excitement with what we were tasting. Christian, who worked for a long stretch at Domaine Tempier in Bandol and has for the last several years overseen the Famille Perrin operations in Gigondas and Vinsobres, is a somewhat intimidating addition to a blending session that's going to dive deep into Mourvedre. But seeing their enthusiasm for the freshness and lift of the wines they had in front of them, and living vicariously through their first visit to this special place we get to grow grapes and make wine, felt like serious validation of our work. During one of the final lunches, Christian stood up to give a toast, in which he roughly said (I'm translating here) "we are excited to learn that there is in fact paradise on Earth, and it's here in Paso Robles."
• One of my favorites of Neil's sayings is "hang time is great... until it isn't". The 2023 vintage gave us incredibly long hang time, with harvest not starting until mid-September and not finishing until mid-November. That we got that long, slow ripening essentially without a single heat spike is a rare luxury. The consistent depth and intensity of the lots that we tasted was noteworthy. We know that this vintage is likely an climatic outlier, but that doesn't mean we aren't going to glory in what it gave us. I'm not sure I can remember another vintage with such a well-defined character, which is going to make future retrospective tastings a lot of fun.
• One very interesting facet of this blending was that we've started to get more significant production off of some of our newly replanted (and mostly head-trained, dry-farmed) blocks. Those young vines, which are healthy and as yet unaffected by the virus we know we have in the vineyard, were consistently among our favorite lots. It will be interesting, as we move forward, integrating those juicier, more powerful lots into the more elegant, mineral-driven lots from the older vines. We want to make sure that we maintain the elegance and freshness that we've come to love (and our fans have come to expect) while also incorporating the more robust, juicy lots that we'll get from the young vines.
• In terms of vintage comps, I'm not sure we have a great one for 2023. (For some examples, look at last year's blog post diving into vintage character.) It seems like 2011, with its dark fruit profile and lovely acids, is likely the closest to what we saw in 2023, but that was a frost year in addition to a cool year, and there's a generosity of fruit in 2023 that I don't find in 2011. There's something of the weightless elegance of 2015 in 2023, but the wines are more structured and Grenache, in particular, is stronger. It will be a pleasure to get to know these wines as they rest in barrel and eventually (or in the case of the Alouette Grenache, pretty soon) make their way to you.
• Speaking of the Alouette, this blending session really drove home the value of the collaborative approach we use. It's not up to any one person to come up with a solution to the year's challenges. Ideas can come from anyone around that table, and if the blind tastings we do support them, we'll do it. If you'd told me, three years ago, that we'd conclude a blending session with three Famille Perrin members by deciding to add a chillable red -- and one that we'd market solely in box and keg -- to our lineup I'd likely have looked at you like you'd sprouted a second head. But I think it's going to be a gorgeous wine and a lovely addition to our portfolio. I can't wait to share it with you. 

I'll let Neil have the last word: "I thought the wines across the board were really strong, with good depth and good structure. It's super exciting to see the new blocks coming on; they're going to be a game changer for us. And, of course, how exciting to have our first-ever Muscardin!"

From all of us, cheers.

Footnote:

1. Alouette, if you're curious, means “lark” in French, with both of its meanings: the songbird but also something done on a whim, or for fun. For us to make a wine we're really excited about, in a category we've never explored, feels like a lark indeed!

Celebrating 25 years of Dianthus… and the return of rosés with color

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from two of my wine writing heroes, Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, long time wine columnists for the Wall Street Journal, creators of “Open that Bottle Night” and authors of Love by the Glass¹. They had brought a bottle of our Dianthus to New York’s Central Park to enjoy with the recent solar eclipse. They were sufficiently intrigued with the wine to reach out to learn its story. We talked for a half-hour, and our conversation became a really fun article on their site Grape Collective.

There’s a lot to talk about with regards to the Dianthus, not least because it is an anomalous rosé, at least according to current style. Much more popular and commonly seen are the rosés from or inspired by Provence, typically very pale copper-pink. These are rosés that are made essentially like white wines, where the character is determined by the flesh of the grapes with only minimal influence from the grape skins. Our Patelin de Tablas Rosé follows this model. But not the Dianthus.

Instead, the Dianthus looks to a different model, which also originated in the south of France. Just across the Rhone River, to the west of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, lies the rosé-only appellation of Tavel. Tavel’s wines, made from a list of grapes very similar to that of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, typically receive 24 hours or more on the skins and have a deeper pink color than anything you’d find in Provence. After all, the Tavel region is warmer than the more coastally-influenced Provence, and with that warmth comes weight and richness. To balance that richness, wineries traditionally leave the grapes on the skins for longer, to take advantage of the tannic bite present in skins but not the grape flesh. This skin contact produces a different suite of flavors, typically more red fruited and with richer texture than Provence-style dry rosés, which tend toward citrus fruit and lighter body. That textural complexity also lends itself to pairing with food², while Provençal rosés tend to be enjoyed more solo. 

