Category: Experiences

As we wrote quite a few years ago, there was once a time that wineries gave away souvenir glasses if you stopped by and had a taste of their wines.  In fact, their tastings were free, too!  (And still are in a few places, believe it or not.)  We’re reminded of this because we recently got rid of nearly all of the glasses we had collected on wine tasting trips over the years.  Most of them were tiny and thick and we had too many; we don’t know why we kept them, except for the memories.  A few were of high quality and we kept those, because…well, just because.

But it caused us to give some thought to the role glassware plays in the wine tasting experience.

Photo courtesy of Kendall-Jackson.

In some ways, the quality of the glasses is indicative of the winery owners’ perception of their wine and their customers.  There are still some who serve tastings in small, clunky glasses.  Maybe they just don’t care, or think their customers don’t care or that they couldn’t tell the difference anyway.  Our experience is that many – certainly not all – people we meet in tasting rooms are reasonably familiar with wine and would appreciate a better glass.

At the other extreme, we’ve been finding some really fine glasses in some tasting rooms.  They have copious bowls, no lip (that little bulge you sometime find) at all on the edge of the glass, thin stems and a great feel in your hand.  If you turn the base of the glass slowly in the right light, you may find the mark of an Austrian or German glassmaker, such as Reidel, Spiegelau or Schott Zweizel.  These wineries make, or at least think they make, great wine that deserve great glasses.

But does it really make a difference?  Actually, yes it does.  A glass with the room to swirl the wine will open up the aromas in a way that a poorer glass cannot do.  And your ability to stick your nose in the glass as you sip will enhance your wine tasting enjoyment as well.  There is a sensual pleasure to holding a well-balanced wine glass that you can only understand if you can compare it with the other kind.  That’s why you don’t serve fine wine in jelly jars.

What if you don’t have exceptional wine glasses at home?  Will it make a difference to the wine if you buy some and take it home?  Not exactly.  But wine glasses are part of the allure of wine tasting.  So enjoy those fine glasses while you’re there!

Many of the gift shops at wineries will sell you their engraved glasses.  If your intent is to have a souvenir of your trip, by all means go ahead.  But if you are looking for quality glasses for your home, there are much better values to be had in the stores and on the internet.

And at the end of the day, if someone offers us Château Petrus in a plastic cup, we’ll be happy to take it.

One of the basic tenets we follow at Power Tasting is that we go to taste wine, not drink it and certainly not drink it to excess.  In our travels, we have met some people in tasting rooms who have failed to follow that rule and they were the worse for it.  But if you pace yourself, have breakfast and a hearty lunch, you may from time to time allow yourself what the French call an aperitif and the Italians an apertivo. (In the United States, we just call it a drink after work.)

One of the pleasures of an aperitif in Wine Country is that if you choose the right place to have one, you get to share the space and the experience with the people of the area.  You can just go to the first bar you come across.  If it has a bright neon sign in the window advertising Budweiser, you probably won’t be sipping a delicate Chardonnay.  But you very well might get a pint of one of the brews made in the area and that can be a pleasure too.  And you might be drinking next to the fellows who till the vineyards and pick the grapes that you’ve been trying that day.  If you don’t recognize the names of the ales on draft, ask the person next to you at the bar.  The worst that can happen is he’ll ignore you; the best is that you get to meet someone who’s in the know.

Willi’s in Healdsburg, a great place to meet local folks. Photo courtesy of USA Restaurants.

Many times we’ve taken a glass of wine before dinner at a restaurant other than the one we plan to dine in.  It’s a way to get to see more gathering spots and in some cases to familiarize yourself with the ambience of a restaurant before trying it for a meal.  You may be seated next to other tourists or you may get to meet the people who make the local wines.  If the latter, keep a polite eye on what they’re drinking.  It’s probably not their own because they are surrounded by it all day.  You can learn a lot from what the knowledgeable people of the area are having.

Strolling around the Piazza del Campo in Sienna.

The best way, by far, to enjoy an aperitif is to take it at a café in France or on a piazza in Italy.  We remember with much warmth sitting under the plane trees in front of the Bar Central in a tiny village surrounded by vines, while the piped music played French (and Quebecois) songs while the businesspeople and shopkeepers stopped by for a pastis or a glass of whatever was just growing a mile away.

