2002 Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc

Production Notes

The Tablas Creek Vineyard Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc 2002 is a blend of three estate-grown varietals, propagated from budwood cuttings from the Château de Beaucastel estate.

The 2002 vintage was tremendous: warm and sunny, with cool nights that prolonged the hangtime of the grapes. The warmth and long hangtime led to grapes that were concentrated, rich, and ripe, but with good acidity to balance the richness. All three white varietals were harvested roughly simultaneously through the second half of September, beginning with the Viognier on September 12, and ending with the last lot of Roussanne the September 29th.

The fruit was whole cluster pressed, and fermented with native yeasts. The Roussanne was fermented half in stainless steel fermenters and half in small oak “pieces”, while the other varietals were fermented 100% in stainless steel. All the wines except a portion of the Grenache Blanc went through malolactic fermentation. The varietals were blended in late April, after which the wines were racked, blended, cold stabilized, and bottled in May 2003.

Updated tasting notes from a July 2011 vertical tasting can be found on the Tablas Creek blog.

Reviews

[...more recent Tablas Creek press]

Recipe Suggestions

[...more recipes]

Food Pairings

  • Cooked shellfish (lobster, scallops, softshell crab, shrimp)
  • Roasted eggplant
  • Foods cooked garlic and olive oil (i.e., Mediterranean foods)
  • Rich fish dishes (i.e., salmon, swordfish with buerre blanc sauce)
  • Asian stir fry
Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc

Not Available for Purchase

Blend

  • 70% Roussanne
  • 25% Grenache Blanc
  • 5% Viognier

Technical Notes

  • 14.5% alcohol by volume
  • 1350 cases produced

Downloads

Share
Upcoming Events

Celebrate Paso Robles Wine Festival with Tablas Creek

Join us for the Paso Robles Wine Community's biggest celebration! We'll pour Esprit de Beaucastel at Friday's Reserve Event and a range of new releases at Saturday's Grand Tasting. And all weekend we'll have special wines open at the winery and will be taking tours to visit our herd of sheep, alpacas and donkeys. Sunday 11am to 1:30pm enjoy Chef Jacob Lovejoy's small plates, free with a tasting. Details & more events »

Tablas Creek News

Featured Wine for May: 2011 Cotes de Tablas Blanc

In May, we're featuring our 2011 Cotes de Tablas Blanc at a 10% discount. In 2011, our Viognier crop was cut by 80% due to spring frost, leaving a tiny, intense yield of less than one-half a ton per acre. The resulting wine is rich and tropical, with stone fruits and honey, but at the same time firmly dry, with a very long, saline & mineral finish. Details »

On the Blog: When Terroir Was a Dirty Word

May 15, 2013

Take a look at the seven-line entry of Frank Schoonmaker, America’s foremost wine expert and author in 1964, about terroir. His association, rather than the "somewhereness" the wine exhibits, is more of a taste of dirt, neither elegant nor elevated: "somewhat unpleasant, common, persistent”. My, how things have changed. More »