We began making the Dianthus 25 years ago, back in 1999, thanks to my mom. She decided that it was crazy that we were growing these grapes that made such lovely rosés in France and not at least making some to drink ourselves. This was before there was any significant market in the United States for dry rosé. The whole category had been so thoroughly kidnapped by white Zinfandel that the baseline assumption was that if a wine was pink, it was sweet. I remember pleading with guests who visited our tasting room in those early days to just try the rosé, that it wasn’t going to be sweet, and that it was included in the tasting. I usually had to tell the whole story about how we started making it (thanks, Mom) and how rosé was as important a part of the production of the wines of the Rhone region as whites or reds. Gradually, over the course of the 2000s, dry rosés from France started to make inroads into the American market, and by the early 2010s the Provençal model was dominant, in part because its exceptionally pale color signified to people that it was dry and not sweet. Darker pink rosés became rarer and rarer. We introduced our Patelin de Tablas Rosé in 2012, and within a few years its production had outstripped that of the Dianthus. But we kept making Dianthus, which I think more than a few people thought was crazy. Making one dry rosé in California was progressive enough. I’m not aware of any other California winery that has a decade of history making two.

I myself can go months without spending much time thinking about Dianthus. It gets a flurry of my attention around our spring VINsider Wine Club shipment, when we typically release it to members. We allocate a little for wholesale as well, but that quantity is so small (this year, it was just 112 cases) and it tends to sell out so fast that I don’t often overlap with its presence on my trips to work with distributors in our key markets. But it happened that I spent a lot of time with the 2023 Dianthus over the last week. I started the week with three days of market work in and around Seattle and finished it at Hospice du Rhone, which was held in Walla Walla this year. Our Washington State distributor chose to bring in a few of those 112 cases, so we were showing it alongside the 2023 Patelin de Tablas Rosé. At Hospice du Rhone, the Dianthus was one of the six wines Neil and I chose to pour:

The reactions that the Dianthus received were fascinating. During my three Seattle days, it generated more questions than any other wine in the lineup we were showing, and we had to pull it out of what we were presenting on Thursday because we’d already taken enough pre-orders on Tuesday and Wednesday to exhaust what the distributor had ordered. The general consensus was that it would be a hand-sell to customers, but the restaurants and wine shops were so intrigued by the wine’s food-pairing possibilities that it was a wine that they wanted to make the effort to get into people’s hands (and mouths). At Hospice du Rhone, which included a master class and rosé lunch featuring the wines of Tavel, the color and style of the Dianthus didn’t even raise much commentary. For that audience – always a bellwether for where the most committed Rhone lovers are going – the deeper color and richer flavors were taken in stride. If someone did ask about it, a quick reference to Tavel and a reminder that Tavel is a lot closer to Chateauneuf-du-Pape than Provence is usually helped the taster wrap their head around what we were going for. And I think that the Dianthus got the most re-tastes of anything on the table except the 2005 Esprit de Beaucastel.

What does this all mean? I think it’s both a great piece of evidence in the cyclical nature of the wine market and a sign that the American rosé market may be getting to be mature enough to accept some stylistic variation. I’ve been preaching to the restaurants that I visit this spring that there is enough sophistication among rosé-lovers that they should offer multiple rosés by-the-glass. Sure, have your Provence standby. But also offer something that is a contrast, either because of its region or its style. After all, a wine-focused restaurant would never have just one white wine by the glass, or just one red. At our tasting room, we’ve been pouring our own two rosés in our Spring Tasting Flight for the last several weeks, and it’s fascinating seeing how different people gravitate toward one wine or the other.

I love both. But it’s been a while since I spent this much time thinking about them both. Cheers to 25 years of Dianthus, and an American wine market that continues to grow in sophistication. We’re finally back to a place that a rosé wine can be… pink.

Footnotes:

1. I had one of my favorite Instagram Live conversations with Dorothy and John last May. If you missed it, it's in our archive, no Instagram account necessary.
2. The Dianthus has provided some memorable pairings when I've hosted wine dinners. A particularly mind-blowing match was when, roughly a decade ago, Chef Julie Simon at Thomas Hill Organics paired it with a Moroccan spice-rubbed quail served alongside a salted watermelon and feta salad. 

2023 white blending trials suggest that we're looking at a truly special vintage: "each grape was clearly itself, but more so"

We spent four days last week around our blending table, working to turn the 37 different lots we made from our white grapes in 2023 into the blends and varietal bottlings we'll be releasing to you in coming months. Overall, we were really happy at the end of the week; the quality of what we tasted was uniformly outstanding, and quantities a lot better than what we saw in 2022. However, 2022 was so scarce -- due to the combined impacts of drought, frost, and our decision to pull out one underperforming Roussanne block -- that even with quantities of estate white grapes 55% higher in 2023 the wines will still be in short supply. So we still had some constraints on our blending this year that meant we entered the blending week with some fundamental questions. Would there be enough outstanding lots to give us choices with the Esprit de Tablas Blanc? Would the improved yields allow us to make a Cotes de Tablas Blanc? Would we have anything left to make varietal wines, and which ones? For the answers to these questions and more, read on.

If you're unfamiliar with how we do our blending, you might find it interesting to read this blog by Chelsea that she wrote a few years ago. And for a different behind-the-scenes glimpse, Neil recorded and posted little video updates of what we were working on and what we were thinking each day, which I enjoyed watching a lot at the time and found great fun to look back on now that we're done. If you missed them, they're on his Instagram feed.

