Printable Restaurant/Shelf Talker

Reviews

Slate (Jul. 2007)
Gang of Pour (Nov. 2006)

How is it drinking?
Vintage Chart

The 2004 Tablas Creek Vineyard Mourvèdre is Tablas Creek's second bottling of its 100% Mourvedre. The wine shows the rich cherry, fig, mocha and spice flavors, medium to full body, and a spicy, appealing finish of saddle leather and loam of the Mourvedre grape.

We use most of our Mourvedre in our Esprit de Beaucastel each year. However, we feel that this is a grape that deserves a champion, and when we have some tremendous lots of Mourvedre, we try to put together a limited quantity of wine for a single-varietal bottling.

As with all our wines, our Mourvedre grapes were grown on our 120-acre certified organic estate vineyard.

The 2004 vintage was excellent, with a very early spring balanced by a long, warm (but rarely hot) summer. The extended ripening cycle gave the grapes intense aromatics, pronounced minerality, and good structure. The harvest began in early September and continued warm and sunny, with cool nights, until an early onset of the fall rains on October 14th. At the first round of storms, about one-third of our Mourvedre had been harvested the week of September 23rd. After this rain, two weeks of sunny, cool, and breezy temperatures allowed us to harvest most of the rest of the Mourvedre between October 23rd and 25th. A final lot of Mourvedre, harvested on November 18th (our latest harvest ever) completed the 2004 vintage. The different Mourvedre lots gave us tremendous opportunities in the cellar for blending.

The Mourvedre grapes were destemmed and then fermented using native yeasts in a balance of small open-top and enclosed stainless steel tanks. After three weeks, they were pressed, and moved to 1200-gallon foudres to complete their fermentation. The Mourvedre lots were blended in June of 2005 as part of the assembly of the 2004 reds, and aged for an additional year in a 1200-gallon foudre and an assortment of smaller neutral barrels. The wine was bottled in May 2006. The wine underwent only a light filtration before bottling, and should be expected to throw a sediment over time.

The 2004 Mourvèdre displays a classic nose of roasted meats, cherries, mocha, and spice. It is juicy and full in the mouth, with ripe tannins, lingering notes of coffee, chocolate and leather, good acidity, and a pronounced minerallity on the finish. We expect it to show lush, young fruit character, buttressed by plenty of structure, when young (before the end of 2007) and then to shut down for a few years. After it reopens, we expect it to drink well for a decade or more.