Or watching the sun decline over the rooftops and steeples surrounding the big piazza that’s in every Italian town.  Half the town would take a glass with us, in order to watch the other half of the population indulge in what they call the passeggiata.  That’s just a walk around the square but it’s so much more.  It’s a chance to see the locals enjoying who’s out and about and to be seen being out and about.

Ah, yes, it must be 5 o’clock somewhere.

A few issues back we discussed  Pinot Noir Tasting.  That was supposed to be a one-off, because that grape is so ubiquitous and yet so different as you traverse Wine Country.  Then we thought about Syrah.  So we at Power Tasting decided to make a new series, investigating wine tasting from the perspective of different varietals.

We have often experienced tastes of Sauvignon Blanc as the first offering on any given California winery’s tasting list for the day.  To be honest, it’s not our favorite, but what are we supposed to do when a nice server just puts a glass of it in our hands as we walk into the tasting room?  For the most part, California winemakers tend to favor very fruity Sauvignon Blancs. Maybe too much so, in our opinion, so we tend to dismiss wines made from those grapes.

Sauvignon Blanc grapes.  Photo courtesy of the Wine Institute.

Now, it’s not that we never buy or enjoy California Sauvignon Blancs.  We enjoy Dry Creek Vineyard’s version on hot summer days and Robert Mondavi’s all year long (except they call it Fumé Blanc).  If that were all there were to it, we’d consider these wines pleasant pastimes, but nothing to take seriously.

Our mistake.

Sauvignon Blanc has such a different character in France (or really, multiple characters) that it’s hard to recognize French wines made from that grape as being related to their California cousins.  Let’s start in the Loire valley, where Sancerre is as austere (almost to the point of sourness) as California Sauvignon is fruit-forward (almost to the point of sweetness).  For many people, Sancerre is the wine of choice to match the brininess of raw oysters, totally unlike any California Sauvignon Blancs.

The French do make things confusing, though.  Another widely popular Loire wine is Vouvray, but it’s made from Chenin Blanc.  And then there’s Pouilly Fumé from the Loire, which is Sauvignon Blanc and Pouilly Fuissé from Burgundy, which isn’t.   (It’s Chardonnay.)

In Bordeaux, Sauvignon Blanc is one of the two primary grapes in Sauternes.  (The other is Semillon.)  In this case, the wines aren’t almost sweet; they’re very decidedly honeyed.

Shriveled grapes to be made into Sauternes wine.  Photo courtesy of Winetraveler.

There’s nothing quite like wine tasting in the Sauternes region, which also includes the village of Barsac.  It’s a day spent drinking dessert.  The grapes aren’t as pretty; they’re all shriveled by the botrytis fungus that concentrates the sugars and adds an indescribable sensation to the taste of the wine.  But the castles and the grand châteaux are wonderful and the food is delicious.

In Italy, they make wine from Sauvignon Blanc all over the country, especially in the northeastern part, but they just call the grape Sauvignon.  Frankly, they’re not the white wines that Italy is famous for.

They are famous for Sauvignon Blanc in New Zealand, where we’ve visited but not had the chance to go wine tasting.  The Kiwi white wines are also very (maybe two very’s) fruit forward, the fruits in question often being citrus and pineapple.  These wines are not to everyone’s taste, but they certainly put New Zealand on the map of Wine Country, so that’s something to be proud of.

A little fruity, a lot fruity, maybe sour, definitely sweet.  That’s some grape, Sauvignon Blanc!

 

The Syrah grape is ubiquitous.  It originated in ancient Persia, around 4,500 years ago, according to archaeologists, in the region that now contains the city of Shiraz.  And indeed, some wines made from the grape are still called Shiraz.  It is now grown in France, mostly in the Rhône valley and the Languedoc.  You’ll find it in California, especially in the Central Coast.  It is a primary grape in Australian wines (where they call it Shiraz) with the center of production in the Barossa region.

We were first introduced to Syrah many years ago, when traveling in abroad.  Some Aussie blokes we knew gave us a glass of Oxford Landing Shiraz.  At that early stage of our wine tasting education, red wine meant Cabernet Sauvignon and nothing but.  So our first reaction to this glass was that there was something wrong with the wine.  But it wasn’t sour; it didn’t taste bad.  It was just different.  This was a wine tasting epiphany!  Oxford Landing is a mass production wine and we’ve had many better Syrahs since then, but that first one has never been forgotten.