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

The team which assembled for the entire week included Neil, Chelsea, Craig, Amanda, Austin, Kaitlyn, and myself. We had a few days when Gustavo and Erin joined us. I'm conscious of the fact that these blending weeks are like final exams for the cellar team, where their work is suddenly made public and evaluated. The high quality across the board is a great testament to their work over the last six months. I'm also grateful for the work that goes into these tastings, including pulling hundreds of individual lots, careful measuring and assembly, and then the lab work to get the samples clean and ready to taste. I captured this photo of Amanda, Craig, and Austin on Wednesday morning, tools of the trade in hand:

As usual, we took the first two days to taste through all the individual lots, with the core varieties we use for Esprit Blanc (Roussanne, Grenache Blanc, and Picpoul) on Monday, and everything else on Tuesday. My quick thoughts on each variety are below. For context, in a normal year, for every 10 lots we might see three or four "1" grades, five or six "2" grades and one "3" grade. When we think a lot is right on the cusp between two grades, we can note that with a slash ("1/2", or "2/3"). In rough harvest order:

• Roussanne (10 lots): The quality of the Roussanne was outstanding, with excellent richness and texture across the board, and surprisingly good acids for this usually low-acid grape. I gave six lots, with characters spanning the spectrum between focused and mineral-driven, and opulent with a kiss of sweet oak, "1" grades. One other, to which I gave a "1/2", was less vibrant but pretty, while three others got "2" grades for various reasons, two were a touch softer than I'd like for the Esprit (but will be delicious in a varietal Roussanne) while one (which ended up going into Cotes Blanc) was high toned with great acids but without the characteristic Roussanne breadth.
• Grenache Blanc (9 lots): A great Grenache Blanc showing, with six lots getting "1" grades, one "1/2" and two "2" lots that in other years could have been 1's. Everything was mouth-filling but electric with green apple and key lime acids, long finishes, and good minerality. The two that I gave "2" grades to were still sweet enough I was reluctant to earmark them for Esprit, but in all likelihood will when they're dry be just as good as the ones I gave "1" grades to.
• Picpoul Blanc (4 lots): A little like the Grenache Blanc, I had trouble not giving all four lots "1" grades, as they all showed what we like best about Picpoul: its tropical fruit, creamy texture, and electric acids. I ended up marking one lot down to a "1/2" because it was a little less expressive than the others, but in reality it could have been a "1".
• Viognier (4 lots): A Viognier vintage with good richness and good acids, but with a little less Viognier character than I was expecting. The two lots that had that luscious tropicality along with the richness and acids got "1" grades, while the other two got a "1/2" and a "2".
• Marsanne (4 lots): Although I gave the same grades I did to Viognier (two 1's, a 1/2, and a 2) I felt like it was a really good Marsanne vintage, and I feel like in retrospect I was grading a little harshly. The top lots had pretty luscious honeydew character with nice texture and a salty mineral note. The "1/2" was still a little sweet but heading in the right direction, while the "2" lot was a touch on the dense side, more like Roussanne than Marsanne.
• Picardan (1 lots): Only one Picardan lot this year, but it was lovely, with kiwi and pear fruit, nice minerality, and a little pithy bite on the finish. I gave it a "1".
• Bourboulenc (3 lots): Three lots, all quite different from one another. My favorite, textured with nice cantaloupe fruit, rich texture, and salty minerality, I gave a "1". Another that was darker and nuttier, but still within the boundaries of what we consider characteristic for Bourboulenc, got a "2". And the third, which was still sweet and unfinished, had an unusual coffee grounds character that I wasn't sure what to make of. I gave it a "2/3" but am sure it will in the end become something worthwhile. This tasting also suggested that it was to Bourboulenc that we would look to find the small Tablas Creek component for Patelin de Tablas Blanc in 2023.
• Clairette Blanche (1 lot): Just one two-barrel lot of Clairette Blanche in 2023, with classic peppered citrus character and a clean minerality that I loved. I gave it a "1".
• Cotes Maduena Blend (1 lot): From a newly replanted block, we made a small field blend of Clairette Blanche (61%) and Roussanne (39%). It was still sweet, seemingly at this point more dominated by Clairette than Roussanne and without a super well-defined character though pretty enough. I gave it a "2". 

We finished Tuesday by brainstorming ideas for the Esprit Blanc. We've figured that our bare minimum of Esprit Blanc that we need to sell here and around the country and world is around 1700 cases, and that's what we've made the last two years. But given that we're already sold out of our 2021 Esprit Blanc, six months before the 2022 will be released, I wanted to increase our production back up to around 2100 cases. At that quantity, we didn't have infinite options (so, for example, we couldn't make a blend that was 70% Roussanne or 25% Picpoul because the quantities just weren't there) and we decided to make one blend that used our maximum possible Roussanne (around 55%), another that used our maximum Grenache Blanc (around 25%) and another that leaned more heavily into the brighter varieties like Picpoul and Bourboulenc and see where that took us. All three blends were going to use our full production of Picardan and Clairette, which were only going to amount to 5% and 2%. It's a bummer knowing that we won't have either of those as varietal wines, but with so little it didn't make sense to split up what there was. 

