Blending table report: we piece together a smaller lineup of white wines from the painfully scarce 2022 vintage

We spent four days last week around our blending table, working to turn the 30 different lots we made from our white grapes in 2022 into the blends and varietal bottlings we'll be releasing to you in coming months. The good news is that we were excited about the lots we tasted and what we made looks like it will be good. The bad news is unlikely to be a surprise if you've been following this blog. The 2022 vintage was painfully scarce, particularly on whites, whose yields were down 29.3% from 2021 and a heartbreaking 55% from 2020. That meant that we were faced with some difficult questions before we even sat down to blend. With Roussanne lots most affected of all (down 63% from the combined impacts of lingering drought and a May frost) would we be able to find enough lots we loved to make an Esprit de Tablas Blanc? If we did, what would it look like, and what would it leave us? 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.

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, and come to consensus. 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:

In a normal year it takes us two days to taste through all the white lots. Not this year; we finished in one day. 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:

• Viognier (6 lots): An above-average Viognier vintage, with classic flavors, good richness, and respectable acids. Since we don't use Viognier in Esprit Blanc, the best grade I was giving out was a "1/2". Three "1/2" lots, two "2" lots, and one "3" that ended up being more useful in blending than I expected.
• Marsanne (4 lots): An outstanding Marsanne vintage, with all four lots showing Marsanne’s classic honeyed charm, creamy textures, and mineral-laced finish. I gave all four lots "1/2" grades, and we included Marsanne in our blending trials for Esprit Blanc for the first time since 2001 (!).
• Picardan (3 lots): A strong representation of what we find appealing about Picardan: peppered citrus notes, good minerality, and solid acids. I gave two lots "1/2" grades and one (a single barrel of our heavy-press component, which was darker in color and lower in acid) a "2/3".
• Bourboulenc (3 lots): The most challenging of the varieties we tasted, at least for me, the three lots were all quite different from one another. One four-barrel lot showed the combination of honeyed aromatics, rich, nutty texture, and bright acids we've come to expect from this grape. Another, which was fermented in concrete egg, was higher toned and less expressive, with some reductive notes. And a third two-puncheon lot from our heavy-press component had the deep orange color we saw back in 2019, a lacquer-like savory note, and very bright acids. I gave the first lot a "1", the second a "2/3", and the third a "3".
• Clairette Blanche (1 lot): We nearly doubled last year's production and it was outstanding: citrusy and minerally, with lemon curd notes and great finishing brightness. I gave it a "1".
• Grenache Blanc (4 lots): Our fewest Grenache Blanc lots in my memory. But what there was was outstanding: citrus and brine on the nose, lovely peach and grapefruit pith on the palate, and the combination of brightness and texture that we look for. I gave three lots "1" grades and even the fourth, which I gave a "2", was appealing: just softer and less vibrant.
• Picpoul Blanc (3 lots): Only three small lots totaling just 648 gallons. Luckily all were strong: pithy pineapple and salty minerality, still just a touch sweet. I gave two lots "1" grades and the third, which had a little more texture but a little less brightness, a "1/2".
• Roussanne (6 lots): All the best options for making Esprit Blanc involved using all or almost all of the Roussanne we had. So it was a relief that the quality of the six Roussanne lots was so high. I gave four of them "1" grades for their classic, rich, honeyed pear noses, the kiss of sweet oak emphasizing their rich texture, and their long finishes. One other, to which I gave a "1/2", was less rich but brighter, while the last, which I gave a "2" sat at the other end of the spectrum: darker in color, rich and nutty, but a touch low in acid.

We finished by brainstorming ideas for the Esprit Blanc. Our minimum amount of Esprit Blanc that can cover the different needs we have for it with our wine club, tasting room, wholesale and export is about 1700 cases. Given the scarcity of Roussanne, using all of it only made up about 36% of a possible Esprit Blanc blend at that minimum quantity. Given that our least-ever Roussanne in the Esprit Blanc was 45%, and it's more typically around 65%, we first needed to make sure that what we could make would feel at home in the history of Esprit Blanc bottlings. Knowing that we wanted to keep our Grenache Blanc percentage below the Roussanne percentage, again to preserve the link with our established tradition, limited our options further.

We ended up deciding to make up three different potential Esprit Blancs. One would use all the Roussanne, Picpoul, and Clairette, the best Grenache Blanc lots, and the top lots of Bourboulenc and Picardan, at our minimum total quantity. In my mind, this was the baseline Esprit Blanc, closest to what we'd done in the past. The second would make about 100 more cases of wine by increasing the Grenache Blanc to the maximum we could use while keeping just below the Roussanne percentage, and adding the rest of our Picardan. And a third modified the baseline blend by replacing the least-strong Roussanne lots with Marsanne. If we'd chosen this, it would have been the first time since 2003 that we'd have used a grape outside of the six white grapes legal for use in Chateauneuf-du-Pape. So even the decision to try a blend that included Marsanne caused a certain amount of hesitation. But given the strength of the Marsanne this vintage and the scarcity of Roussanne we thought if there were ever a year to break with tradition this would be it.

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 first glass (which upon revealing, was the one I'd been thinking of as our baseline Esprit Blanc). While it was pretty, with good texture and weight, it just wasn't as exciting as the other two. We split pretty evenly between the other two options, with some preferring the elegance and openness of the second glass and others the extra texture and brighter acids of the third glass. When we revealed what was in the two glasses, and realized that the third option was the one that eschewed Marsanne for extra Grenache Blanc and Picardan, and made us 100 more cases of the Esprit Blanc, we had our winner. The final blend was 33% Roussanne,  32% Grenache Blanc, 14% Picpoul Blanc, 8% Picardan., 8% Clairette Blanche, and 5% Bourboulenc. Our rule is always that the Esprit wines get first dibs on whatever lots they need to be great. This year, that means it got all of the Roussanne, Picpoul, Picardan, and Clairette. It will hurt not having any of those for a varietal bottling, but at least we have an Esprit Blanc that we love.

Looking at what we had left after setting aside the Esprit Blanc lots made it clear that if we made a Cotes Blanc in anything like our normal 1,000 case quantity, that would use most of what was left and mean essentially no varietal bottlings for the year. That didn't seem to be a great choice, and would likely leave us short of wines to send out to our wine club. So we decided that the next step was to try varietal bottlings of what was left (Viognier, Marsanne, Grenache Blanc, and Bourboulenc) and get down into the barrel-by-barrel decisions of what felt varietally appropriate and what we wanted to instead declassify into Patelin.

All four lots of the Marsanne were strong, and a blend of the four was expressive, classic, and lovely. Perfect. The remaining Grenache Blanc lots fit together beautifully, with the softer, richer lot providing depth and counterpoint to the citrusy brightness of the base. Done, and done. For Viognier, it was really a question of how much of the lot that I gave a "3" to we wanted to use. It had deep gold color, rich texture, and very bright acids. We tried a blend using both barrels, with neither barrel, and with one barrel and ended up deciding like Goldilocks that the one-barrel addition was just right. The other will become a useful part of the Patelin Blanc. Finally, with the Bourboulenc, we all decided that we preferred it as a varietal bottling without the two heavy-press puncheons. That finished off our varietal decision-making. 

On Thursday we got together to taste the wines we'd decided on and make sure that the Viognier and Bourboulenc lots that we hoped to declassify into the Patelin Blanc fit stylistically. We also tried for the first time a new 100% Grenache Blanc we're calling "Lignée de Tablas" about which I'll be sharing details a little later in the spring. The Patelin Blanc absorbed the declassified lots seamlessly, which was great, giving us a blend of 49% Grenache Blanc, 22% Viognier, 10% Marsanne, 10% Vermentino, 4% Roussanne, 3% Picpoul Blanc, and 2% Bourboulenc. That left us with seven white wines from 2022, and a feeling of relief around the table:

My brief notes on each wine, with the rough quantity we'll be bottling this summer:

• 2022 Bourboulenc (275 cases): Medium gold. A nose of orange bitters, lacquer, and nuts. On the palate, the orange note continues, with rich texture, bright acids, and a long finish.
• 2022 Grenache Blanc (350 cases): A pretty nose of peaches and cream, crushed rock, and lemongrass. The mouth has Grenache Blanc's signature mouth-filling texture and white grapefruit flavors, bright acids, chalky minerality and a little pithy bite of green apple skin tannin on the finish.
• 2022 Marsanne (475 cases): Quite polished already, with a nose of honeydew melon, sweetgrass, and briny minerality. The mouth has gentle but persistent flavors of lemon curd and cantaloupe, nice texture without any sense of weight, and a creamy mineral note that comes out on the long, clean finish. Lovely.
• 2022 Viognier (700 cases): A charming nose of honeysuckle and Haribo peach. The palate is long, pure, and textured, with more stone fruit and a tarragon-like note of sweet green herbs. Rich texture is balanced by some structural weight and unusually good acids for Viognier. Should make a great wine club shipment wine.
• 2022 Patelin de Tablas Blanc (4080 cases, plus some wine for boxes and kegs): A nose more driven by Grenache Blanc than Viognier right now: white grapefruit and petrichor, pepper spice and a little nutty depth. On the palate, flavors of stone fruit and lemon custard, persistent chalky minerality, fairly rich texture and vibrant acids. Exciting that we have a solid supply of this!
• 2022 Lignée de Tablas Grenache Blanc (825 cases): A pretty lifted nose nose of white pepper and citrus pith. On the palate, more citrus, with a green citrus leaf element adding complexity. With solid texture, good acids, and a little sweet spice on the finish, this should be a nice addition to the lineup!
• 2022 Esprit de Tablas Blanc (1850 cases): Despite its comparatively low percentage, a nose clearly expressive of Roussanne in its notes of beeswax, jasmine, and sweet spice. On the palate, good weight and texture, with flavors of peach pit, lanolin, a little kiss of oak, and a clean minerality that got described as rainwater and river stone. This will have another several months in oak, and should develop additional caramel notes and nutty depth before bottling.

