2017 Esprit de Tablas

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The Tablas Creek Vineyard 2017 Esprit de Tablas 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.

Reviews coming soon

Tasting Notes

A cool wintergreen minty note sets off deeper smoked meat, redcurrant, mocha, and juniper aromas. The mouth shows Grenache's sweet fruit and licorice on that attack, then deepens into notes of black cherry, chocolate, and a chorizo-like meatiness, all with tremendous mouth-coating texture. The long finish, with lingering flavors of wood smoke, roasted meat, plum skin and crushed rock, hints at more rewards to come with cellar aging.

Updated tasting notes from a June 2024 vertical tasting can be found on the Tablas Creek blog.

Technical Details

Appellation

Adelaida District Paso Robles

Technical Notes

14.5% Alcohol by Volume
4090 Cases Produced

Blend

40% Mourvedre
35% Grenache
20% Syrah
5% Counoise

Recipes & Pairings

Recipe Suggestions

Food Pairings

Game
Dark Fowl (i.e., duck)
Richly flavored stews
Lamb
Asian preparation of red meats (i.e., beef stir fry)

Production Notes

The 2017 vintage saw our drought end with a bang, as we received 43 inches of rain and saw our rainiest month ever in January. The wet soils delayed budbreak to a normal time frame, and produced such a healthy vineyard that we saw canopy sizes and cane lengths we hadn’t seen in years. The summer began relatively cool, but was punctuated by two heat spikes, one in early July and the other in late August, that accelerated ripening and produced intense flavors. The resulting vintage shows the health of the vines with a combination of concentration and freshness, with bright acids framing powerful fruit.

The grapes for our Esprit de Tablas were grown on our certified organic and biodynamic estate vineyard.

The grapes were fermented using native yeasts in a mix of 1500-gallon wooden upright fermenters, open-top tanks and closed stainless steel fermenters. After pressing, the wines were moved into barrel and allowed to complete malolactic fermentation. The Esprit was selected from the vintage's best lots and blended in May 2018, then aged in 1200-gallon French oak foudres for another year before being bottled in July 2019.