Wednesday morning, we started on our blending work by tasting three possible Esprit de Tablas Blanc blends. To my surprise, our least favorite was the one that leaned most heavily into Grenache Blanc. It had good texture and plenty of acids, but felt less expressive than the other two glasses. Our second-favorite was the one that maxed out Roussanne. It had the deepest flavor, and lots of length, but felt a little one-dimensional. Our consensus favorite turned out to be the glass with the least Roussanne (still, at 48%, 15% more than we were able to use last year) which left more room for Grenache Blanc, Picpoul, and Bourboulenc. It was the most charming on the nose, with the most evident fruit, great acids, and plenty of texture and length. And thinking about it, I can understand why. The difference between 48% and 55% Roussanne doesn't sound huge, but at 48% we were using roughly the top 60% of the Roussanne that we produced this year. The additional Roussanne required to get to 55% meant that we were using some Roussanne lots that received "2" grades instead of just the consensus "1" lots. It isn't surprising that replacing that "2" rated Roussanne with "1" rated Picpoul, Grenache Blanc, and Bourboulenc made for a better wine. And the concentration of the vintage meant that we didn't have any worries about it not having sufficient presence to stand proudly in the historical lineup of Esprit Blanc. Final blend: 48% Roussanne, 22% Grenache Blanc, 13% Picpoul Blanc, 10% Bourboulenc, 5% Picardan, and 2% Clairette Blanche. Side note: I love that it again includes all six of the white grapes legal in Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

In 2022, it was clear that we didn't have the quantity to both make a Cotes de Tablas Blanc and the number of varietal wines we needed to satisfy our wine club and tasting room. So, we made the difficult choice to sacrifice Cotes Blanc for a year. I'd been hoping that quantities would rebound to the point that making Cotes Blanc again would be an easy choice, but instead it was a difficult choice. We need about 1300 cases of Cotes Blanc for the various uses we make of it (wine club, tasting room, and wholesale sales) and if we made that quantity, that would leave about 1750 cases of varietal wines in some combination. In that mix, we needed one wine of at least 800 cases (to go out to our wine club in the "classic" mix) and at least three others at 150+ cases (to go out in our "White Wine Selection" mix). Add those up and it works... but leaves only a little wiggle room. Given our post-Esprit quantities, the only variety with enough gallonage to include in a classic shipment was Grenache Blanc. So for our Cotes Blanc trials Chelsea put together three options, one using our maximum amount of Viognier and Marsanne, another using our maximum amount of Viognier and Grenache Blanc, and another reducing our Viognier a bit and making room for a little more of everything else. If we didn't love any of the options, we could bail on the Cotes Blanc and just make varietal wines.

Happily, all three of the test blends were good, and we truly loved the last one, which reduced Viognier to 34% and included more Marsanne (31%), Grenache Blanc (20%), Roussanne (13%), and a little Clairette Blanche (2%) that came along for the ride because it was in the Cotes Maduena field blend. The Viognier-heavier blends both felt rich and dense, perhaps a bit too much so despite their bright acids, while the blend we chose showed more elegance and translucency to its flavors while still being mouth-filling and luscious. It felt like just what we wanted for this lovely vintage. Added advantage: we're able to make a varietal Viognier, which I hadn't been expecting.

On Thursday, we convened to re-taste the blends we'd decided on as well as the varietal wines that our blending decisions resulted in and the two non-estate wines that weren't included in the blending. Our main goal in this tasting is to make sure that there is definition between the different wines that share a lead grape (say, our Viognier and our Cotes de Tablas Blanc, or our Roussanne and our Esprit de Tablas Blanc) as well as the estate and non-estate wines (like our estate Grenache Blanc and the Lignée de Tablas Grenache Blanc that we made from Zaca Mesa Vineyard grapes this year). To make these comparisons easier, we tasted in two flights of five wines, in the order below. My brief notes on each wine, with the rough quantity we'll be bottling this summer:

• 2023 Bourboulenc (175 cases): A pithy nose, but rich, with mineral, almond, and mango notes. One the palate, quite rich, still a little sweet, with flavors of cumquat and baked apple, marmalade and toasted graham cracker. There's a nice pithy bite at the end. But when it's bottled, this is going to taste quite different than it does now.
• 2023 Picpoul Blanc (175 cases): A high-toned nose of kiwi, honeydew melon rind, crushed rock, and lemon verbena. On the palate, fresh pineapple and green apple fruit, creamy texture, and lovely acids that reveal a wet stone minerality on the finish. Lovely. 
• 2023 Grenache Blanc (900 cases): A classic Grenache Blanc nose of baked green apple, chalky minerals, anise, and sage butter. On the palate, flavors of lemon drop and apple galette, lovely rich texture kept in check by vibrant acids and Grenache Blanc's phenolic architecture that offers a hint of tannin on the finish.
• 2023 Lignée de Tablas Grenache Blanc Zaca Mesa Vineyard (220 cases): A nose reminiscent of sauvignon blanc, with notes of gooseberry and sea spray, elderflower and ripe pear. Similar in the mouth, with white grapefruit and green herb flavors like lemongrass and thyme. Fresh and lively, lighter in body than our estate Grenache Blanc. Pretty and fun.
• 2023 Patelin de Tablas Blanc (4300 cases, plus some wine for boxes and kegs): A plush nose equally balanced between Grenache Blanc and Viognier right now: apricot and ripe pear, oyster shell minerality, and a little pithy note. On the palate, white grapefruit and honeycrisp apple, anise, chamomile, orange oil, and a chalky mineral note on the finish. Lovely acids. Exciting that we have a solid supply of this! Final blend: 50% Grenache Blanc, 23% Viognier, 10% Roussanne, 8% Marsanne, 8% Vermentino, 1% Bourboulenc.
• 2023 Marsanne (100 cases): A lovely nose of grilled peach, honeycomb, sweet green herbs, warm straw, and petrichor. In the mouth, gentle but persistent, with flavors of cantaloupe and preserved lemon, lovely texture, and a little gentle minty lift.
• 2023 Viognier (150 cases): So very young on the nose, with high-toned mandarin peel and pear blossom aromas, a little pepper spice, and some barely-ripe apricot. The mouth is lush with flavors of nectarine, cumquat, and Meyer lemon. The finish is long, with a pithy bite and a lingering saline note.
• 2023 Cotes de Tablas Blanc (1300 cases): A plush nose of buttered popcorn, white flowers, melon, and salted caramel. On the palate, a burst of sweet bright fruit like baked lemon squares with additional notes of honeydew melon and crushed rock. The long finish shows lemongrass and mineral notes.
• 2023 Roussanne (260 cases): Absolutely characteristic of Roussanne on the nose, with aromas of honey and cedar and lanolin. On the palate, notes of vanilla custard, white flowers, a little kiss of sweet oak, and surprisingly bright acids maintaining order on the long finish.
• 2023 Esprit de Tablas Blanc (2100 cases): A nose equally poised between Roussanne and brighter notes, including kiwi, honeycomb, baked apple, lemongrass, and toasted pine nuts. On the palate, mouth-filling with flavors of quince and pear, rich texture, lovely acids, and notes of jasmine and salty minerals on the lingering finish. We can't wait to see where this goes with the additional 8 months of barrel aging it will get before its December bottling.