A few concluding thoughts:

• Given that we've never had so few options in our blending, it was a relief that the puzzle pieces fit together. All sorts of options were potentially on the table. Would we maybe not make an Esprit Blanc? It was possible. Would we have lots that didn't fit into the estate wines but also didn't work in the Patelin Blanc? Also possible. In the end, sacrificing the Cotes Blanc made the other puzzle pieces fit. With all the lovely rain we've been getting this winter, I hope we'll have a very different picture next year. Fingers crossed, please, that we dodge frost.
• This is the stage where I often try to reach for what vintage(s) in our history might be good comps for what we've been tasting. And yes, it's early to make these sorts of judgments, but the vintage that this reminded me of most was 2015, at the nadir of our previous drought cycle. Like 2022, 2015 produced uneven results across different varieties, and that unevenness keeps me from thinking of it as a truly great vintage. But I love the 2015 Esprit Blanc, which reduced our quantity of Roussanne and used all our Picpoul and a healthy amount of Grenache Blanc. I think that the solution that we came to for the Esprit Blanc this year, with less Roussanne and more of the higher-acid, earlier-ripening varieties, will end up resembling the 2015 stylistically. If you like your Esprit Blancs on the fresher, more minerally side, while still carrying the essential honey and mineral flavors of Roussanne, this should be one you'll love.
• For all that, I'm not sure we yet have a great handle on what the character is of the 2022 vintage. Each variety seemed to handle the year in its own way. That's a good thing, I think, and suggests we were able to keep up with the terrible heat wave that hit us in the beginning of September. Talking to some friends and neighbors, it seems not everyone was as lucky and that there were vineyards without the monitoring and labor capacity to get all their grapes off when they wanted. I don't think that the wines we tasted felt like they came from a hot vintage. No raisiny heaviness. No volatility. I hope to have a clearer sense of how to describe the year after we dive into the reds next month. 

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 and Lignée de Tablas will be the first to go into bottle, in May. The varietal wines will be next, in June. And the Esprit Blanc will go into foudre and have another 9 months to evolve before its scheduled December bottling.

But in a year where all sorts of difficult options were on the table, I'm not sure our first blending week could have gone much better. We look forward to sharing these 2022 whites with you, and apologize that many of them will go very fast because of their scarcity. When they come out, don't blink.

Harvest 2022 Recap: We Emerge Cautiously Optimistic

On Friday, with the bin of Counoise pictured below, we completed the 2022 harvest. The combination of our earliest-ever start and a (roughly average) 51-day duration meant that we tied with 2013 for our second-earliest-ever finish, with only the frost impacted 2001 vintage finishing earlier. Our rock star harvest crew deserved to celebrate, as they powered through our busiest-ever week on their way to a 9% increased amount of fruit compared to 2021 in a harvest that was five days shorter:

2022 will likely always be defined by the ten-day heat wave that began on August 31st. You can see it clearly in this graph of high temperatures by day, as well as the cool stretch that followed, culminating in our unusual September rainstorm September 18th-19th:

We were already harvesting before that heat wave hit, thanks to warm early-August weather and relatively light crop levels, but that definitely kicked it into high gear. It's remarkable (though hardly surprising) how closely the harvest by week tracks the temperatures, most notably in our busiest-ever week of over 130 tons between September 4th and 10th. In the chart below, blue is purchased fruit for the Patelin program, and orange estate-grown fruit:

Because of the heat-induced sprint in early September, this seems to me to be the kind of year which will separate the wineries with a secure source of labor from those without. When you get an extreme event (typically heat or rain) it impacts an entire region. All the growers and wineries, faced with needing to pick at an increased pace, are competing for the same finite number of field crew. If you can't get the crew, you can't pick. Sugars can spike, acids can tumble, and the cells of grape skins can start to break down, opening the door for insect damage or rot. But we've given our core field crew year-round employment since 1996, which means that we're able to keep up with what's going on in the vineyard. Sure, it's more hours of overtime and more expense. But it's within your control. That's why it's the challenging vintages that shows the true quality of a winery's team. In a year like 2021, everyone should make great wine. That won't be the case this year. But I feel good about our prospects.

Yields were down 8.2% overall off the estate vs. 2021, and averaged 2.37 tons/acre. That's the lowest that we've seen this century except for the extreme drought year of 2015 and the frost years 2009 and 2001. And yet that number could have been worse. Like 2009, we had the twin impacts of drought and frost. But the most serious frost, which came late on May 11th, was localized in an 11-acre section of the vineyard we call Nipple Flat. I'd estimate that this one below-freezing night cost us three-quarters of our production from that section, which includes our largest block of Roussanne and additional sections of Grenache Blanc, Picpoul, and Vermentino. Lo and behold, those were the grapes that were seriously down:

Grape	2022 Yields (tons)	2021 Yields (tons)	% Change vs. 2021
Viognier	11.9	11.9	none
Marsanne	8.3	7.6	+9.2%
Grenache Blanc	14.2	23.4	-39.3%
Picpoul Blanc	4.2	5.2	-19.2%
Vermentino	8.7	11.4	-23.7%
Roussanne	10.5	28.1	-62.6%
Other whites	10.0	8.3	+20.5%
Total Whites	67.8	95.9	-29.3%
Grenache	52.5	54.7	-4.0%
Syrah	39.9	37.6	+6.1%
Mourvedre	42.9	44.4	-3.4%
Tannat	13.5	11.1	+21.6%
Counoise	14.4	12.5	+15.2%
Other reds	11.8	8.4	+40.5%
Total Reds	175.0	168.7	+3.7%
Total	242.8	264.6	-8.2%

Complicating year-over-year calculations is our decision to start regenerating some of our weaker blocks by pulling out the vines and building up the soils before planned replanting this winter. Last year, we pulled out vines in two areas,. each about three acres: a block of Mourvedre down on Nipple Flat (which turned out to be good timing, since it would have gotten clobbered by frost anyway) and our second-largest block of Roussanne at the north-east edge of the property (which turned out to be a bummer, since our largest Roussanne block was on Nipple Flat). So we have about six fewer acres in production in 2022 than we did in 2021. All this means that the yields picture looks better that it might appear, as despite our third drought year in a row, the non-frozen sections of the vineyard generally saw yields slightly above what we saw in 2021. That's evidence that the early rain that we got last winter, and the work we've been doing with our flock of sheep to build up our soils' water-holding capacity, helped give the vines the reserves they needed to withstand the stresses of the August and September heat. It also bodes well for quality. 

Help is on the way. In the last couple of years we've planted nearly 30 new acres, including blocks of Mourvedre, Grenache, Counoise, Roussanne, and Clairette Blanche. Much of that is on Jewel Ridge and based on the quality of the first tiny picks we did off those blocks this year seems likely to be the gem its name suggests. And this and next winter we have plans to plant an additional dozen or so acres of Picpoul, Vermentino, Cinsaut, and Roussanne. I'll share more news on that as it happens. It does mean that for the second year in a row our choices in blending are surely going to be constrained. I'm particularly concerned with what we're going to do with the Esprit de Tablas Blanc from this vintage; the wine has never been less than 45% Roussanne, and even if we assume all the Roussanne we harvested is good enough to go into the Esprit Blanc, which isn't a guarantee, that would cap our production of that wine at 1,500 cases, which isn't really enough for the many things we use it for. So, we'll have a challenge on our hands at blending time. The low quantities also preclude us having enough of any single white grape to do a varietal wine in the quantities we'd need to send it out to our 8000 VINsider Classic Club members. But I have faith that we'll figure out something fun and creative to do. Stay tuned on that too.

We had 115 harvest lots, an increase of five vs. 2021. These included three fewer estate lots (82 instead of 85) and eight more Patelin lots (33 instead of 25). That will be a silver lining to this harvest: we were able to source some great, new vineyards for Patelin, and our quantities of these wines should be assured. In fact, we were able to get enough Patelin that our overall quantity of fruit that we processed this year is up about 9% vs. 2021. In the photo below, the estate lots are in yellow, while the purchased lots are purple on our completed harvest chalkboard:

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

While 2022's sugar numbers are very similar to 2021's, we saw lower acids due to the heat and drought. The result were numbers remarkably like 2016, which was culmination of the five-year 2012-2016 drought in California. The 2016 vintage was an outstanding one in terms of quality, so that's good. But eventually, we really do need some rain. Fingers crossed for this winter. 

In character, it's early to tell what things will be like, but I asked Winemaker Neil Collins to sum up the vintage based on what he's seen so far, and the first thing he mentioned was the pace: "It was an insanely hectic month which beat us all up. I think we scared the interns a bit." But he's happy with what he's seen in the reds so far: "The Pinots and Syrahs are tasting super. Not massive, but complex, with good depth of color." Senior Assistant Winemaker Chelsea Franchi had a similar take on the whites: "they feel a little more luscious because of the high-pH year. They're sultry, I think." We're looking forward to getting to know the wines of 2022 even better in coming weeks.

Now that we're done picking, it can rain any time, though there's nothing in the immediate forecast. We've already returned our flock of sheep to the vineyard, where they're eating second crop clusters before they rot and spreading their manure. This should give the soil's microbial activity a boost as soon as it rains:

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. Now, when we press something off and clean a tank out, that's the last time of the season. We've already put a couple of our open-top fermenters outside, along with our sorting table and destemmer. And we're going through the white barrels one by one and making sure that they're topped off. A little head space is necessary when it's bubbling away actively, but once fermentation slows down we need to make sure each barrel is full: 

After the challenges of the growing season, we're grateful for the return of a slower pace. And we're excited that it looks like quality will be good. I'll let Chelsea have the last word: "Everything is tasting really beautiful. I just wish there was more."

We reach (and pass) the peak of the 2022 harvest... that escalated quickly

By Ian Consoli

We passed the midpoint of the 2022 harvest sometime last week, and what a week it was. In terms of timing, that's pretty early. This would make sense since this harvest was our earliest start (August 17th). But when you take into consideration our early estimation that it would be a prolonged, drawn-out harvest, this past week threw us for a loop. Harvest usually lasts about eight weeks, so passing the midpoint in three and exceeding it in the fourth is an outlier like we haven't seen. The 10-day heat wave will go down as something of a winemaker legend. I can already hear the stories from individuals who worked in cellars in Paso Robles in 2022 talking about "the heat wave of September 2022." With all the bins, fruit, and heat, our vineyard and cellar teams continue to smile and enjoy the rush of harvest 2022.

Bins of fruit waiting on the crushpad

Harvest intern Louisa cleans the press

 

So what did the heat wave look like?

In this graph, you can see the max daily temperatures during the 10-day heatwave were consistently over 100, topping out just shy of 110 on three of those.