Syrah grapes. Photo courtesy of Banfi Wines.

One part of that experience still rings true: Syrah is different.  Sometimes it’s a deep, dark wine that goes with roast beef.  California’s Darioush winery makes wine like this.  (The founder is of Iranian descent and calls it Shiraz.)  Others are lighter and can accompany chicken or pasta.  You just can’t tell until you taste.

Syrah is the primary grape of the Northern Rhône.  Wines from Cornas must be 100% Syrah and it is central to most of the other wines of the region.  There’s plenty of depth in these wines but there is also a notable acidity.  As we have gone wine tasting in the Northern Rhône, we’ve been surprised at how notably acidic some of the wines are, especially those we tasted at Cave Yves Cuilleron.  Of course, acidity is a good thing in wine; no complaints, we’re just noting the difference.

There’s plenty of Syrah grown in the Southern Rhône and the Languedoc, where it is generally blended with Grenache and other grapes.  Blends are the rule for AOC-denominated wines, so single varietal wines from the region are marked as IGP (Indication Géographique Protégée) or VdP (Vin de Pays).  When you can taste the full varietal character in the southern regions, there is often a note that the locals call garrigue, the scrubby vegetation that grows along the hillsides with some flavors of rosemary.

California’s Central Coast makes Syrahs that are fruit bombs with way over-the-top alcohol levels. Sometimes we call those “chewy” wines.  In general, Syrah likes warm weather but the heat of the Central Coast really pumps up the sugar, which in turn becomes alcohol.  The Syrahs in the Napa/Noma area tend to be mellower, though still on the deep end.

They grow more Shiraz in Australia than any other grape, and the wines tend to be big and sunny, which brings us full circle back to that first glass.  The point of this round-the-world Syrah trip is that you never know what you’re going to get when you first taste a Syrah.  Big and bold, lighter and acidic, punchy and alcoholic, open and herbal – they’re all the same grape, but not the same terroir, not the same winemaker.

So when you travel for wine tasting, be prepared for something different, whenever they offer you a Syrah.

Our experience with Pinot Noir has been rather strange.  For a long time, we just didn’t care for wines made from this grape.  Too thin.  Too acid.  Too pricy.  We would continue tasting Pinot Noirs in our travels but we never got that kick that lovers of Burgundy wines have written and talked about.  Then on one wine tasting trip about a decade ago, the light bulb came on.

Pinot Noir grapes.  Photo courtesy of LaCrema winery.

We were in the Carneros region of Napa Valley at the Etude winery.  They’re equally well-known for their Cabernet Sauvignons as for their Pinot Noirs, so it was our intent to savor the big California boomers.  Since Pinot Noir was included in the tasting, why not try it?  That was the moment that changed everything; we became club members from that moment and still are.

On that trip and since then, we have been all over Carneros and have found many other wineries specializing in Pinot Noir.  Saintsbury and Domaine Carneros (yes, the same maker of California sparkling) are particular favorites.  But we have expanded our horizons.  We were dining at the late, lamented Hurley’s restaurant in Yountville and they had a weekly special wine from a place we’d never heard of, Santa Lucia Highlands.  Another aha moment and we’ve been buying wines from there ever since.

We’ve enjoyed Pinot Noirs from the Santa Rita Hills near Santa Barbara, from Russian River and Sebastopol in Sonoma County, and in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.  We enjoyed them in Burgundy’s Côte d’Or quite a while ago, but then seemingly lost our taste for them (and regained it, too).  To this day, we prefer California Pinot Noirs to the originals from France.  That may have something to do with the astronomical prices for grand cru Burgundies.

So were we wrong in the days when Pinot Noir didn’t appeal to us?  Not really, but did our taste change or did the wines?  To this day, we find some very well-regarded wines from Russian River and Green Valley in Sonoma County to be thin, acid and overpriced, just as we did in the past.  As you can read in our opening statement on Power Tasting’s front page, tasters need to know what they like.  That implies that we need to know what we don’t like, as well.

In general, we go for more robust Pinot Noirs, so some wine educators have told us that we want wines made for Bordeaux drinkers.  There’s probably a little truth in that, but we think it misses the point.  There are Cabernet Sauvignons that we don’t care for (and Syrahs, and Chardonnays, and Tempranillos and, and, and…) and many others that we love.  We always appreciate well-made wines that respect the nature of the grapes and reflect the hand of capable winemakers.