A few concluding thoughts:

• It was very nice to be out of the painfully scarce 2022 vintage, but the tasting drove home that white wines are still going to be in short supply in 2023. And I noted that in my 2023 harvest recap: that while white yields were up 55% in 2023, they were so low in 2022 that we still ended up below our historical averages. Once you set aside what we need for wine club shipments and our wholesale commitments, we're still looking at releases of most of our varietal wines in the 50-150 case quantities. If these are wines you look forward to, keep an eye on your emails. They will go fast.
• Why were things low? I think a lot of it can be attributed to the toll taken on the vineyard in the 2020-22 drought and the 2022 frost. The buds for a growing season are set the year before, so a grapevine that's under extreme stress one year will usually not set a big crop the next year even if it gets ample rain and no frosts that winter. But with the ideal 2023 growing season and the lovely wet-but-benign winter we've gotten so far, I have high hopes for 2024. Fingers crossed, please, that we dodge frost.
• In terms of what vintage in our history might be a good comp for what we saw in 2023, I feel like we need to go back to 2011 to get something that reminded me of what we saw in 2023. That 2011 vintage was historically cool (cooler even than 2023) with yields reduced by spring frosts. The result was a late-ripening vintage with both concentration and vibrancy, a lot like what we saw around the blending table last week. Sure, there are differences; we've got more grapes in production now than we did then, I think our farming is stronger; and we didn't get the disruption of a spring frost. But those 2011 whites were outstanding, and if that's our baseline I think we'll be happy.
• I asked everyone around the table at Thursday's tasting to give a brief overview of their thoughts on 2023, and wanted to share a few of the answers. Chelsea contributed, "Everything is so perfectly poised with florality, minerality, and acidity. There's a great balance between fruit and non-fruit elements." Austin added, "Purity. Each component was clearly unique and varietally characteristic." Craig said, "Elegance and acidity. That's the throughline." Amanda called them "Confident and stately." Kaitlyn called the lineup "super delicate and pretty." Neil praised the wines' "great balance and intricacy, especially the blends." I'll end with Gustavo's contribution, which I thought captured my own thoughts well, that each grape was clearly itself, but more so, almost the platonic ideal of Rhone whites: "Each wine is what it is and I enjoyed that."

Now that the blending decisions have been made, we can move forward in getting the wines racked, blended, and given time to settle and integrate. The Patelin Blanc will be the first to go into bottle, in May. The Cotes Blanc, Lignée de Tablas Grenache Blanc, and all the estate varietal wines except Roussanne will be next, in June. And the Esprit Blanc and Roussanne will go into foudre and have another nine months to evolve before their scheduled December bottling.

It's not always easy coming into a blending week with high expectations. But it was exciting that the wines exceeded even what we'd been hoping for them. There wasn't a single "3" grade given out by anyone around the table all week. And the finished wines that we made showed all the promise of their components, and more. We can't wait to share them with you. We do apologize that while better than 2022, quantities are still scarce and these wines will go fast. We promise, they're worth making an effort to secure.

2023 Harvest Recap: Late, but Worth the Wait

On Thursday, with the bin of Roussanne pictured below, we completed the 2023 harvest. Well, mostly, at least. We completed the last pick. There's still some of that pick that is sitting on straw in one of our greenhouses, working to get that last little bit of concentration. This last pick was a full month later than the last pick in 2022. If you've been following along with the growing season, that won't be a surprise. But it's still a relief. 