The heat caused a rapid ripening of fruit, bringing an avalanche of berries into the cellar. When the team left on September 2^nd for the holiday weekend, we were ~35% of our way through harvest, based on our estimates of the tonnage we expect by the end. By the end of September 9^th, that number had jumped all the way to 63% of the way through harvest. Winemaker Neil Collins and Viticulturist Jordan Lonborg noted they'd never seen a week like this in their decades in the industry. Multiple varieties jumped 6 Brix in a single week. Varieties that we typically harvest late (Bourboulenc, for example) came in at this early-mid harvest stage. Terms like "madness" and "bonkers" became the go-to when trying to explain what was going on.

Realizing what an anomaly this past week was, I thought it would be fun to look at the last three harvest chalkboards to see how many lots we had picked by the end of September 9^th. In 2020 we had harvested 19 lots; in 2021, 32 lots; this year, we are already at 65 lots. Bonkers indeed.

In terms of varieties, we have picked a bit of everything. In fact, on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, sequential picks off the estate brought in Vermentino, Roussanne, Picardan, Syrah, Counoise, Viognier, Mourvedre, and Grenache, grapes that normally encompass a 6-8 week range. We’re done with a few varieties, including Viognier, Vermentino, Grenache Blanc, and (just today) Syrah and Marsanne, while we're continuing to wait on the bulk of perennial late-ripeners like Mourvedre, Roussanne, and Counoise. There have been days where we've been stashing grapes wherever we could find space because all of our presses are in use simultaneously, and all our tanks are full. As soon as a lot finishes fermentation, we're pressing those tanks off and washing them out to make room for that day’s fruit. The cellar is so full, we had to move the sorting table outside to make room for the fruit. It's a flurry of activity in the cellar.

It is important to note that while we are seeing a record number of lots come in for this time of year, yields are a little all over the place. Varieties like Syrah, Viognier, and Marsanne (none of which were much affected by our May frosts) are seeing totals equal to or slightly higher than last year's. Picpoul Blanc, Grenache Blanc, and Vermentino (all of which have blocks in our low-lying Nipple Flat section, which was hit hard by May’s frost) are all down significantly from last year. This is particularly bad for Grenache Blanc and Vermentino, which were already down 40%-50% from 2020. Roussanne, whose most extensive planting is on Nipple Flat, is sure to be down sharply as well. For the rest, we’ll see.

A normally vigorous Grenache Blanc vine in Nipple Flatt showing the effects of frost damage

In the vineyard, it feels like we came out of the heatwave mostly unscathed. Some pre-emptive irrigation on our more sensitive grapes like Mourvedre helped minimize raisining, the vines’ self-defense mechanism of pulling the moisture they need to survive from the clusters. There was some very limited damage, but nothing like we'd feared. Most of the remaining signs of the heatwave are what you see on the sun-kissed Marsanne cluster below: healthy and ready for harvest.

We also hit an important milestone last week with our first significant harvest of Jewel Ridge, the 35-acre dry-farmed block on the parcel we purchased in 2011. We let it lay fallow for six years, grazing our sheep there and building organic matter in the soil before beginning planting in 2017. ⁠The nearly five combined tons we picked of Roussanne, Counoise, Mourvedre, and Grenache represent a big piece of the future of Tablas Creek.

We continue to see lovely fruit concentration in 2022. The combination of yet another drought year and frost-reduced yields means that all our varieties come in with smaller berries and thicker skins. The fact that both sugars and acids were at ideal levels is good evidence that we were able to keep up with the heat spike. The similarities Jason drew to the 2009 vintage in his most recent blog seem to be ringing more and more accurate.

In addition to the Mourvedre, Tannat, and Counoise still hanging on the vine, there are a couple more obscure varieties we look forward to bringing in, including Terret Noir and Clairette Blanche, a personal favorite. Most exciting of all is our block of Muscardin, the 14^th and final Chateauneuf du Pape variety from the Beaucastel collection. We are hopeful this year could be the year we can finally get enough to bottle on its own. If the look of the clusters is any indication, it seems we're set to make history in 2022!

Another good piece of news: we've been able to secure some really nice additional fruit for our Patelin de Tablas wines, including 10 tons of Grenache Blanc contracted just last week. That's always been one of the primary benefits for us of the Patelin program. In years where our own crop is plentiful, we use more Tablas fruit in those wines. In years where it's scarce, we reach out to the big network of growers who have our clones in the ground in Paso Robles and secure some more fruit to purchase. That should mean that even if many of our estate wines are scarce or can't be made in 2022, we'll at least have some wines for the pipeline. And all of that fruit has looked outstanding.

So, now it's a question of how much longer harvest will last. Winemaker Neil Collins predicts another 3 weeks of fruit, which opens the possibility of being fully harvested before October even begins! That would certainly mark the first time in our history that happened. Either way, we are challenging our earliest end to harvest ever of October 3^rd, set in 2001. Will the second half of harvest provide a new narrative? Stay tuned.

What we've learned about making box wine, six months and three colors later

Back in February, I published a blog that created a bit of a stir. In it, I made the case that boxes of wine (the cardboard kind normally found on grocery store shelves, not the wooden kind found in fancy cellars) deserved another look from higher-end producers. It had become stigmatized in the market, the container for what people assumed would be cheap plonk. But I asserted that there were compelling reasons to shift certain wines into boxes, most notably that it offered advantages in preservation (it can last weeks in your fridge after being opened), storage space (glass bottles are bulky, and the packaging needed to cushion them takes up yet more space), and portability (a full 3L bag-in-box weighs seven pounds while the same volume in bottles weighs eleven). Plus, and probably most importantly, because glass bottles are heavy and require lots of energy to melt and mold, a 3L wine bag-in-box offers an 84% carbon footprint reduction vs. the four glass bottles that would contain the same wine.

The blog got 54 comments, more than any other we've ever published. It spurred stories in Wine Searcher, Forbes, and even the Robb Report. I was invited to speak about the decision at the WiVi tradeshow and on the XChateau Podcast. More recently, the New York Times published an article in which wine columnist Eric Asimov pointed to our experiments with the wine boxes as a productive step forward for wine producers grappling with the environmental impact of our default package. The initial batch of 324 boxes of our Patelin de Tablas Rosé sold out four hours after we announced their release in an email to our wine club and mailing list. We made more (522 boxes) of the Patelin de Tablas Blanc in June, and despite releasing them in a much less shipping-friendly season sold them out in less than a month. This week, we put our first red into box, the 2021 Patelin de Tablas. We're planning to release it soon, and I expect it to go fast.

The response from our customers has been amazing. I was hoping that we'd sell out of the Patelin Rosé boxes in a month, so being out in four hours was definitely above my wildest aspirations. And the feedback we've seen from customers either directly or online has been terrific. But I've been most gratified to hear from so many other producers who are also looking to explore this lower-carbon package and want to know what we've learned. A few have even jumped in and done it, including Kobayashi Winery, who released their high-end Roussanne/Marsanne blend in a $195 box.

In the spirit of using the blog to answer the questions I get every day, here's a quick summary of what we've learned after six months:

• The public is more open than they've ever been to alternative packaging. This first hurdle, which I assumed would be the biggest one, turned out to be no big deal. Granted, we have a direct relationship with the customers on our mailing list and in our wine club. But so do other wineries. And based on the number of people who let me know that this was their first-ever purchase of a boxed wine, we weren't dealing with people who were already converts to the package. That's amazing. And it's not just boxes. Writers as on platforms as diverse and distinguished as JancisRobinson.com, SommTV, San Francisco Chronicle, and Wine Enthusiast have recently published pieces in support of lighter-weight, lower-waste wine containers like boxes, cans, kegs, and bottles made from paper, resin, and plastic. 
• The wholesale market is likely to be slower to adjust. When I published that February blog, I heard from a few independent retailers around the country asking if they could buy some of these boxes. We didn't make enough this first go-around to sell them in the wholesale market, but I put out some feelers with our wholesalers for next year. Although there were a few exceptions, the responses I got were not generally enthusiastic. Most boiled down to some version of, "You want people to spend how much for your box of wine? That won't work with our current box wine outlets." And I get this. A quick search on the shelves at our local Albertsons revealed a decent array of box wines... all selling for between $20 and $35. Doing the math, that translates to between $5 and $8.75 per 750ml. Our Patelin boxes, priced at $95, work out to $23.75 per 750ml bottle. I submit that this is still a great value -- bottles of Patelin sell for $28, after all -- but I could easily imagine the sticker shock of a grocery store customer wondering what this outlier was doing on a shelf at triple the price of the next-most-expensive box. If someone knows and trusts Tablas Creek already, great. That's easy to overcome. But are those people looking in the box wine section of their local retail store? Perhaps not. However, I still think that there is a market for high-end box wines in wholesale. It's just not at the traditional grocery and retail chain outlets. The sweet spot, I think, would be to market this to smaller, independent retailers who talk to their customers and would be excited to share the advantages of boxes. And to hip restaurants who don't have keg systems to pour wine by the glass. After all, the preservation and waste-reduction advantages offered by boxes could prove incredibly valuable at a restaurant level. No more pouring out the oxidized ends of bottles after two days. No more bins full of empty glass.    
• The infrastructure to support small producers packaging in bag-in-box has a long way to come... but it could happen fast. There is a supply network that allows small- to medium-size wineries to operate with reasonable economies of scale. These include brokers who consolidate the offerings of vendors of bottles, capsules, labels and corks; mobile bottling lines that allow a winery to bottle a few weeks a year without having to invest in a line that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars; and warehouses who ship wine for hundreds of wineries and can negotiate on reasonable footing with common carriers like UPS and FedEx. All those pieces still need to be developed for boxes of wine. We had one off-the-shelf option (thank you AstraPouch!) on the open market for sourcing our boxes and the bags that go inside. That's fine; you don't need to make millions of boxes to contract with a printer to make your own. We're leaning toward doing so for future runs. But if you were wondering why for this year we used the plain craft cardboard box with our label stuck onto it, well, that was the only option available. For the filling, we had a similarly restricted set of options. There are no mobile boxing lines in California. There is one in Oregon, but the minimum commitment to have them drive all the way down here was in the tens of thousands of boxes. There is a custom boxing line in the Central Valley at which you can rent space if you can bring your wine and materials to them, but their minimums were similarly high. So we were left with renting (and eventually buying) a semi-automated bag filler from Torr Industries and building all the boxes ourselves. That's time consuming (see below) and not very scalable. Finally, on the shipping end, we work with the largest fulfillment house in California to ship our wine to our consumers. They didn't have a package for boxes because they'd never done it before. We had to do a bunch of trial and error, and still aren't 100% satisfied with where we ended up. What's more, neither FedEx nor UPS have approved shipping boxes for wine in box, which means they won't take any responsibility that the product arrives intact.
• It's time consuming doing the box construction and filling yourself. As I mentioned in the last point, because of the lack of availability and prohibitively high minimum quantities for automated box-filling lines, we had to set up a little assembly line and do it ourselves. You can see the process in the pictures at the beginning of the piece. Someone has to attach the bag to the filler, start the fill, then when it's done detach it and repeat. Meanwhile, someone else has to be assembling and taping the top of the boxes, while yet another person puts a bag into that half-assembled box and then closes and tapes up the bottom. Finally, someone has to carefully stick on the label, then put the box into its "master" case box that holds six of the finished 3L packages. Each stage takes time, on average 30 seconds to fill, 20 seconds to assemble the top of the box, 24 seconds to put the bag into the box and tape up the bottom, and 16 seconds to stick on each label. That's 90 seconds per box of labor. To make 400 boxes, as we did Monday, it takes 10 hours of work time, not counting the time it takes to set up and calibrate the machine, unpack the shipments of materials, or close up finished master cases and prepare them for transport. For our cellar team of four, making 400 3L boxes was an afternoon's work. That's a lot slower than bottling using a mobile bottling line. How much slower? We normally can bottle 2000 cases in a full day of work. The 400 3L boxes is equivalent to 133 9L cases. So if we'd done a full day, we might have finished the equivalent of 275 cases... less than 15% of the volume we could have put into bottles in that same time. That's a huge disincentive to scale up a boxed wine program.
• The package itself is even better than we'd thought. For all the challenges, we're believers in the package. We're now roughly six months out from our first batch of boxes, and the wine is still showing beautifully when we open a new box, indistinguishable from a newly-opened screwcapped bottle. We've tried the wine after having it be open two months and four months in a fridge, and it showed fresh and pure. We'll keep testing and will know more after a year, but as far as the integrity of the wine in the box, we've been happy.