We don’t want a Pinot Noir that’s like a Cabernet Sauvignon.  We like Pinot Noirs that show the complexity of the grape, with subtle aromas and some deep notes that accompany the overall roundness that Pinot Noir can achieve.

That’s not too much to ask, is it?

For many bygone years, a wine tasting trip in California meant travelling to Napa Valley.  Oh, we knew there were vineyards on the other side of the Mayacamas range in Sonoma County.  And occasionally we’d drive over the Oakville Grade and emerge on Route 12 in the Sonoma Valley region.  We’d visit a few nearby wineries and then scamper back to the familiarity of Napa Valley.  No disrespect to Chateau St. Jean, B.R. Cohn or Arrowood (our most frequent Route 12 visits) but we were missing an awful lot of what Sonoma County has to offer the wine enthusiast.

In the late ‘90’s we decided to dedicate an entire trip to Sonoma County.  It was very different then, much more rustic with simple wineries and not many places to eat.  Even though the main road is a highway (Route 101), Sonoma County’s Wine Country is vast.  Not knowing where we were going nor what we liked, we spent a lot of time driving from one winery we had heard something about to another and wasting a lot of time getting from place to place.

The view in front of the Stonestreet winery in Alexander Valley.

We’ve learned that the smartest plan is to visit one region per day.  Fortunately, there is a fairly consistent mapping of grape varietals with specific regions, so we have a good idea of the type of wine we’d be trying each day.  For example, Sonoma Valley was and is all about Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot and so are Chalk Hill and Alexander Valley.  If you’re a Pinot Noir fan, you should head straight to Russian River and Green Valley.  And while you’ll find Zinfandel everywhere, they specialize in it in Dry Creek and Rockpile.  Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc are everywhere.

Old Zinfandel vines in Dry Creek Valley.

There are three towns where you’ll find most of the restaurants and hotels: Sonoma, Santa Rosa and Healdsburg.  If you did nothing but visit the main squares in each, and sip in the tasting rooms there, you’d have a pretty nice visit to Sonoma County.  All the same, we recommend that you get out into the countryside.

There are still plenty of wineries that are reminders of the way the county used to be.  They’re small, out of the way and their tasting rooms are nothing fancy.  Some have wines that are probably not worth being on the top of your list, but we have chanced upon more than a few that have been favorites of ours for many years.  It’s a good idea occasionally to let serendipity be your guide and try some wines you’ve never heard of.

At the other extreme, there are quite a few wineries in Sonoma County that have deservedly great reputations and should be considered for your visit.  Among these are Jordan, Verité, Rochioli, Martinelli, Ridge and Chalk Hill (including their Chardonnay).  Even before the pandemic, may of these were by appointment only, so check before you go.

Sonoma County may have once been Napa Valley’s little brother (at least in the opinion of the Napans).  In no way is that true today.  You can taste, dine, sleep and tour just as well in both these sectors of Wine Country.  There are many similarities, which is why we term them both together as Napa/Noma.  But Sonoma has a distinct personality in its wine, geography and attitude.  It’s a destination in itself.

It’s impossible to draw meaningful comparisons between wine tasting in France and California.  They’re both too large with too many wine growing regions to be able to say anything about one place without having a counterexample from another.  So let’s narrow the scope of the comparison to the two premier winemaking regions in each.  That would be Napa Valley and Bordeaux, although the people of Burgundy might make a claim as well.

We suppose that there were people who traveled to both regions for wine tasting in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  We can only speak to the wine tasting experiences of the last quarter of the 20^th century onward.

Let’s stipulate a few differences up front.  They speak French in Bordeaux; their history goes back thousands of years and the restaurants all serve French food.  In Napa Valley, they speak English (and a lot of Spanish); the history there is hundreds of years old and the restaurants there serve cuisines from all around the world.

Château Palmer in Margaux, in the Medoc.  Photo courtesy of The Drinks Business.

Both are beautiful, but in different ways.  Napa Valley has a broad lowland with mountain ranges on both sides.  Bordeaux has three major vineyard areas: Macon on the left bank of the Garonne River, Pomerol/St. Emilion on the right bank and Graves/Sauternes south of the city of Bordeaux.  It’s easy to drive the length of Napa Valley in a few hours.  You need a few days to see all of Bordeaux.

Franciscan winery in Rutherford, Napa Valley.

