Tablas Creek 2002 Côtes de Tablas Blanc (Paso Robles) – 36% viognier, 30% marsanne, 26% grenache blanc, 8% roussanne. Years ago, I consumed a bottle of this wine and posted the note to my then-blog, drawing a response from Jason Haas (from the winery) saying that my suppositions regarding future potential were probably off the mark, and the wine was almost certainly fully mature. It’s not that I didn’t listen to him, it’s that I had no idea I owned another bottle. Well, here are 750 milliliters of Jason-was-wrong, which I say not to tweak him but to reiterate one of the much-ignored wine truisms: any given bottle can be a surprise, and there are few absolutes…especially when it comes to aging.
Enough meta. The wine: deep bronze, and perhaps not coincidentally with the consistency of tanning oil, spice turned to the dust of deep antiquity, still powerful, but the power is a deep basso throb. It brightens, slightly, with food, but the intention throughout is to dominate rather than complement. Which is fine, because the wine’s extremely interesting. Hold it longer? No, I wouldn’t. But people have been wrong about this before… (12/11)
Jason Haas
August 1, 2012Thor, I just stumbled across this note, and I’m happy to admit I was wrong. We’ve been finding that we’ve significantly underestimated the ability of both the Cotes de Tablas and Cotes de Tablas Blanc wines to age. This is a part of our logic in creating the Patelin de Tablas wines, and in doing so trying to further elevate the Cotes wines to reflect a little better their structure and complexity.
Thanks, as always, for the perceptive comments.
thor iverson
August 2, 2012You’re giving me more credit than I deserve, but when I found the lost soldier I admit I was happy to discover that, at least for that one bottle, I was right and that you were wrong. ;-)
Keep making great wines, and thanks for your response.