Tablas Creek

Two wine families combined their expertise and persistence to build a North American Rhône community from the ground up, creating a singular range of Rhône-style varietal wines and blends

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Let's say your thoughts are running to a crisp, aromatic white on a warm spring afternoon. A little Bourboulenc, maybe? Or how about some Picardan? Until recently, your search for wines made from these approved but highly obscure Châteauneuf-du-Pape grape varieties would almost surely have drawn a blank.

Not only do many of the appellation's 13 approved grapes disappear into blends, but in the case of these two, there are precious few rows growing in the entire world.

Tablas Creek Vineyard - California Central Coast's outpost of the partnership between the Perrin family of Château de Beaucastel in the southern Rhône and the Haas family, longtime wine importers in the US has gone to great lengths to shore up the shortfall. Now you can sip glasses (albeit not many) of the rare wines - as well as many more Tablas-facilitated bottles of other compelling US-grown Rhône varietals and blends. But it wasn't easy...

RHONE FOCUS

When they began their California search for vineyard land in the mid-1980s, US wine importer Robert Haas and his friends and partners Jean-Pierre and François Perrin (fourth-generation current proprietors of the prominent Château de Beaucastel in Châteauneuf-du-Pape) harboured no doubt that it was possible for terrific wines to be produced in the state from southern Rhône grape varieties.