Napa Valley’s wineries have evolved from farmhouses to what we term Napa Palaces.  In Bordeaux they have real palaces, or at least châteaux.  There are few if any rustic wineries left in Napa Valley.  In Bordeaux many of the smaller producers don’t have the magnificent castles that the famous names have, although they all seem to call themselves Château This or Domaine That.

In our earliest travels to both, it was a simple matter of driving up to a winery and asking for a taste of their wines.  If money ever changed hands it was only a few dollars; in Napa Valley they would throw in a free glass.  There are still some places where walk-in tastings are available in Napa Valley.  Those in Bordeaux are generally lower quality houses, mostly in the town of St. Emilion.  The better Bordeaux tastings have long since been by appointment only.  This trend was apparent in Napa Valley too, prior to the pandemic.  Now it’s more of a general rule.

In Bordeaux, a tasting means blends featuring either Cabernet Sauvignon (Macon and Graves) or Merlot (St. Emilion).  There are some whites, most based on Semillon grapes.  Napa Valley tastings offer much greater variety: all the Bordeaux grapes, and those of Burgundy and the Rhône.

The wineries in Napa Valley are closer to one another.  You can easily visit five or six wineries and not travel more than a mile.  That’s just not the case in Bordeaux.  On the other hand, traffic is much worse in Napa Valley (especially on Route 29) than on the main roads in Bordeaux.

So finally, which region makes better wine?  That’s a question often debated at our dinner table and it has not yet been resolved.  You’d better decide for yourself.

For most people, travelling to Wine Country is a trip, one that often involves a flight and a rather lengthy drive.  If you’re going to go through all that, you surely want to justify your exertions by visiting several wineries, if only to get a feel for what that region can make.  However, some fortunate people live close enough to a wine-producing area that they can spend a few hours wine tasting whenever they want.  Or they can just stop by a winery for an easygoing half-hour or so, with some nice wine to add to the pleasure.

If you happen to be among those happy few, you may already have taken advantage of nearby wineries.  We have met some people in our wine tasting adventures who have told us that they live so close that they often hop on their bikes and come over on particularly pleasant weekend afternoons for a taste or two.

As residents of New York City, we can’t take advantage of “just stopping by” wine tasting.  Even a trip to Long Island’s North Fork entails at least two hours on the expressway.  But on a few occasions, we have had the chance to be the “locals”.

A vineyard in the Île d’Orleans.

We have a home in Québec City, which is a fairly populous metropolis.  But it’s also only minutes away from the Île d’Orleans, which is unquestionably countryside, the source of much of the fruits and vegetables for the city.  It is also the home to a half dozen wineries.  Many a summer weekend we drive over to the island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River to buy corn and tomatoes or just to breath some rustic air.  It’s no big deal for us to stop by and try a glass or two at one of the wineries.  To be honest, none of the table wines are particularly notable, but some of the ice wines (it gets awfully icy in Québec) are quite good.

Etude Winery.  Photo courtesy of the winery.

A few years ago, business required us to spend a few months living in Sacramento, only an hour from Napa Valley in one direction and Amador County in the other.  There were of course some weekends when we visited multiple wineries, with others when had non-wine reasons to be in Napa Town.  The road back to Sacramento took us right by Etude Winery, one of our favorites, where we are members of their wine club.  The servers became used to us stopping by for a few pours of their top wines, which we enjoyed in big Adirondack chairs on their terrace.

Finally, we once took a lengthy vacation in the Languedoc.  When it was market day in the village of St. Chinian, we’d drive in for our pain and fromage. And as long as we were there, why not stop by a winery?

If you are or ever will be that close to Wine Country, make sure you just stop by a vineyard or two.

The Southern Rhône is in Provence, which is famous for many things, notably wine, of course.  Then there are food, sunshine, an easygoing joie de vivre, and the people with their beautiful Provençal accent that is unique in France.   It is also a center of perfume production and much of that perfume is made from a flower characteristic of the region: lavender.

If you are coming to taste wine in Provence at the right time of the year, the late spring and through mid-summer, you will have the added attraction of seeing lavender growing in the fields. You may catch a few buds in April and there are stragglers in the fields after the main harvest in the middle of July, but the radiance of the fields in full bloom is a reason to visit in the prime months.

Lavender fields in front of the village of Grignan, in the Drôme Provençale.  Photo courtesy of Complete France.