2023 was our coolest year since 2011. That cool weather, combined with a late start thanks to our record rainfall last winter, meant that we came out of dormancy late, hit every marker late, and harvested late. At the beginning of October we were only 10% done, and with El Nino looming in the Pacific, had real worries as to whether or not we'd get the crop in before it started to rain. But we got lucky. The weather warmed up in October, the rain (and frosts) held off, and we were able to pick everything. Check out the degree days trend for the year. 2023 is the bold, red dotted line. The key inflection point is at the beginning of October, at which it bends back up and since we've seen more-or-less average heat accumulation:

Another way of looking at the cool year is going month by month compared to normal. We've had two months that were slightly warmer than average (July and October), three that were slightly cooler than normal (April, May, and August), and two that were significantly chillier than normal (June and September):

As you would suspect, the cool September didn't exactly cause fruit to come tumbling in. But once it warmed up in October, things shifted into high gear. That month included our busiest-ever week of over 140 tons between October 8th and 14th. In the chart below, blue is purchased fruit for the Patelin or Lignée programs, and orange estate-grown fruit. While the timing of the arrival of our purchased grapes is more variable, the estate fruit forms an almost perfect bell curve:

Yields were up 39.9% overall off the estate vs. 2022, which sounds amazing, but it's more a reflection of how low 2022 was than that 2023 was some crazy windfall. We also have some new acreage in production, which means that even with all those new grapes we averaged 3.04 tons/acre. A list of our other vintages that saw crop levels right around 3 tons per acre reads like a "greatest hits" collection and includes 2003, 2007, 2014, 2016, and 2019. But it's worth noting that there's a lot of variation in how different grapes did this year. The grapes that were up sharply were either the whites that were impacted by last year's frosts (Grenache Blanc, Vermentino, Picpoul, and Roussanne) plus Grenache Noir, which saw the most significant increase in producing acreage. Other grapes were flat or even (in the cases of Viognier and Cinsaut) down a bit:

Grape	2023 Yields (tons)	2022 Yields (tons)	% Change vs. 2022
Viognier	10.1	11.9	-15.1%
Marsanne	9.0	8.3	+8.4%
Grenache Blanc	29.3	14.2	+106.3%
Picpoul Blanc	7.2	4.2	+71.4%
Vermentino	13.0	8.7	+49.4%
Bourboulenc	7.2	5.9	+22.0%
Roussanne	26.2	10.5	+149.5%
Other whites	3.2	4.1	-22.0%
Total Whites	105.2	67.8	+55.2%
Grenache	97.1	52.5	+85.0%
Syrah	41.7	39.9	+4.5%
Mourvedre	47.4	42.9	+10.5%
Tannat	15.3	13.5	+13.3%
Counoise	22.4	14.4	+55.6%
Cinsaut	3.6	3.8	-5.3%
Other reds	7.1	8.0	-11.3%
Total Reds	234.6	175.0	+34.1%
Total	339.8	242.8	+39.9%

In trying to pull out trends that aren't just reflections of 2022's weirdness, it seems to me that early grapes (like Viognier, Marsanne, Cinsaut, and Syrah) were pretty much flat compared to last year's low levels, so below-average historically. Vermentino and Grenache Blanc look like exceptions to that rule, but they were frozen last year and even their healthier yields this year are a little below our long-term norms. The grapes that flowered and ripened in the middle of the cycle (think Grenache Noir, Tannat, and Bourboulenc) all saw above-average yields and in many cases were up notably from last year. And the late-sprouting grapes like Counoise, Mourvedre, and Roussanne were somewhere in the middle, up from last year but still around our long-term averages.

Ideally, the outstanding vine health this year pays us off in two ways. First, all that leaf area combined with relatively modest yields should translate into great intensity in the wines. That's consistent with what we're seeing with the deep colors and dramatic flavors in the wines we're tasting so far. But the second payoff is that the cane growth and this year's lack of frosts should put the vines in position to produce well next year too. The buds that will produce next year's growth, after all, are already formed. They're just waiting for the arrival of spring to show themselves.

We had 129 harvest lots, an increase of 14 vs. 2022. These included 12 more estate lots (94 instead of 82), two more Lignée lots (4 instead of 2) and the same number of Patelin lots (31). The combination of the increased fruit off the estate and some larger Patelin lots meant that we processed 35% more fruit this year than we did in 2022. No wonder the cellar team was ready to celebrate! In the photo below of our harvest chalkboard, estate lots are in white, while purchased lots are green. Each line represents one pick. And yes, we have five more lots that we're going to have to figure out how to fit into those last three lines:

One 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

It's been a long time since we saw sugar and (especially) pH numbers like this. In fact, you need to go back to 2010 to find a comparable year. How big a difference does 0.19 pH points make? A lot more than you might think. pH is measured in a logarithmic scale, so a pH of 3 has ten times the concentration of acid ions as a pH of 4. So the average pH of 3.51 is 55% more acidic than the average pH of 3.70 we saw last year. That's why Chelsea described what we were seeing as "dream chemistry" in an Instagram Live we recorded mid-harvest. We can thank this year's cooler weather and lack of heat spikes for the vibrant acids, but I also think it points to the health of the vineyard thanks to the ample rain last winter and the years of regenerative farming that have allowed it to hold that water in a zone where the vines' roots can find it. 

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, that's the last time of the season: 

In character, it's early to tell what things will be like, but I asked Senior Assistant Winemaker Chelsea Franchi to sum up the vintage, and she was enthusiastic: "the long ripening really helped us out with the depth and intensity. Even this early the aromas are so nuanced, layered, and complex. If this is a sign of things to come I think we've got a really exciting vintage ahead of us." We're all looking forward to getting to know the wines of 2023 even better in coming weeks.

With rain in the forecast for later this week, we've been pushing to get the vineyard prepped for winter. We've been spreading compost, seeding cover crop, and laying straw on our vineyard roads:

Just as this year has gone since the beginning, it looks like we'll get it done just in time. We've been telling ourselves, for what feels like months, that we'll have a rest when we get to Thanksgiving. It looks like that's about right. And there will be plenty to give thanks for.

