Browse Tag

paso robles

Doux date

Bonny Doon 2005 Viognier Doux (Paso Robles) – 12.2% alcohol, 12.8 grams residual sugar, 500 ml bottle. All the aromatics here are in the honey genre. While big, the wine’s got an extremely appealing silken texture with a little edge of bitterness on the finish. There’s little more to it, but it hardly seems to matter. Pure fun. (9/08)

Coverting to Robles

[vineyard]Tablas Creek 2005 Rosé (Paso Robles) – While this may be drawing the curtains a little bit, the show that’s still visible is quite entertaining. There’s a bunch of different explorations of the concept of orange (including the blood variety), then a pale red-berry rush of fruit, and later an autumnal sunset viewed through a rippling window from the comfort of a soft, fraying easy chair. It’s still hefty for a rosé, but the virtues of its twilight are now readily apparent. (2/09)

Houndglove

Foxglove 2007 Zinfandel (Paso Robles) – 15% petite sirah, 14.6% alcohol. Big boysenberry fruit, with a nicely bitter espresso edge. A little short aromatically, but eminently drinkable. (9/08)

Blonk de blancs

Edmunds St. John 2002 “blonk!” (Paso Robles) – Tastes like it’s just coming into its maturing phase – which is not to say it’s all the way there yet – with older, bronzed stone fruit and a lot of dusty trails running through the foundation. It gets a bit twisty with food, but with more aeration finds its voice and starts to hum an old, folkish tune with a decided desert twang. (11/08)

TCA, TC nay

[vineyard]Tablas Creek 2002 “Côtes de Tablas” Red (Paso Robles) – Corked. (11/08)

Tablas Creek 2002 “Côtes de Tablas” Red (Paso Robles) – Juicy and succulent, with a freshly-crushed handful of blue, purple, and black berries given a bit of heft from black soil and a good sun-drenching. Pure pleasure. (10/08)

Blanc slate

[bottle]Tablas Creek 2006 Côtes de Tablas Blanc (Paso Robles) – Grasping for easy acceptance, which it achieves with a quenching blend of stone fruit and citrus, yet blending salts and rocks into the palate that promise further development and a more sophisticated form of excitement down the road. Delish. (9/08)

Tablas Creek 2006 Côtes de Tablas Blanc (Paso Robles) – Approachable and puppy-like in its drinkability, showing a garden of fruit trees (white apricot, white grapefruit, yellow plum) with all its varietal fatness braced and beaten back by fine acidity; a true accomplishment with the grapes in question. I could – and probably will – drink a lot of this. Will I hold it? Only by accident, though I don’t doubt it will develop for a few years. (10/08)

White!

Edmunds St. John 2002 “blonk!” (Paso Robles) – Drinking very well, with moderate stone fruit resolving into something in the spiced stone (as in: rocks) realm, better acidity than one expects from the Rhônish grapes involved, and a long, come-back-for-more finish. (9/08)

Sacre-not-so-bleu

[bottle]Tablas Creek 2003 Vin de Paille “Sacrerouge” (Paso Robles) – Dates, prunes, raisins, plums. Fresher than that produce list would indicate, though, and with a strong core of iron. Yes, it’s volatile, but what sweet red isn’t? Very tasty and quite approachable, though I suspect there might be some salutary effects from age (some deleterious ones too; that volatility again). (8/08)

Vodka, kahlua, cream

[label]Tablas Creek 2003 Roussanne (Paso Robles) – From a dubious source, but holding well, with the palate a little broader than in previous bottles. It’s still thick with stone fruit lushness, with spice malingering in the foreground, but there’s a bit of snap to it that wasn’t there before, and it could be headed somewhere more promising…especially from good storage, which this bottle has not seen. (7/08)

Indian percussion

[label]Tablas Creek 2005 “Côtes de Tablas” Red (Paso Robles) – Performing beautifully, as is its wont. Rich, deep baritones of dried red fruit, mild earth, a bit of spice, perhaps a hint of porcini, done in a palate-coating wash of tasteful appeal. As reliably solid a wine as you’ll find in the States, outside the more peripatetic house of Edmunds. (7/08)