So, where does this leave us? Not all that far from where we began. We think the package is good for the wine and now have confirmation that consumers are willing to give it a try even at a higher price. We have learned that the infrastructure to support smaller producers who want to move to bag-in-box is limited. We have learned that there are lots of other wineries out there who are interested, but that many are stymied by the lack of infrastructure. And we know that the wine press is focused like never before on bigger picture questions on the sustainability of wine and the containers it comes in.

All this together seems to me like it will result in changes coming sooner than later that will make it accessible for smaller wineries to offer boxes of their wine to customers. After all, it's a business opportunity, as well as a chance to help move the wine world to a lower-carbon future. Now we wait.

With Cesar Perrin back, we welcome Muscardin to the blending table and build a 2021 red vintage that looks outstanding

On Wednesday we finally got to sit down and taste the thirteen red wines from the 2021 vintage we'd built over the past two weeks around the blending table. It was one highlight after another. From the tangy watermelon and blood orange flavors of the Terret Noir to leather, teriyaki, and redcurrant of Mourvedre, the warm spices and elegant minerality of the En Gobelet, and the intense black licorice and olallieberry of the Panoplie, each wine was somehow both supremely itself and clearly reflective of the low-yielding, intensely flavored 2021 vintage. Sure, we wished there were more of many of the wines. And there were some wines we just couldn't make in this scarce vintage. But as we thought after our white blending last month, what there is will be exceptional. 

After a two-year absence, it was great to have Cesar Perrin join us at the table. But while his voice was welcome, our process isn't dependent on any particular participant. Instead, like the Perrins' own system at Beaucastel, we take the blending process in steps and build consensus rather than relying on one lead voice to determine the wines' final profiles. 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. More importantly, we're also convinced it makes better wines.

With the welcome return of Hospice du Rhone in the middle of Cesar's visit, we spread out our tastings more than we often do, beginning by splitting the tasting of the 59 different red lots between the Friday of Hospice and the Monday after. On Friday we tackled Grenache, Counoise, and Pinot Noir. Monday we dove into the more tannin-rich grapes: Mourvedre, Syrah, Tannat, Terret Noir, Vaccarese, Muscardin, Cinsaut and our tiny Cabernet lot. 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 make the most sense in. And that's our goal at this first stage of blending: 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. Here's some of the lineup of components:

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. 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:

• Grenache (16 lots): Grenache is often a challenge in this first tasting, as it is slow to finish fermentation and some lots are just rounding into form. But it was a highlight in 2021, with the generous fruit and spice we always expect from the grape, and several lots that also had the density and plushness that we get in our best vintages. I gave more than half the lots (nine in total) "1" grades, with one other getting a "1/2". Four "2" lots and two "2/3" lots rounded out the best Grenache showing I can ever remember at this stage. 
• Counoise (6 lots): A solid showing for Counoise, with all the lots having the lively, spicy Gamay-style juiciness that our varietal Counoise bottling typically reflects. One lot also added the richer, more structured Counoise that we look to use in Esprit. Grades: one "1", two "1/2" grades, two "2"s, and one "2/3".
• 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 we live now. It's planted to a mix of different Pinot Noir clones, and while in some years we have fermented each clone separately, they all always end up in the Full Circle Pinot Noir. In 2021 we fermented them together, and had just one lot to taste, which balanced Pinot's classic dark cherry and cola flavors with just a little oak. There weren't many choices to make here, but it will be a compelling 2021 Full Circle.
• Mourvedre (15 lots): Mourvedre was strong as well in 2021, with more powerful structure than we often see, and the meatiness and red fruit that it contributes to our flagship blends on full display. Six lots got "1"s from me, with three others getting "1/2". Only five "2"s and one "3" that will get declassified into Patelin.
• Cinsaut (1 lot): Our third vintage of Cinsaut, and the largest quantity (and strongest showing) to date. Richer and more structured than the Counoise, with enough grip to think it could contribute to some of the wines we intend for people to lay down. I gave it a "1/2".
• Syrah (12 lots): Syrah at this stage is easy to appreciate, with its plush dark fruit, spice, and powerful structure. The main question we have, beyond identifying the extraordinary lots from the merely good ones, is in evaluating the different winemaking choices we made and deciding where to best deploy the lots with noteworthy oak or stemmy herbiness. I gave out five "1"s, five "1/2" grades (these included most of those lots with notable stem or oak character, as I felt they weren't necessarily slam dunks for Esprit or Panoplie), just two "2" lots and nothing lower than that.
• Vaccarese (1 lot): Maybe the surprise of the tasting for most of us, with dark, rich fruit, solid tannic structure, a little floral lift, and a lovely salty minerality on the finish. Less plush and more vibrant than Syrah, but similarly dark. We all found it plenty good enough for consideration for Esprit. I gave it a "1".
• Terret Noir (2 lots): I felt like Terret is coming into its own, with the high-toned wild strawberry balance of fruitiness and herbiness that we've come to expect, but a little more plushness and better-integrated tannins than we've seen in the past. I gave the denser, more structured lot (which seemed a natural for Le Complice) a "1/2" and the other fresher, prettier lot (which felt on point for a varietal bottling) a "2". 
• Muscardin (1 lot): 2021 marked the first year we've had enough of our newest grape to include in our blending trials. Exciting! Even better, we liked the wine a lot: spicy and red-fruited, with a minty/herby/juniper note, good acids, and nice saltiness on the finish. Reminiscent of a more refined Terret Noir. I gave it a "2" and we all thought it would be a nice addition to the Le Complice. Just 30 gallons in one half-barrel, so not enough to bottle on its own. Next year, we hope.
• Tannat (3 lots): Plush, tannic, and chocolatey, yet with the acids that always surprise me in such a powerful grape. Not a lot of decisions to be made here, except for how much oak we wanted in the blend and how much Tannat we feel is the right addition to En Gobelet. I gave two lots "1" grades and another, whose oak felt a little dominant, a "2".
• Cabernet (1 lot): Typically, the few rows of Cabernet in our old nursery block go into our Tannat, but we always taste it and have a few times decided to bottle it on its own when we had enough to make that viable and such well-defined Cabernet character that we couldn't bear to blend it away. In 2021 we only had one barrel, so even though we loved it we didn't have enough for a solo bottling. It will go into Tannat and be happy. 

We finished Monday with our normal round-table discussion about what we wanted to try in the blending the next few days. Complicating the decision was the overall scarcity of the crop. With the reds down 18% off a relatively small base we realized if we made our preferred quantity of Esprit and Cotes (3500 cases and 1500 cases, respectively) we wouldn't have much left over, and critically wouldn't have enough different wines to send out to our wine club. So we made the decision to cut back to the absolute minimum we need, 2800 cases of Esprit and 1200 cases of Cotes. It's painful to do that in such a strong vintage, but we didn't feel we had any choice. As for the composition of the flagship blends, the strengths of all three of our main red grapes suggested we kick off the blending trials for both Panoplie and Esprit with three different blends, each one emphasizing one of the varieties, and see what we learned. We also loved the minor varieties this year, and decided to try adding some Vaccarese and Cinsaut (along with Mourvedre, Grenache, Syrah, and Counoise) to Esprit to see if we liked their contributions.  

Tuesday morning we convened to work out the two blends, starting with the Panoplie. As always, we tasted our options blind, not knowing what was in each glass. Panoplie is always overwhelmingly Mourvedre (typically around 60%) and typically more Grenache than Syrah, because Syrah's dominance often threatens to overwhelm the Mourvedre. This dynamic held true in our first three-wine trial, with the Panoplie with the most Syrah (28%) being no one's favorite, while we split between a high-Grenache/low-Syrah (31%/11%) option and one that held them both in the low 20% range. In a second round, we tried splitting the difference between those two wines while adding some Counoise, as well as a blend where we used more Syrah, displacing Mourvedre. Each had their advocates, with the Counoise blend showing elevated fruit and vibrancy (but a little less density) and the higher-Syrah, lower-Mourvedre blend showing remarkable density but somehow losing a little of the elegance that Mourvedre brings even to powerful wines. In the end we came back around the option in our first flight that got the most first-place votes: 54% Mourvedre, 24% Grenache, and 22% Syrah. It showed both powerful fruit and serious richness, but still felt appropriately elegant for Panoplie.

