1999 Reserve Cuveé

Reserve Cuvée: The Beginning

In the early years of Tablas Creek, we produced just one red wine and one white wine, and called these Rouge and Blanc.  Beginning in 1999, we separated our red production into two wines: the Reserve Cuvée (which the next year we would rename Esprit de Beaucastel) and the Petite Cuvée (which would become the Cotes de Tablas).

Like the Esprit de Beaucastel, the Reserve Cuvée is a selection from our most compelling lots, blended for elegance, richness, and longevity.

Production Notes

The Tablas Creek Vineyard Reserve Cuvée 1999 is a blend of four estate-grown varietals, propagated from budwood cuttings from the Château de Beaucastel estate. The wine is based on the dark red fruit, earth, spice and mid-palate richness of Mourvèdre, with additions of Grenache for forward fruit, approachability and lushness, Syrah for mineral, aromatics, and back-palate tannins, and Counoise for brambly spice and acidity.

The grapes for our Reserve Cuvée were grown on our 120-acre certified organic estate vineyard.

The 1999 Reserve Cuvée is a powerful expression of the outstanding 1999 vintage. The crop was small and concentrated. The harvest took place starting in September under ideal conditions and continued through October.  The lots were fermented separately with native yeasts, then blended in the spring of 2000 and aged in 1200-gallon foudres until the wine's bottling in July of 2001.

Tasting Notes

The 1999 Reserve Cuvée is a deeply colored, richly intense, highly extracted wine, redolent of ripe cherries, raspberries, currants and blueberries held together in a velvety tannic structure.  We expect it to age for a decade or longer.

Updated tasting notes from a December 2010 vertical tasting can be found on the Tablas Creek blog.

Reviews

[...more recent Tablas Creek press]

Recipe Suggestions

[...more recipes]

Reserve Cuvee

Not Available for Purchase

Blend

  • 40% Mourvèdre
  • 27% Grenache Noir
  • 23% Syrah
  • 10% Counoise

Technical Notes

  • 14.7% alcohol by volume
  • 2208 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 »