RN. Our last morning at Croad was beautifully cool (finally!) so I took a walk/jog on the nature trail through the property.  There are 3 loops to the nature trail so I picked the vineyard loop so I could get up close to the grapes.  The vines are not irrigated so their roots go deep into the ground to find water.  Given the past two super-hot days, I wondered how the plants were doing.  Their leaves were beautifully green and healthy and the vines were loaded with clusters of grapes. Impressive!!

The dry-farmed grapes at Croad

After breakfast, we checked out and drove to Tablas Creek Vineyard, of which we are wine club members. Mark had told us to sign up for the tour and tasting, which we did belatedly after our begging our way into an already fully subscribed tour.  Thank you, Tablas!

Tablas Creek is located on 270 acres of limestone-rich land northwest of Paso Robles in the Adelaida district, only 11 miles from the Pacific Ocean. It is a leader in organic, dry farming of grapes and it incorporates many sustainable, biodynamic practices such as using a mobile herd of sheep and alpacas to eat grasses and weeds between the vines while adding manure.  In 2020, it became the first certified regenerative organic vineyard in the world.

FE. One of the many other reasons to be club-members at Tablas is that their Rhone-style red blends truly rival their French cousins in quality (no surprise, Tablas is co-owned by a renown Chateau Neuf du Pape estate). They take exceptional care in how they harvest, ferment and age their wines. Below is a list of their current harvest, sorted by date, vineyard and grape.

Check out these barrels. They use a judicious amount of new oak, so as to not overwhelm their wines with wood flavor.

And here is one of my favorites, their Panoplie, a blend of Mourvèdre, Grenache and Syrah

Another reason to admire Tablas creek is that they sell not only their outstanding blends, but also wines made from the separate grape varieties used in the blend. How fun to experience their individual characteristics. And here is Ray, our knowledgeable guide, leading us through the tasting of all that excellence. I point out you that the glasses shown reflect the combined tasting of Rae and me. Solo it possibly could have been a bit much even for moi.

RN: We tried two different flights- summer wines (whites, rose, and a chillable red); and a red flight.

FE: And a short drive over the hills and we are in Monterey for the evening. A little off-shore fog, cooler climate, squid fishing boats

Cormorants, pelicans

and a loon

RN: And we saw all this a short walk from our car from Fisherman’s Wharf!