Panoplie decided, we moved on to the Esprit. Like the Panoplie, we started off with a high-Grenache/low-Syrah option, a high-Syrah/low-Grenache option, and one that had them in roughly equal proportions. Unlike with the Panoplie, we had near-universal agreement around the table on the first round, coalescing on the third option, which was a wine with both powerful fruit and noteworthy lift, structured but fresh. When the numbers were revealed, we also learned that this blend had the year's full production of both Cinsaut and Vaccarese in it: 35% Mourvedre, 26% Grenache, 23% Syrah, 7% Vaccarese, 5% Cinsaut, and 4% Counoise. That means we won't have those two grapes as varietal bottlings this year, but that's OK. Our rule is that if the Esprit needs something, it gets it. Just a heads up to anyone who loves (or is just curious about) those two new grapes. If you want to try one, snag some 2020 before they're gone. It also cemented our decision to plant more of both Vaccarese and Cinsaut this year!

Wednesday, we tackled our remaining wine club blends, starting with En Gobelet. Because we used a relatively high number of head-trained lots in Esprit and Panoplie, we didn't have much wiggle room on Syrah or Counoise, and our blending decisions came down to what the right proportions were of Grenache and Mourvedre, and how much Tannat we wanted. In the end, there was clear consensus in the first round, and we ended up with a blend of 39% Grenache, 29% Mourvedre, 16% Syrah, 11% Counoise, and 5% Tannat. The wine was complex, with red-to-purple fruit and good structure alongside the signature elegance we see from our head-trained blocks.

For Le Complice, we had a more fundamental question. The wine celebrates the kinship we feel Terret Noir shows with Syrah, and particularly the Syrah lots fermented with stems or whole clusters. Both grapes share a peppery, sage-like green spiciness, although Syrah is very dark and Terret quite pale. In order to make the wine more friendly, particularly in the mid-palate, we've always added about 20% Grenache. Our question for ourselves was how much of that spicy, herby character makes the best wine. Being distinctive and intriguing are important and valuable, but so is drinking pleasure. And with those thoughts in mind, our favorite blend in the first round was one that de-emphasized the stemmy character for something a little lusher, with a greater contribution from Grenache. But it seemed a little too far from what we'd done in previous vintages of Le Complice. So we decided to try a fourth option, leaving the percentages the same but swapping in a two-barrel 100% whole-cluster Syrah lot that we'd initially held out because we thought it might be too dominant for one of the more traditional Syrah lots. And we all loved that final wine, with both richness and lift, meatiness and herbiness. It should be a stunner when it's released. Plus, this will be the home for our 30 gallons of Muscardin! It may only make up 1% of the wine, but it seems happy there. Final blend: 59% Syrah, 32% Grenache, 8% Terret Noir, and 1% Muscardin. 

At this point, after a prowl through the wines aging in the cellar, Cesar had to head back to France, but we soldiered on the next morning, building the Cotes de Tablas. Because we'd held down the quantity of Esprit, and because the solutions we'd come to in most of our blends had leaned into Grenache (our most plentiful grape) we had more options than we often do. The Cotes is always led by Grenache, but that total has been anywhere from 35% to 60% in recent years. In our first round, we eliminated one blend that leaned a little heavier into Mourvedre as lacking in the vibrancy we love in Cotes, but split between a juicy, lively option that had 56% Grenache and 25% Syrah, and a more structured, tannic wine that with 42% Grenache and 30% Syrah. After some table blending, we decided that essentially splitting the difference between the two made everyone happy: 47% Grenache, 30% Syrah, 15% Counoise, and 8% Mourvedre.

We took another break to prep for this week's bottling, but on Wednesday we reconvened to taste the finalized blends alongside all the varietal wines that we ended up making. We won't have quite the lineup that we had last year, but it's still a substantial one. Even better, we were thrilled by what we tasted.

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

• Full Circle (305 cases): A very Pinot nose of dark cherry, green herbs, and sweet cola. The mouth is vibrant, with flavors of cranberry and baker's chocolate, sweet earth and a little hint of sweet oak. 
• Terret Noir (70 cases): A watermelon and blood orange nose, with a buttery pie crust note offering surprising richness. On the palate, peppered citrus and baked red apple, lovely lift, a little of Terret's signature grip but in beautiful balance with the fruit. Pretty, lively, and fun.
• Counoise (265 cases): A juicy bramble patch nose, raspberry and leafy herbs. The mouth is exuberantly juicy, with plum and earth and vibrant acids. Fresh and refreshing, like a glass of springtime.
• Mourvedre (515 cases): A more serious nose than the three previous wines, with leather, teriyaki, and redcurrant notes. The mouth shows lovely loamy earth, dark red berries, and a little hint of chocolate. It promises to continue to deepen and gain texture with its time in barrel.
• Grenache (975 cases): An amazing vibrant nose of red licorice and grape, deepened with peppery spice. The mouth is exuberant, with sweet red fruit held in check with vibrant acids and some serious tannins. The finish shows sweet spice and more licorice. My favorite varietal Grenache we've made in a long time. 
• Syrah (425 cases): A dark nose, not very giving right now: black licorice, iron, and molasses. The mouth is friendlier than the nose suggests, with blackberry and a little sweet oak, a return of that iron-like minerality, and substantial tannins. The classic "iron fist in a velvet glove" of young Syrah.
• Patelin de Tablas (3900 cases): Dark chocolate and soy on the nose, with additional potpourri, black raspberry and white pepper notes. The mouth is in a nice place, seemingly evenly balanced between Syrah and Grenache with black and purple fruit, nice grip, and a lingering brambliness that reminded us of a walk in our local oak woodlands. The blend ended up 43% Syrah, 28% Grenache, 23% Mourvedre and 6% Counoise.
• Cotes de Tablas (1100 cases): A nose poised between red (Luxardo cherry) and black (blackcurrant), with noteworthy sweet spice. On the palate, Grenache comes to the fore, with flavors of elderberry and licorice, and a little tannic grip keeping control at the end.
• En Gobelet (885 cases): A nose of warm spices, dark cherries, and chocolate. The palate is gentle after the exuberance of the other wines we tasted, with vibrant plum skin and cocoa powder notes, chalky minerality, and dusty tannins at the end. As we hope the En Gobelet will be, more about elegance and terroir than density or power.
• Le Complice (870 cases): A nose of menthol and dark chocolate, chaparral and soy marinade. The mouth shows flavors of iron and black plum, lots of chalky minerals and sage-like herbs. Then a little sweet oak wraps around the finish like a warm blanket. Intriguing and memorable.
• Esprit de Tablas (2820 cases): The nose is on point for Esprit: sweet dark redcurrant fruit, loamy earth and anise, all classic expressions of Mourvedre here. On the palate, currant and plum fruit, new leather and anise, with good structure and finishing tannin. Already delicious, with lots more time to continue to flesh out. 
• Panoplie (865 cases): A powerful nose, olallieberry and black licorice, minty coolness and spicy herbs. The mouth is plush and powerful, rich in fruit and tannin, deep loamy earth and baker's chocolate. Long and opulent but with lovely minty lift.  
• Tannat (720 cases): Dark on the nose but somehow chalky and mineral as well, with a little mint chocolate note. The mouth is a different beast, like a dark berry pie with firm tannins and a little sweet oak. All this gets cleaned up on the finish by Tannat's signature acids and violet florality. 

A few concluding thoughts. 

• What a pleasure having Cesar around the table again. His ability to step in after being gone so long, to offer context from his decade of experience at Beaucastel yet understand the uniqueness of Tablas Creek, makes him an amazing addition to the blending team. Yes, I feel great about our process, and am proud of the wines that we made in the two pandemic years when a Perrin visit wasn't possible. But it was great to have him back, and to see his excitement about what we were tasting.
• I came out of that blending session really excited at the degree to which the strength and character of the vintage showed through in these many wildly different grapes. You wouldn't think that the same things that early grapes like Syrah and Cinsaut need would be great for late grapes like Mourvedre and Terret Noir. You can't assume that the conditions in which a vigorous grape like Grenache and a low-vigor grape like Counoise each would thrive would be the same. And yet all were good, and many were outstanding. That's the sign of a truly great vintage.  
• In looking for a comparable vintage to 2021, I continue to think that 2007 was as close as we've seen. The wines we're making now are a bit different in style than they were then, a little less ripe, a little more elegant. But the conditions that produced the blockbuster 2007 vintage were pretty close to what we saw in 2021: intensity, from a very dry, cold winter that didn't reduce the cluster counts much but gave us smaller clusters of smaller berries. Freshness, from the relatively moderate harvest season, each hot stretch relieved by a cooldown immediately after. The yields, right around 2.5 tons per acre, were also similar in both vintages. Given that those 2007's were some of the best, longest-lived wines we've made, if I still think the same in another year I'll be very happy.

I'll let Neil have the last word, as I thought a comment he made in our final tasting summed it up nicely: "All these wines have a lovely force behind them. Not big, not heavy, but intense in personality."

A Report from the Blending Table: the 2021 Whites May Be Scarce, But They're Exciting

We've spent the last four days around our blending table, working to turn the 36 different lots we made from our white grapes in 2021 into the blends and varietal bottlings we'll be releasing to you in coming months. With the ongoing challenges of international travel, we again convened without a Perrin in attendance, though Cesar will be visiting for red blending next month and we'll have a chance to get his thoughts before anything goes into bottle. After four days immersed in these wines, I feel confident that he'll love what he tastes. And that's great! After the painfully short 2021 harvest (white grapes down 36.5% overall) we knew our options might be constrained. But the reward in scarce vintages is typically noteworthy intensity. That (spoiler alert) definitely holds true with 2021. 

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.

