Tablas Creek Esprit de Tablas Rouge (375ML half-bottle) 2014
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Opaque ruby. Deep, smoke-accented aromas of red and blue fruits, candied flowers and cracked pepper convey a slow-building mineral quality. At once rich and energetic, offering intense black raspberry and boysenberry compote flavors given spine by juicy acidity. Finishes spicy and impressively long, with velvety tannins arriving late and adding gentle grip.
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The 2014 vintage was the third drought year in a row at Tablas Creek, but this top selection of estate fruit doesn’t seem to suffer—quite the opposite. Based on mourvedre and grenache, with some syrah and a bit of counoise, it’s fresh and lively, with a strawberry-red fruit tone that’s immediately delicious. The wine’s structure feels as if it were made of balsa wood, the tannins firm yet light, dancing on the tongue with flower-petal spice. It wouldn’t be a stretch to connect this lightness of tone directly to the pale, fragile limestone bedrock underneath the vines that allowed them to access moisture through California’s long dry spell.
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Tablas Creek is a pioneer of California’s Rhone movement. Founded in 1989, it is the culmination of a friendship between two of the international wine community’s leading families dating back to 1967: the Perrin family of Chateau de Beaucastel and the Haas family of Vineyard Brands. After a four-year search, the partners chose Paso Robles, California for its many similarities to the Southern Rhone and began the lengthy process of importing vine cuttings, building a grapevine nursery, and creating an estate vineyard from the ground up. Today, the vineyards at Tablas Creek are proudly Biodynamic® and organic certified by Demeter USA.
With bold fruit flavors and accents of sweet spice, Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre form the base of the classic Rhône Red Blend, while Carignan, Cinsault and Counoise often come in to play. Though they originated from France’s southern Rhône Valley, with some creative interpretation, Rhône blends have also become popular in other countries. Somm Secret—Putting their own local spin on the Rhône Red Blend, those from Priorat often include Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. In California, it is not uncommon to see Petite Sirah make an appearance.