2018 Marsanne
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The 2018 Tablas Creek Vineyard Marsanne is Tablas Creek’s sixth varietal bottling of Marsanne, best known from the northern Rhone's Hermitage appellation, where it is renowned for making some of the world's most ageworthy white wines. While many summers here are too warm for Marsanne to be a great varietal wine, in the cool 2018 vintage we picked our Marsanne in mid-September with precise, expressive flavors, and selected the varietal bottling from a single lot with unusually good acids.
Tasting Notes
A classic Marsanne nose of honeydew, quince, crushed rock, and a sweet note like freshly harvested wheat. Soft and delicious on the palate, with flavors of vanilla custard, chamomile tea, candied lemon peel, and chalky minerality. Medium-bodied, refined, and pretty. It's so appealing now that we're guessing a lot of it will get drunk young, but it should evolve in an interesting way for a decade at least.
View tasting notes on the Tablas Creek Youtube page: Marsanne Tasting - 2018 Marsanne with Chelsea and the Shepherd
Technical Details
Appellation
- Adelaida District Paso Robles
Technical Notes
- 12.0% Alcohol by Volume
- 395 Cases Produced
Blend
- 100% Marsanne
Recipes & Pairings
Recipe Suggestions
Food Pairings
- Mussels Marinière
- Green salads with avocado and citrus dressing
- Scallops
- Light-fleshed fish (halibut, sole) with tropical salsa
Production Notes
The grapes for our 2018 Marsanne were grown on our certified organic and biodynamic estate vineyard.
The 2018 vintage saw an almost ideal balance of vine health and stress, as is often the case with the first dry year after a very wet one. Although rainfall was just 70% of normal, the rains came late, delaying the onset of bud-break and the beginning of the growing season. The cool weather continued most of the year, punctuated by a six-week heat wave in July and early August. But temperatures moderated before picking began, and harvest proceeded under slightly cooler than normal conditions, allowing us to pick without stress and producing fruit (and wines) with intense flavors and good balancing acidity.
The Marsanne was whole cluster pressed, and fermented in a mix of stainless steel (to emphasize its clean crisp flavors and minerality) and foudre (to build body and richness). Only native yeasts were used. After fermentation, the wine was racked and blended, and bottled in June 2018. The wine underwent only a light cold stabilization before bottling.