The 2007 Tablas Creek Vineyard Vin de Paille Sacrérouge is Tablas Creek’s fourth bottling of this non-traditional application (to red grapes) of an ancient Mediterranean technique for producing dessert wines. Ripe grape bunches are carefully laid down on straw-covered benches in our greenhouses, and allowed to dehydrate in the sun. When the grapes reach the desired concentration (usually in about 3 weeks) they are crushed by foot and fermented in small open-top fermenters using only native yeasts. When they reach their desired level of extraction, we press them and move the juice to oak barrels to continue fermenting until it reaches an alcohol level where the sweetness of the wine is in balance with its acids, tannins, and mineral characteristics.
The grapes for our Vin de Paille were grown on our 120-acre certified organic estate vineyard.
The 2007 Vin de Paille Sacrérouge is made from 100% Mourvèdre grapes.
The 2007 vintage was the best vintage we’ve yet seen at Tablas Creek. Yields were very low (down between 15% and 30%, depending on variety) due to a cold and very dry winter, which produced small berries and small clusters. A moderate summer without any significant heat spikes followed, allowing gradual ripening, and producing red wines with tremendous intensity, excellent freshness and a lushness to the fruit which cloaks tannins that should allow the wines to age gracefully. The Mourvèdre was harvested throughout October and completed the vintage on October 30th. The grapes for the Sacrérouge were among our last harvested, and spent much of the month of November in our greenhouses.
The wine, after pressing, was aged in four new French oak barrels for 20 months before being bottled in May of 2009.
The 2007 Vin de Paille Sacrérouge has a sweet nose of dates, plums, and figs, with dark cherries, black plum, cassis and chocolate in the mouth. The finish is long with lingering fig, chocolate, and mineral notes.
[...more recent Tablas Creek press]
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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 »