During the week of April 15th we bottled the 2000 Esprit de Beaucastel (formerly Reserve Cuvée) and the 2000 Petite Cuvée, as well as the 2001 Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc (formerly Clos Blanc) and the 2001 Rosé. The wines have already settled down from the trauma of bottling, and are tasting beautifully: the reds are deep and intense, with ripe fruit and dark color, while the white is spicy and bright, with crisp acidity to complement the rich honey and pear fruit of the Roussanne. The Rosé has just been released, and we expect the reds and whites to be released in August or September.

We are also pleased to announce the debut of our wine club, which will ship 6-bottle lots of early-release, winery-only and special cuvée wines twice yearly directly to consumers. We have wine club details available on-line.

We have also begun the summer festival season with participation in three events: the Rhone Rangers Tasting (April 27), the Paso Robles Wine Festival (May 17-19) and the Hospice du Rhone (May 30-June 1). On these weekends we have welcomed several hundred visitors to the winery, and we will continue to be opening our doors for festivals and special events. If you haven't had a chance to visit us yet, please call or email to set up a time to do so!

At the festivals, we saw first-hand the tremendous buzz about the wineries growing vines purchased from the Tablas Creek nursery. In our own tastings, we found that these wineries produced some of the deepest, most complex and interesting wines there. The press is noticing as well: these vines are being called the "Tablas Clones" and noted for the quality of their fruit. Two articles that mention the Tablas Clones can be found at http://www.wineloverspage.com/schaefer/sbbarrel.shtml and http://www.westcoastwine.net/anderson/sbfutures_ea_01_3.html. Each wine we taste further validates our choice to go through the process of importing our vine material.

The vineyard is proceeding well, and it looks as though we will have a good fruit set. The vines began flowering the last week of May, with the first days of summer-like hot weather. A cool, consistent early spring delayed the budding process until after the danger of frost, and we anticipate a full fruit set. The vines look vibrantly healthy.

One technique that we used to protect against frost was to leave a long cane on each vine after pruning over the winter. These canes sprout first, and delay the budding of the main vine. After the danger of frost, we prune off these canes, leaving the vine with the correct number of shoots. Now that we're securely into the warm weather, we're catching up with our shoot thinning.

We have a new weapon in our organic battle against weeds in the vineyard: a tractor attachment named the "Tournesol" (French for sunflower, as the blade-heads look like sunflower blooms). It allows us to use a tractor to cultivate between the vines by coordinating the cutting blades with a computerized sensor arm that pulls back the blades when it approaches a vine. It even re-centers itself within the row, should we hit a rock or drift off-line.

We are nearing the end of the nursery's grafting year. Grafted vines are in the greenhouses hardening off in preparation for their shipment in the next month. We are sorting the growing vines by size and vigor, and moving the most vigorous vines into our screenhouses to further acclimate them to variations in sunlight, humidity, and temperature.

Although nearly all our grafted vines are spoken for, and due to be shipped to their buyers soon, we do have buds available for field grafting. And, this is a great time to place your orders for next year, while we have full availability of all our TruWood varietals.

Please contact Nursery Manager Laura Wulff at (805) 237-1231 or laura@tablascreek.com to discuss specific availabilities or to place an order for 2003.