Tablas Creek Vineyard

The Free Bacchus Story

Over the last thirty years Tablas Creek has propagated more than five million grapevine cuttings and given the vast majority of them away — to growers in California, Washington, Oregon, Texas and Virginia.

That is a strange thing to do with an asset. Authenticated, disease-free vine material of a specific variety is slow and expensive to obtain, and most estates treat their plant stock as a competitive advantage worth protecting. The consequence of not protecting it is that a meaningful share of the Rhône-variety wine now made in America can trace its genetics back to one limestone hill twelve miles from the Pacific.

The estate was founded in 1989 by the Haas family and the Perrin family of Château de Beaucastel, who spent four years searching for soils and a climate resembling Châteauneuf-du-Pape before settling on the Adelaida Hills. They then put their imported Beaucastel cuttings through a three-year USDA quarantine to be certain the vines were what they claimed to be. In 1998, when California discovered that much of its supposed Roussanne was in fact Viognier, that patience turned out to matter a great deal.

The farming record is among the most comprehensively certified in American viticulture: CCOF Organic, Demeter Biodynamic and Regenerative Organic Certified held simultaneously, each independently audited against a different evidentiary standard. In 2020 it became the first Regenerative Organic Certified vineyard in the world. Sheep, alpacas and guard donkeys graze the rows between harvest and bud break; much of the estate is dry-farmed; and daikon radish is planted between vines to fracture compacted soil as the root decomposes: a plough made of vegetable rather than steel.

In 1998 California learned that much of its supposed Roussanne was Viognier. Tablas Creek knew what its own material was because it had taken every cutting through quarantine first.

The Esprit de Tablas Rouge has drawn 96 points from Wine Advocate and Best American Rhône at the Wine Enthusiast Awards. But the more useful entry is the Patelin range, blended from neighbouring vineyards mostly planted with Tablas Creek's own cuttings, which puts the house philosophy at an everyday price. Starting at the bottom of a serious producer's range is the cheapest way to find out whether you like what they are doing.