Harvest 2023 update: a deep exhale as warm weather brings the finish line in sight

Three weeks ago we were all pretty nervous. We'd had the coolest September in our history, and not just by a little. High temperatures were more than 7.5°F cooler than average, which on top of the delayed growing season meant that as the calendar flipped to October we'd only finished about 10% of the harvest off the estate. With el nino brewing in the Pacific, we were facing a real risk of serious rain coming while significant quantities of our fruit were still out on the vine. We were hoping that the warmer weather that began with the onset of October would stick around long enough to have a real impact on the ripening of our grapes and the timeline of our harvest. Spoiler alert: it did.

Not only have the last three weeks been warmer than normal, they've been nearly as warm as we'd expect September to be. In essence, the months have flipped places. While September's average high was 80.9°F, since October 1st our average high has been 84°F. This has reversed the trend in Growing Degree Days and brought 2023 back up away from the record-cool years of 2010 and 2011:

Even better, that warm weather has come just the way we prefer it. Although we've had eight days in the 90s, the highest high temperature was just 96.4°F. Both of the warm stretches (October 4th-8th and October 18th-20th) were followed by at least three days that topped out in the 70s. That meant that the grapevines could continue to build sugars without losing their acids and without being under an unhealthy amount of stress. And as often happens when a delayed harvest finally gets some heat, the fruit came rolling in. Most days we've had a lineup of bins in our parking lot, waiting to be processed, as we're running presses of newly-harvested whites and newly-fermented reds. The dance of the forklifts is something to behold.

These harvest days start before sunup and finish after dark, with what seems like endless rounds of washing in between. After all, every tank we have will get used five or six times this year. Every press gets used three or four times each day. And all the equipment gets cleaned up and put away every night. I love this photo I got of Gustavo cleaning the red press today as the sun was setting:

The fruit that we've been getting, and the young wines that we've been tasting, look tremendous. We're seeing some of the deepest colors we can remember. The grapes have lovely freshness and lift. I spoke to Chelsea last week for an Instagram Live harvest update, and she described what we were seeing as "dream chemistry". Now maybe you have to work in a winery cellar to dream about chemistry at this time of year, but it gives you a sense of the lovely balance of sugars and acids that we're seeing.

We don't have to look far to know that the clock is ticking. The fall foliage colors on the vines, like this Counoise block below, are telling us that the end is near: 

Still, the grapes that are still out on the vines are there because they need this time. The two clusters below (Counoise, left, and Roussanne, right) are looking and tasting great, but they're sitting only at about 20° Brix and will benefit from another week or two out in the sun:

The mornings are usually starting with a little low-lying fog:

Walking around the vineyard, there are more blocks where the grapes have already been picked than there are with crop still hanging. That gives us the chance to give some of the younger vines (like this three-year-old Syrah) a little post-harvest drink:

We're also giving a little sigh of relief because it looks like yields are significantly recovered from last year. It's most dramatic in the varieties that were frozen last year; we've harvested double the quantity of Grenache Blanc that we did last year and Vermentino is up 49%. But even grapes like Viognier, Marsanne, and Syrah, none of which were impacted by last year's frosts, are seeing crops something like 10% higher than last year. We've already picked 30 more tons of Grenache than we did in 2022, with a couple of blocks still to come. And it seems clear that Roussanne will come in with higher quantity than last year, when it finally gets ripe. Now our biggest unknown is Mourvedre, and when I saw Neil today he sounded more relaxed than he has in weeks. We're no longer worried about whether the fruit will be good, or whether it will get ripe. Now we're just worrying about where we're going to put it. And that's a huge relief.

Harvest Update: After a Record-Cool September, Things Heat Up (Thankfully)

This week, we got our first Grenache off of Jewel Ridge, from an early morning pick. The fruit was lovely, as was the view west over the lines of hills:

Even a few days ago, a view like this would have been hard to come by. We've had consistently chilly, often foggy nights, and a string of days where temperatures have been well below average. For the month, 25 days were below average, with only two above our norms and three others almost exactly average:

And it's not like it was only a little cooler than normal. The daily highs in September were a full 7.5°F cooler than average, meaning that this September has seen temperatures about what an average October would bring. A good way of measuring heat accumulation is Growing Degree Days (GDDs). The average year 2010-2022 saw September accumulate 558 degree days, with a high of 655 in 2020 and a low of 505 in 2013. September of 2023 looks like it's a data error: just 393 GDDs. This has meant that our overall heat accumulation (the dotted red line) is trending away from average, back down toward the very cool years of 2010 or 2011:

All this explains why, two days before we finished harvest last year, we're only about one-third of the way done, and still working on early-ripening grapes like Viognier, Syrah, and Vermentino:

Still, at around 200 tons picked (roughly one-third of our projected total) there's still lots of activity in the cellar. All that Syrah is getting processed, with the portion that's being fermented whole-cluster needing to be foot-treaded twice daily:

Samples are being pulled in all our blocks that look like they might be getting close, with sugars and acids measured and flavors and colors evaluated:

Once Neil and the team in the cellar have decided that something is ready to pick (in this case, the first Grenache from Jewel Ridge) we cue up our crew and get them out early in the morning so that the pick is comfortable and the fruit is cool when it goes into the bins:

Its next stage brings it to the sorting table, where any leaves or other unwanted material is removed before the grapes are de-stemmed and sent to a tank to ferment:

