Rosé: The Beginning
After years of searching, Robert Haas (Vineyard Brands) and the Perrins (Château de Beaucastel) found the perfect site for their new estate in the steep and stony hills west of Paso Robles. Tablas Creek Vineyard was conceived with vine selections similar to Beaucastel. Natural farming techniques in the vineyard allow our grapes to be the purest expression of the warm climate and the calcareous clay soils in which they grow. Fermenting with native yeasts and selective blending of the varietals, as practiced by Beaucastel for 150 years, allow the wine to best express its rich and elegant esthetic qualities. We have left no stone unturned in our effort to make Tablas Rosé a forceful statement of its outstanding terroir.
Tablas Rosé is estate bottled from vines grown on the Tablas Creek Vineyard Estate cultivated without the use of herbicides or systemic pesticides. Only hand hoeing, cover crops, mulch, scorching and mowing are used for weed control. Natural predatory insects, “Bordeaux Mixture” and sulfur control pests and fungi.
To make this 1999 rosé wine, Tablas Creek Vineyard maintained skin contact of destemmed French vine Mourvèdre, Grenache Noir and Counoise grapes for 72 hours in a stainless steel fermenter. The fermenting juice was then drawn off to continue its fermentation in 225 liter French oak barrels. The blend of grapes is predominantly Mourvèdre and therefore more like the solid, dry rosés of Bandol than Grenache based Tavel. It boasts a moderately dark rosé color and a well developed bouquet of ripe strawberries. It is rich, ripe and full of fruit on the palate and has a nice long finish—a serious wine for all seasons.
Not Available for Purchase
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 »
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 »
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 »