Our first step, on Monday and Tuesday, 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. A snapshot of my notes:

My quick thoughts on each variety are below. For context, in a normal year, for every 10 lots we might see 3-4 "1" grades, 5-6 "2" grades and 1 "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"). As you'll see, the Roussanne in particular got a ton of good grades this year. In rough harvest order:

• Viognier (4 lots): A really strong Viognier vintage, with good richness but also better-than usual acidity. Since we don't use Viognier in Esprit Blanc, a "1" grade just means that it's as good and expressive as Viognier gets, with freshness to balance its plentiful fruit and body. One "1" lot, two "1/2" lots, and one "2".
• Marsanne (3 lots): If possible, an even stronger Marsanne showing than Viognier, with all three lots showing Marsanne’s classic honeydew and chalky mineral charm. One lot was still unfinished and got a "1/2" from me. The other two I gave "1"s to. With yields off more than 40% I was worried that despite how good it would surely be we wouldn't be able to showcase this with a varietal Marsanne, but as it turned out, we will, and it should be terrific.
• Picardan (2 lots): Neither lot was quite finished fermenting, which made it difficult. Both had nice herbiness and good acids, but neither had as much richness as we've found in our favorite Picardan lots. One "2" and one "2/3". While there won't be Picardan in the Esprit Blanc this year, we have good confidence it will finish up and make a delicious varietal bottling.
• Bourboulenc (3 lots): After our issues in 2019 with our debut vintage of Bourboulenc having a crazy orange color when it came out of the press the cellar team separated out the press fraction this year. That lot, while it had interesting aromatics, was low in acid and had an almost amber color. I gave it a 2/3 and it got declassified into Patelin. The other two lots had lots of good texture with solid acids. I gave them both "1/2" grades.
• Clairette Blanche (1 lot): We only had 192 gallons of this, our scarcest white grape, and it was spicy and tropical, with lots of texture. I gave it a "1/2".
• Grenache Blanc (8 lots): Grenache Blanc is often tough to evaluate in this first tasting because it's always the last to finish fermentation, and this year was no exception. I gave out two "1" grades to lots with brightness, richness, and the grape's characteristic pithy bite, two "1/2" grades to lots with classic flavors but a little leaner, two "2" grades to lots that were in the final stages of fermentation and showing some oxidation but seemed promising, a "2/3" to a heavy press lot with an amber color and some bitterness, and a "3" to a lot with dark color and notable oxidation. I have confidence that even these last two lots will become something good with a little cellar attention, but they weren't there yet.
• Picpoul Blanc (2 lots): One 708-gallon "1" lot that we all loved, with sweet tropical fruit and bright citrusy acidity, and a 120-gallon "2" lot that we thought would end up just as good, but was still a bit sweet and showing a little oxidation.
• Roussanne (13 lots): Although there were plenty of strong lots among the other grapes, there was also unevenness. So it was a relief to have our strongest collection of Roussanne lots I can remember. I gave seven lots "1" grades, which would gave us plenty of Roussanne options for Esprit Blanc. Three others got "1/2" grades due to their oak, which we liked but thought had the potential to be too dominant in Esprit Blanc. Three "2" grades to pretty, classic Roussanne lots without quite the level of texture and richness our top lots got. And nothing lower than that.

We finished Tuesday by brainstorming ideas for the Esprit Blanc. With plenty of Esprit-caliber Roussanne, good acids across the board, and the relative unevenness of Grenache Blanc, we thought this might be a good year to lean into Roussanne and Picpoul. But which of the higher-acid whites should be included, and just how much we would reduce Grenache Blanc from the roughly 25% we have most years, we didn't know. That's what our blending trials are for! Complicating matters was the overall scarcity of the vintage, which meant that we knew we would struggle to make enough lots big enough (600+ cases) to send out to our VINsider wine club members. We needed four whites from this vintage in quantity and quality to send out, and that meant at least one varietal bottling, plus the three blends, or two varietal bottlings plus Esprit Blanc and Cotes Blanc. To give us enough options, we made the decision to make somewhat less Esprit Blanc than usual, something more like 1,600 cases than our usual 2,200 cases. That's 600 cases of top-quality fruit available to other wines.

Wednesday morning, we started on our blending work by tasting three possible Esprit de Tablas Blanc blends. Our least-favorite had the most Grenache Blanc (18%) while our favorite had the least (12%) and instead got lovely tropicality from 16% Picpoul. But even our favorite felt like it could lean heavier into Roussanne than the 64% that it contained, and had plenty enough acid that we could swap that in for portions of the brighter Grenache Blanc, Clairette, and Bourboulenc lots that it contained. The cost would be making less Roussanne and not having enough for a full club shipment, and having to use the Patelin de Tablas Blanc instead, which we would prefer to avoid since wines that don't make it into distribution feel more special to include to club members. But our rule is that the Esprit wines always get first dibs on what they need to be great, so in a second round we tasted that wine against a new one which upped the Roussanne percentage to 70% and added the rest of the top Picpoul lot (17%), with 10% Grenache Blanc, 2% Bourboulenc, and 1% Clairette. That gave the wine a deeper, more honeyed profile, with exceptional richness and length. It should be impressive young, but feels to us like it's got a long life ahead of it. Consider yourselves forewarned that because of its scarcity it may go fast.

That afternoon we tackled the Cotes Blanc. Viognier always takes the lead, but we weren't sure whether we wanted Marsanne's elegance or Grenache Blanc's density and acid in the primary support role. So, we decided to try one blend with more Grenache Blanc and less Marsanne, one with more Marsanne and less Grenache Blanc, and one where set them to roughly equal levels. As sometimes happens, there was a clear favorite, which to our surprise was the one with the most Grenache Blanc. That at first was surprising, but given that we used so little Grenache Blanc in Esprit Blanc we had some truly outstanding lots available for Cotes Blanc, which produced a wine that we loved: luscious but structured, persistent and appealing. As a bonus, it also gave us the chance to make a varietal Marsanne, which I'd almost given up hope of doing. Final blend: 44% Viognier, 32% Grenache Blanc, 14% Marsanne, and 10% Roussanne.

In making the quantity of Esprit Blanc and Cotes Blanc we wanted, we hadn't used all any of our grapes. Even after declassifying one Bourboulenc lot and two Grenache Blanc lots into Patelin Blanc, we'll still have a great range of options from 2021. And that's how we finished up the blending week: tasting the three blends alongside the eight varietal wines that we'll be bottling from 2021. Our principal concerns here are to make sure that the varietal wines are differentiated from the blends that lead with the same grape (so, our Esprit Blanc is different from Roussanne, our Cotes Blanc different from the Viognier, etc) and to make sure that the blends fall into the appropriate places in our hierarchy:

My brief notes on each wine, with the rough quantity we'll be bottling this summer:

• 2021 Bourboulenc (200 cases): Medium gold. A nose of orange bitters, green herbs, and citrus blossom. On the palate, the citrus note continues with Seville oranges, sweetgrass and chamomile, with nice texture and a long finish.
• 2021 Picardan (175 cases): A complex, savory nose of lime, peppery citrus leaf, and briny oyster shell. Super bright on the palate with lemon and fresh green herbs, zippy acids, and a mineral finish.
• 2021 Clairette Blanche (50 cases): Scarce, because we just don't have much Clairette in the ground. But after not making one at all in 2020 I'm happy to have even 50 cases. A high-toned nose of wintergreen, preserved lemon, and limestone. A hint of sweetness on the palate (this isn't quite done fermenting) then turning creamy with a lemon drop zippiness and little lemon pith bite that emphasizes the grape's signature minerality.
• 2021 Picpoul Blanc (50 cases): Scarce, because we used so much Picpoul in Esprit Blanc. A pretty nose of ripe apple, with a hint of oxidation from the fact that this Picpoul lot hasn't finished fermenting yet.  That's clear on the palate too with some remaining sweetness and notes of crystallized pineapple, lemon drop, and wet rocks. Should be outstanding by the time it's done. 
• 2021 Grenache Blanc (750 cases): A classic Grenache Blanc nose, pithy, briny, and vibrant. A great combination of acids and richness on the palate, with a long finish where that pithy note comes back to the fore. Should be a great wine club shipment wine.
• 2021 Viognier (190 cases): A high-toned nose of peaches and white flowers with a little bit of tarragon-like sweet herbiness. Nicely fruity on the palate, with nectarine and mineral character and solid acids. Medium-bodied, which I loved, given that Viognier can have a tendency toward heaviness. Not this one.
• 2021 Marsanne (230 cases): Quite polished already, with a nose of honey, petrichor, and white flowers. The mouth is clean and spare, with gentle flavors of white tea, honeydew melon, and chalky minerality. Lovely.
• 2021 Roussanne (480 cases): A notably rich nose with flavors of beeswax, lemongrass, and cedary oak. Similar on the mouth, with the honey flavors given lift by a nice lemony brightness. We're going to put this in neutral barrels and have high hopes for something amazing as the oak integrates.
• 2021 Patelin de Tablas Blanc (2900 cases): A lovely floral, fruity, buttery nose, orange blossom and white peach, seemingly dominated more by Viognier than Grenache Blanc right now even though there's twice as much of the latter than the former. Good balance on the mouth, with flavors of pineapple and preserved lemon (there's the Grenache Blanc!) and good acids coming out on the peachy finish. Charming already, and exciting that we were able to make this in good quantity.
• 2021 Cotes de Tablas Blanc (1215 cases): A nose of caramel and brioche, with a little minty lift. The palate is lovely, with good richness held in check by good acids. The ripe peach and lime flavors seem equally balanced between the Viognier and Grenache Blanc components. A creamy texture emphasizes the stone fruit flavors on the finish.
• 2021 Esprit de Tablas Blanc (1610 cases): The nose is very Roussanne, with poached pear, crystallized pineapple, honeysuckle and sweet oak. The mouth is luscious and textured, with honey, green apple, and graham cracker flavors, solid acidity, and the little dancing mango-like tropicality that I think comes from the Picpoul. This, like the Roussanne, will go back into foudre to let the oak integrate.

