2022 Counoise
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The 2022 Tablas Creek Vineyard Counoise is Tablas Creek’s thirteenth varietal bottling of this traditional blending grape from the Southern Rhone. The Counoise grape has an unusual combination of vibrant blue and purple fruit (blueberries and cranberries), sweet spice (nutmeg and cinnamon), light-to-medium body, bright acidity, ruby color, and soft tannin.
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92 points; "Vibrant, early-drinking style with a generous finish": JamesSuckling.com (Sep. 2024)
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91 points; "silky and vibrant, with a subtle, pleasing grip and tensile energy": Robert Parker's Wine Advocate (Sep. 2024)
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90-92 points; "fireworks of fresh acidity": Robert Parker's Wine Advocate (Dec. 2023)
Tasting Notes
A lovely translucent garnet color. The nose is surprisingly powerful, showing brambly raspberry, baking spices, and a little minty top note. The mouth is pretty, with flavors of red plum juice (imagine the inside, without the skin), creamy texture, flinty minerality, and a nice, long finish of red licorice and wild herbs with some lightly dusty tannins keeping order. Enjoy it lightly chilled any time in the next four to six years.
Technical Details
Appellation
- Adelaida District Paso Robles
Technical Notes
- 13.0% Alcohol by Volume
- 380 Cases Produced
Blend
- 100% Counoise
Certifications
Recipes & Pairings
Recipe Suggestions
Food Pairings
- Roast pork loin
- Veal
- Roasted Chicken
- Spicy sausages
Production Notes
Our Counoise grapes were grown on our Regenertative Organic Certified™ and biodynamic estate vineyard. We typically use most of this Counoise in our Esprit de Tablas and Côtes de Tablas wines. However, in years when Counoise spends an unusually long time on the vine, it achieves enough concentration to balance its exuberant fruit, spice and acidity and we bottle it on its own.
The 2022 vintage was our third year of drought, but because the rain that we received came early, the vines showed good health though with cluster counts down by about 15%. A cool first half of the summer was followed by our hottest-ever August and September, producing an early start and an even earlier finish to harvest. The vintage's extremely low yields produced concentrated flavors, noteworthy texture, and intense fruit.
We tend to ferment our Counoise lots in stainless steel to protect it from oxidation, and to age it in neutral oak to avoid weighing down its bright fruit flavors. The lots that we chose for our varietal Counoise were selected and blended in June 2023 and bottled in February 2024, under screwcap to preserve its freshness.