Much as with grape vines, lavender is planted in orderly rows, so that it appears that fields and hillsides are striped in purple.  Of course we call that shade of purple by the name of the flower, but lavender takes on different hues, depending on the time of day.  In the hazy sun of morning, the plants are almost pink in hue.  In full sunlight, it takes on the light violet color we associate with lavender.  If you see the fields in the waning light of early evening, the plants appear to be a deep blue purple.

The scent of lavender hanging over the villages cannot be adequately described in words.  This indescribable fragrance envelopes you, leads you on, holds you back, entices, seduces and ultimately leaves you with a wistful smile that lingers in your memory.  If it is hard to summon the notion of a village embraced in this aroma, it is impossible to communicate the idea of an entire region smelling of lavender.

Processing lavender at the Distillerie Bleu-Provence.  Photo courtesy of Drôme Sud Provence.

You ought to visit the Drôme Provençale, where you’ll find the charming villages of Nyons and Grignan with its château. You can take a tour of the Distillerie Bleu-Provence and see how they process the flowers into lavender oil.  You will also enjoy a tasting of lavender tea and of course visit their attractive shop.

Our Provençal friends in Nyons have told us that they rub their arms and legs with lavender oil in the hot summer to avoid mosquito bites.  It certainly smells better than what we find here in the US.

Even if you miss the high season, there are lavender products available in all the Provencal towns throughout the year.  In almost every gift shop, you can find dried flowers, cosmetics, bottles of oils and tablecloths with lavender design.  Lavender is sometimes mixed in herbes de provence and there are those who sprinkle the flowers on salads.

We like to think that some of the aroma of lavender finds its way into the more delicate wines of the southern Rhône.  Search for it the next time you open a Côtes du Rhône.

Of course, we don’t mean wine that’s green in color.  Nor red wine with heavy accents of green pepper; those don’t taste good at all.  Nor the vinho verde of Portugal, whose green-ness means that it is young.  We are talking about wines made using sustainable agricultural methods and in many cases eschewing pesticides, fertilizer and additives.  When we visit wineries around the world to try some of their wines, we know nothing about their farming practices and not much more about how their wines are made.  To be honest, we don’t care.  What’s important to us is what’s in our glasses.

But with a little bit of contemplation, we do realize that what the farmers are doing contributes to our enjoyment and in several ways to our enjoyment in the future.  If they don’t care for the land there won’t be wine from their fields in years to come.  If they aren’t respectful of the climate, they may not even have any wine this year; the fires in Napa and Sonoma counties are proof of that.

The best agricultural practices would be unavailing if the wine weren’t good.  Our experience tells us that when the vineyard manager and the winemaker collaborate on sustainable and sanitary winemaking, the results are worth the effort.  Simply put, making wine well produces well-made wine.  While we are unaware of any scientific evidence in support of this proposition, we do have a lot of anecdotal support.

For example, the Famille Perrin Côtes-du-Rhône Réserve Rouge is a widely available, inexpensive red wine.  It’s the kind of wine found on many a French table every night (and ours, from time to time).  The same house also produces a Côtes-du-Rhône Nature for a few dollars more.  It’s only recently available in the United States, but we have tasted and compared the two wines in Québec and it is clear that the Nature is far superior.

The indicator of biodynamic certification

Perhaps not coincidentally, Perrin also owns Tablas Creek Vineyard in California’s Paso Robles.  They are proud to declare that they are certified as biodynamic and organic winemakers.  According to their web site, Tablas Creek uses:

“a mobile flock of 150+ sheep and alpacas to weed and fertilize the vineyard, interplantings of hundreds of fruit trees around and within the vineyards, compost made on site from prunings and grape must, applications of compost tea from the on-site compost, natural pest controls including 39 owl boxes around the vineyard and sections of native vegetation left to attract insects and predators, and our own hives of bees to support all these different plant species”.

Now, we’re not quite sure how much difference sheep, bees and owls contribute to the winemaking process.  But we are certain that, to our taste, Tablas Creek makes the best Rhône-style wines in Paso Robles.

We believe that specific farming and winemaking practices are not in themselves the reasons why being eco-friendly results in better-tasting wine.  It requires more attention to detail, to sanitation, to taking good care of the environment in the field and in the factory.  This seriousness of purpose finds its way into the bottle and ultimately into our mouths.  This is no secret formula, but it does taste like it works.