A few concluding thoughts:

• The vintage's character, if I had to distill it down to one word, would be power. Not alcoholic power; the average Brix reading of our whites was just 20.35, which translates to a potential alcohol of around 12.6%. And I don't mean heavy; the wines all had good acids. But the textures were rich. The flavors were deep and intense. I don't think at this stage one would describe the wines as playful, though that often comes out with a little time. But I have confidence that these will be wines with well-defined character and intense flavors. Given that our yields were so low, that's what we'd have expected, though (see 2015) it doesn't always work out that way. 
• The impact of blind tasting was on full display. It's tempting to write the story of a vintage early, and decide what's going to fit together best as a part of that narrative. But as is demonstrated to us every year, the reality of tasting blends is that you don't know what's going to fit best together until you try it. As evidence, the Cotes de Tablas Blanc and its high percentage of Grenache Blanc, in a year when at the component stage we thought we preferred Marsanne. But it turned out that Marsanne wasn't what Viognier needed this year to show its best self. I am proud of the process that we use, which guarantees that the wines we make reflect the specifics of each vintage. 
• The scarcity of 2021 is going to have impacts across our business. Even though we managed to make enough different wines in enough quantities, there in many cases won't be much left over after we send them out to club members. If there are wines that you know you love, I would pay attention to the release announcements and plan to get them at release. The days of having a wine like Grenache Blanc, or Picpoul, or Viognier available for several months are likely a thing of the past. We do have more vines in the ground from last year's planting, but that help is still a few years away. 
• This is the stage where I often try to reach for what vintage(s) in our history might be good comps for what we've been tasting. And yes, it's early to make these sorts of judgments. But in recent years, it seems like 2016 might provide a pretty good comparison. At the end of our five-year drought, 2016 produced powerful components and seemed particularly strong for Roussanne. In the Cotes Blanc we came to a similar conclusion, using more Grenache Blanc and less Marsanne to better play of Viognier's richness. The solution we came to for the 2016 Esprit Blanc tied for our highest-ever percentage of Roussanne at 75%. That's similar to this year, though we've never before had more Picpoul than Grenache Blanc. But it's at least a starting point. We will see in coming months if I'm right.

It's important to note that while we've decided on blends, it's not like the wines will go into bottle next week. There are lots that need some time to finish fermenting, and everything needs to be racked, blended, and let settle and integrate. The Roussanne and the Esprit Blanc will go into foudre and have another 9 months to evolve. And even the varietal wines are three months from seeing a bottle. But still, this is our first comprehensive look at our most recent vintage. So far, so good.

Tract Home Guerilla Winemaking - The Sequel

By Darren Delmore

(For those of you who didn’t read part one about how you can make wine from a single vine, I once made 2.5 bottles of varietally correct and quaffable Roussanne from my mom's oceanside vine, hand bottled and labeled in time for Mother’s Day.)

As harvest 2021 was ripening along, my mother kept texting me photos of the crazy Roussanne vine taking over her backyard. At random hours, spaced out among days, sometimes well after 2 am, a photo would come through, often with a simple question mark, or “I think these grapes are going bad," even the simple "HELP.” The main complaint used to be that the vine, purchased in a pot at Tablas Creek back in 2007, had blossomed to prolific proportions and obstructed the ocean view from her bathroom window. At 74 years of age, she still runs the oldest Italian restaurant in SLO County, yet the backyard vine seemed to be of a much higher importance. 

Then a texted photo came my way, showing a big Roussanne cluster with some bunch rot happening in its center, so I stopped by her gated community by the beach and had a look. A second vine that I’d put in the ground in 2009, from a simple hard pruning, was having its Coachella moment. Thirty gorgeous clusters raging beneath a healthy green, head trained canopy. I hadn’t sprayed the vines with sulfur or done anything but a timely winter pruning, and perhaps the dryness of this vintage kept the coastal mildew and rot mostly at bay. “Yes mom, we are going to have a vintage!” I announced. Together, my mother and I pulled bird netting over the vines and tied it to the trunks. The clusters on the original vine were already showing the classic gold and rust-spotted freckles of Roussanne, and I cut off the cluster that had the documented rot, leaving the rest to ripen.

Cut to the third week of October, and after taking my son to a gymnastics session in SLO, I had one hour to spare, so I hauled down to Shell Beach with shears and two buckets.  I texted from her driveway: “I’m here for the grapes." She came out into her backyard five minutes later adorned with new fabric gloves, a hat, shades and even sunscreen on, to pick these mere two vines. We pulled the netting off and saw that the extra hang time allowed the second vine’s fruit to catch up. “This is the best these have looked in years,” I said.

“Look at these grapes, Darren!” She was excited.

“You take that vine, mom, I’ll get this one.”

We filled two buckets and a tote with coastal Roussanne, tidied up the netting for next year, and I sped off to pick up kids and prepare my lower back for “the fun part” of making small batch white wine at home.

I’ve met avid home winemakers in Paso Robles with all kinds of custom contraptions to make the pressing process easier, but perhaps the stubborn, hard working side of my mother is fully alive within me, and I chose to hand crush and press in the buckets, till a good portion of the juice was visible, then poured the buckets nearly upside down, holding the skins in, through an appropriate pasta screened funnel, into a glass carboy.

I’m sure drilling holes into the bottom of one bucket and pressing downward over a second bucket or larger funnel is probably the smarter way to go. But in the dark in my backyard, sweating, grunting, cussing, promising never to do this again, and surely raising suspicions from my new neighbors, I filled a 3 gallon carboy and part of a one gallon growler, putting on the plastic air locks and tucking them away in the garage. The skins went into the green waste bin. My wife thought I was insane. 

Days later, the tell tale “Bloop bloop bloop” sounds from the corner of the garage proclaimed that natural fermentation had begun.

After a few weeks, the bubbling stopped, and a thick layer of white sediment had formed at the bottom of each glass container. I elevated the glass up on some cases of wine to settle overnight, then the next morning, using a simple food grade hose, I siphoned the clear wine into a clean 3 gallon carboy, and chucked the sediment. There was a small amount of the wine in the hose, so I drained it into a glass and tentatively smelled it, expecting a bouquet of formaldehyde and kerosene at best. But lo and behold, there was honeysuckle and some ginger… it was Roussanne all right!

Mama Del Old Vines Estate Roussanne 2021 was happening.

As temperatures were forecasted to dip to 27 degrees on December 11^th, I added a pinch of sulfur to the wine and put the glass carboys of wine outside on a towel. Cold stabilization done the natural way. The cold temps would in theory precipitate some crystals out of the wine to cling to the glass, hopefully adding a touch of clarification.

December 13^th, using the hand corker I’d bought years ago at Doc’s Cellar in SLO, I hand corked 10 bottles of my mom’s Roussanne, labeling the back accordingly. Just in time for her 75^th birthday on December 16^th.

The big reveal came at the Madonna Inn, where we took her for dinner. I pre chilled the first bottle and agreed to a corkage fee that was a bit flattering for such a homemade wine. The server poured it into the inn's trademark goblets. I watched my mom for her reaction. 

“What grape is this again?” she asked, swirling the white wine and looking a bit concerned.

“It's still Roussanne.”

She swirled it again, put her glasses on, and studied the custom back label. Then she lowered her nose in the glass. “It’s oaky, isn’t it?”

“Impossible. Do you like it?”

“It’s… it’s... I don't know." She sipped it and scowled. Maybe I'd rushed things. The acids were omnipresent, though it still smelled varietally sound. Besides, here it was, the fruit of her backyard vine, turned into a clear, packaged and labeled wine in less than two month's time.

"It's... it's different, Darren." 

"Different?"

"I don't know."

I shotgunned the entire glass and resigned myself over the Gold Rush Steakhouse menu.

Harvest 2021 Recap: It May Be Scant, But It Should Be Outstanding

On Tuesday, with the bin of Roussanne pictured below, we completed the 2021 harvest. It went out in the same leisurely fashion that it began, low stress and spread out, as a below-average quantity of fruit distributed itself relatively evenly across an above-average 56-day harvest. And after some eye-openingly-low yields on some of our early grapes, the somewhat better results from grapes like Mourvedre and Counoise gave the cellar reason to celebrate. Our rock star harvest crew, with the last bin of the year (which turned out to be Roussanne):

Graphing the harvest by weeks produces about as perfect a bell curve as you're likely to see. In the chart below, blue is purchased fruit for the Patelin program, and orange estate-grown fruit:

Yields were down 26% overall off the estate vs. 2020, just below 2.5 tons/acre, trailing this century only the extreme drought year of 2015 and the frost years of 2011, 2009, and 2001. And yet that number was actually somewhat of a relief, as some early grapes, particularly whites, were down by nearly 50%. The complete picture:

Grape	2021 Yields (tons)	2020 Yields (tons)	% Change vs. 2020
Viognier	11.9	18.8	-36.7%
Marsanne	7.6	13.0	-41.5%
Grenache Blanc	23.4	46.7	-49.9%
Picpoul Blanc	5.2	8.7	-40.2%
Vermentino	11.4	21.1	-46.0%
Roussanne	28.1	34.8	-19.3%
Other whites	8.3	7.9	+5.1%
Total Whites	95.9	151.0	-36.5%
Grenache	54.7	74.9	-27.0%
Syrah	37.6	43.8	-14.2%
Mourvedre	44.4	46.9	-5.3%
Tannat	11.1	17.6	-36.9%
Counoise	12.5	15.9	-21.4%
Other reds	8.4	7.2	+16.7%
Total Reds	168.7	206.3	-18.2%
Total	264.6	357.3	-25.9%

While it looks like our "other" grape varieties (which include Muscardin, Picardan, Bourboulenc, Vaccarese, Terret Noir, Clairette Blanche, and Cinsaut) bucked the trend of lower yields, that's mostly because so many of those blocks are in just their second or third harvest, and we always minimize their yields their first few years to allow the vines to focus on building trunks and cordons, and only gradually allow them to carry a full crop.

The yields picture is something of the reverse of 2020, when our early grapes came in high and then our later grapes lower as the vines started to wear down under the relentless heat and dry conditions. So the discrepancy between early and late grapes might be an echo of 2020's quirks as much as a statement about something unusual in 2021. But the low early yields do tend to support my hypothesis that it wasn't the drought as much as the late cold weather that we received that played the largest role in our low crop levels.

For whatever reason, we don't have many years with yields like these. Typically there's something catastrophic (like a frost) that pushes our yields around two tons per acre, or there isn't and we're somewhere between 3 and 3.5. The low yields without a direct cause has spurred us to take a harder look at some of our oldest blocks of Mourvedre, Roussanne, and Counoise. Even though they weren't down much this year, that's more because they were low last year too; these three grapes averaged just 2 tons per acre. We have planted some new acreage of all three this year (mostly on Jewel Ridge) and as those acres come into production we'll be looking to selectively choose weaker blocks to replant. I'll share more news on that as it happens. But for now, the lower yields on these key grapes will likely constrain our choices in blending; we will likely have to choose between making a normal amount of Esprit de Tablas and Esprit de Tablas Blanc but perhaps no varietal Mourvedre or Roussanne, or reducing Esprit quantities to preserve more gallons for varietal bottlings. We'll know more when we sit down with everything this spring, but I at least feel confident that what we have will be more than good enough to make the amount of Esprit we choose.