So even though we haven't reached harvest's peak, there's still plenty going on. But we're still grateful for the warmer weather we got this week. If we continue on at the pace we've seen so far, we will surely be picking into mid-November, and with el niño building out in the Pacific, that gets risky. Plus, with the moisture in the ground and the lack of hot weather, we're seeing little pockets of botrytis, a form of rot typically rare in California. While some regions (most notably Sauternes) have harnessed botrytis to make sweet wines, we would definitely prefer to get our fruit in unaffected. And the last few days have delivered. It hit 90 yesterday for the first time since September 10th, surpassed that today, and is supposed to stay warm over the weekend. Typically, if it's been cool late in the growing season, even a short warm-up has a big impact on grapes that are nearly ready. We're expecting a wave of Grenache Blanc, Syrah, Viognier, and even Muscardin off our estate next week, as well as more Patelin components for red, white, and rosé.

If you'd like the detailed version, I decided to change things up with my semi-weekly Instagram Live broadcast and instead of bringing in a guest from outside, to sit down with Neil and have him share what he's seeing. That half-hour conversation is on our Instagram feed or embedded below:

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One thing that I thought was memorable in my conversation with Neil was his comment that a cool harvest and long hang time is great... until it isn't, because you get rain. Everything that we've gotten in so far looks outstanding. We should hit harvest's midpoint next week. The forecast going forward looks great. Still, that only takes us about 10 days. Harvest will likely last another five weeks. We're optimistic, but still, it's been a while since we had a year that pushed us into November and even longer since it did so in conjunction with an el niño. If you see any winemakers out there looking nervously over their shoulders, that's why. Fingers crossed, please, everyone.

Harvest 2023 begins. What a difference a year makes!

On Tuesday, we brought in our first two lots, both for Patelin: a little less than seven tons of Viognier from a vineyard called New Creations and a little more than six tons of Syrah from Tofino. Both looked great. Yesterday, we brought in the Pinot Noir from the vineyard my dad planted. Today we got the first picks off the estate, seven bins of Vermentino and two bins of (surprise) Roussanne, as well as another Patelin de Tablas lot of Roussanne from Nevarez. And we're off:

All this is a far cry from last year, when sustained heat pushed us to one of our earliest-ever harvests. We started bringing fruit in off the estate on August 17th, and by the 14th of September we were nearly three-quarters done:

I'll share some thoughts at the end of the blog as to what this all means, but first I want to set the scene for you and share some of the images of these early days of harvest. I'll start with the first bins of Viognier, from Austin Collins' viewpoint on the forklift:

Neil got a photo of the first bin of Syrah, waiting in front of the sorting table for de-stemming. He pointed out that it just happened to be in bin #1:

The pick of Pinot Noir from our place is always a milestone, and the cellar team traditionally joins the vineyard crew for it. Viticulturist Jordan Lonborg got some great photos. First, the scene as dawn broke:

Next, a view of the bins on the back of the trailer. That's Vineyard Manager David Maduena overseeing things... the beginning of his 30th harvest here at Tablas Creek!

The fruit looked great. Those are Jordy's boots:

And finally the whole crew, all smiles at the end of the pick:

After those two mellow starting days, today is starting to feel like harvest is getting into full swing. We're pressing Vermentino and Roussanne, which made a surprise early appearance here thanks to the higher elevation and healthy young vines on Jewel Ridge. We've had perfect conditions, with chilly nights and warm but not hot days. The last wisps of fog were still lifting as Neil snapped this shot at the end of the Roussanne harvest:

The Roussanne was textbook; note the classic russet color of the berries, one of the signifiers that they've reached ripeness:

We're also doing a wide sampling across all the relatively early-ripening varieties, including this Syrah. The color is amazingly dark given that this is just a sample and it hasn't been left to macerate:

If you're wondering why we're so much later than last year (OK, the last several years) you need look no further than the cumulative growing degree days, a common measurement of heat accumulation during the growing season. Although July was warm enough that we jumped ahead of the 2010-2011 vintages that we'd been tracking, it cooled back off in August and we're still significantly cooler than any year since 2011. What's more, we're a whopping 23% cooler as measured in growing degree days (dotted red line) than we were last year (dotted pale blue line):

It's too early to say much about yields. The Pinot Noir harvest came in roughly where last year's did, but conditions in the Templeton Gap are different than they are out at the winery, and it didn't suffer any frost damage last year. Neil is thinking that we'll likely see healthy crops, up measurably from last year and maybe even a bit above our long-term averages. Jordy is thinking a little more conservatively, predicting that the combination of plentiful but small clusters, small berries, and some loss due to shatter and millerandage is likely to combine to produce yields above last year but still below our long-term averages. We'll know more in a few weeks, once we've completed the estate harvest of a few more grapes. 

One thing that is clear is that we're looking at a harvest that seems more like a marathon than last year's sprint. There isn't any major heat in the forecast, with most of next week supposed to top out in the 70s and low 80s. That's ideal for quality, and likely to give us the flexibility to bring things in gradually and in multiple passes. But it does mean that we will almost certainly still be harvesting in November. That wouldn't have been unusual in the 2000s, but it's been a while since it's happened. With el nino building in the Pacific, our current worry is whether we'll be done before we get our first winter rains. That's likely a ways off, but anyone who has a line to the weather gods, please put in a good word.

Meanwhile, we'll enjoy the sights, aromas, and energy of harvest. Stay tuned for updates.