We had 110 harvest lots, a decline of just eight vs. 2020. The even ripening (and lighter quantity) meant we had to do fewer picks than last year, but we made up for part of that by purchasing more lots that will go into Patelin de Tablas. The estate lots are in fuchsia, while the purchased lots are green in our completed harvest chalkboard:

Another way that you can get a quick assessment of concentration 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

While 2021's sugar numbers are very similar to 2020's, we saw a noticeable bump in acids, with our lowest average pH since 2011. That's a great sign of the impact of the cooler harvest season, and of the health of the vines. In terms of weather, we saw something very different from 2020's sustained heat. Sure, we had warm stretches, most notably August 26th-30th (all highs between 98 and 102), September 4th-13th (ten consecutive 90+ days), September 21st-25th and finally September 30th-October 3rd. But our last 100+ day was September 8th, and we didn't even hit 95 after September 23rd. Most importantly, you'll notice that after every hot stretch we got a cool one. This allowed the grapevines to recover, kept acids from falling out, and gave us time to catch up in the cellar and sample widely so we knew what to expect next. 

In character, it's early to tell what things will be like, but I asked Winemaker Neil Collins to sum up the vintage based on what he's seen so far, and he was enthusiastic. That's significant, as winemakers are famously cautious in the aftermath of most harvests, with the memories of the challenges and frustrations fresh: "Sometimes a vintage comes along that is special, a bit beyond just different. Vintage 2021 is a special one. Varietals ripened out of their normal order, clusters were smaller lighter, so many oddities. Whites will be bright and yet rich, reds will be deep of character, complex and structured. But then I am just guessing!" Senior Assistant Winemaker Chelsea Franchi had a similar take: "While the harvest was mild in tonnage and intensity, the fruit we brought in is anything but. We’ve seen beautiful color and aromatics from the reds and the whites feel luxuriant even at this early stage." We're looking forward to getting to know the wines of 2021 even better in coming weeks.

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. Now, when we press something off and clean a tank out, that's the last time of the season. We've already put a couple of our open-top fermenters outside, along with our sorting table and destemmer. That opens up space for barrels, which is great, because that's where the pressed-off red lots are going: 

It seems like we got the fruit in just in time. Unlike the last few years, that saw late October and November mostly or entirely dry, we're looking at a forecast for a real winter storm on Sunday night into Monday. That would be an amazing way to start off the winter, and the earliest end to fire season we've seen in years.

The #ECMWF & #GFS models continue to indicate an intense cold front will move through the Central Coast late Sunday into early Monday with fresh gale-force to whole gale-force (47 to 63 mph) southerly winds and 1 and 3 inches of rain with multiple feet of snow above 7,500 feet. pic.twitter.com/lfFgEoLvey

— John Lindsey (@PGE_John) October 21, 2021

With the rain in the forecast, we've been hurrying to get cover crop seeded and compost spread. The animals have been out in the vineyard for a few weeks, eating second crop clusters before they rot and spreading their manure, jump starting the winter soil's microbial activity.

All this feels strangely... normal, like something we'd have expected a decade ago. After the challenges of the crazy 2020 growing season, we're grateful. I'll let Chelsea have the last word: "There may not be a lot of fruit in the cellar, but what we have seems to be stellar."

The 2021 harvest winds down as it began, with outstanding quality but low yields

As the clock winds down on the 2021 harvest, the bigger picture is coming into better focus. My hopes that we would see a significantly improved yields with our later grape varieties don't seem to have come to pass. Mid-season grapes like Picpoul (down 40%), Grenache (down 28%) and Marsanne (down 42%) are showing results similar to the grapes we finished earlier. Mourvedre does look like we'll get close to our numbers from 2020, but Roussanne and Counoise both seem to be lighter. We won't have a full accounting of where we finished for another week or so, but we've passed the 90% mark, and there aren't many significant blocks left still unpicked. 

On the positive side, we're becoming more convinced than ever that this year will produce memorable wines. The colors on the reds are deep and vibrant. The flavors are intense. The numbers are textbook. And it's not like we're totally bereft of grapes. We've harvested some 380 tons between our estate and the grapes we purchase for the Patelin de Tablas wines. Scenes like this one, with bins of Mourvedre spilling out of our crushpad onto what in other seasons is our staff parking lot, are everyday sights: 

Meanwhile, in the vineyard, it's getting harder and harder to find a block with fruit on it. The vines are starting to change colors, and the scene definitely feels more like fall than summer. That is only exacerbated by the chilly nights (down into the 30s!) and occasional clouds (very rare in summer) that we've been seeing the past few weeks.

The only grapes still out are Roussanne (below left) and Mourvedre (below right). We should be done picking both by the end of next week.

Even in this lighter year, early October is the cellar's busiest time. But the steady pace of the harvest has meant that we've never felt overwhelmed. Looking at the weekly tonnages, you can see why; we haven't had a single week hit 90 tons, and we got a little break in mid-September that allowed us to press off most of what was in the cellar at that point and get ready for the final push:

Although the work in the vineyard is winding down, it's still prime time in the cellar. Each day sees us measuring fermentations in every barrel and every tank (Chelsea, below left, is measuring Roussanne barrel ferments). We're also draining tanks that have reached the level of extraction we want, and then pressing off the berries (Craig, right, is draining a tank of Grenache). That work, plus the punchdowns, pump-overs, and Pulsair cap management that all our fermenting red tanks get twice daily, will go on for a few weeks even after we're done picking.

So, we'll enjoy the changing colors of the vineyard, and the changing feel of the season. There's a chance of some showers tonight, as our first winter storm makes its way down the California coast. We're not expecting anything significant, but we're hoping that it means that more and wetter storms are on the horizon. Meanwhile, we'll be enjoying the last few days of grapes on the vines, and storing up these sights and scents for the winter ahead.

We reach the peak of the 2021 harvest... and it doesn't feel like a peak

Sometime in the next week, we'll pass the midpoint of the 2021 harvest. In terms of timing, that's pretty normal. Figure we start the last week of August (this year, August 24th). Harvest usually lasts about two months. So, it makes sense that we're just about at its midpoint. In terms of varieties, that's pretty normal too. We're done with the early grapes (Viognier, Vermentino, Syrah, Pinot Noir). We're largely done with the early-mid grapes like Grenache Blanc, Cinsaut, and Marsanne. We've made a start on the mid-late grapes like Grenache, Tannat, Picpoul, and Roussanne. And we're continuing to wait on the perennial stragglers like Mourvedre and Counoise. There have been days where we've been stashing grapes wherever we could find space because all three of our presses were in use at the same time.

So why doesn't it feel like we're in the thick of things? Blame the scarcity of the 2021 vintage, and the lovely weather we've been getting.

For yields, we now have two more data points beyond what we had two weeks ago, when I shared that Viognier, Vermentino, and Pinot Noir were down between 32% and 46%. With Syrah done, we see that our yields declined less than they did with the first three grapes, down 14% to about 37.5 tons. That's good news. But Grenache Blanc, with a few tons still to go, is currently down 52%. Assuming we get the couple of additional tons Neil is estimating, we'll end up down in the neighborhood of 47%. That's not good news.

As for our weather, it's been just about ideal both for people and for grapevines. Over the last two weeks, we haven't hit 100 once (max temp 96F). Seven days have topped out in the low 90s. Four more have hit the 80s. Three never made it out of the 70s. Our average nighttime low has been in the upper 40s. Those temperatures are a luxury for us. September can be scorching here in Paso Robles, and very hot temperatures force us to pick grapes to keep them from dehydrating or having their acids plummet. That has meant that we've been able to sequence out the harvest in an ideal way, without overwhelming our team or our cellar space. We actually have a bunch of empty tanks in the cellar right now, which feels like an unexpected treat. A few snapshots of what is going on. First, the daily work measuring the progress of fermentations (Kayja, left) and emptying tanks that have completed their fermentations (Gustavo, right):

In the vineyard we're currently working on harvesting Tannat. Two of our three blocks got picked yesterday, with the third on tap for today. The photos below were taken on adjacent rows. The row on the left had just been picked, while that on the right was picked just after I snapped this photo. 

One more photo of the harvest, with the crew hard at work under the watchful eye of Pedro Espinoza, a 25-year veteran of our team here and current crew foreman:

The Tannat looks amazing, dark and in beautiful condition in bins on our crushpad:

The lovely condition of the fruit is also consistent with what we've been seeing in 2021. The combination of our second consecutive dry winter and our most frost nights since 2012 meant that all our varieties are coming in with smaller berries and thicker skins. The benign weather we've seen this growing season has meant that they're coming in with ideal numbers, with both sugars and acids a bit higher than we've seen in most recent years. That's a recipe for outstanding quality, and reminding me more and more of 2007.

We took advantage of the recent cool stretch to do some vineyard-wide sampling. It looks like we'll continue to see things sequence nicely. There's more Grenache and Marsanne on tap after today's Tannat. Then we'll finish up some of the blocks we've picked selectively. Then we'll dive into Roussanne in a serious way. I'm still hopeful that the later grapes, which suffered most from 2020's heat and which are likely to benefit most from this year's moderate temperatures, will be down less than what we've seen so far. Meanwhile we're going through those later varieties and dropping any second-crop clusters or grapes that don't appear to be coloring up as well as we'd like. You can see evidence of this work throughout the vineyard. This is in one of our Counoise blocks:

One good piece of news: we've been able to secure some really nice additional fruit for our Patelin de Tablas wines. That's always been one of the primary benefits for us of the Patelin program. In years where our own crop is plentiful, we use more Tablas fruit in those wines. In years where it's scarce, we reach out to the big network of growers who have our clones in the ground in Paso Robles and secure some more fruit to purchase. That should mean that even if many of our estate wines are scarce or can't be made in 2021, we'll at least have some wines for the pipeline. And all of that fruit has looked outstanding.

So, now we wait. We keep our fingers crossed that conditions remain good (the next week looks ideal). And we watch the harvest chalkboard fill up. Will the second half of harvest provide a new narrative? Stay tuned.