Winemaker Notes
Pair this wine with cooked shellfish, roasted or grilled vegetables, foods cooked with garlic and olive oil, rich fish dishes, Asian stir fry.
Blend: 71% Roussanne, 21% Grenache Blanc, 8% Picpoul Blanc
Professional Ratings
-
Tasting Panel
A mellow white Rhone with minerality, spice and soft acid structure; elegant, lush with floral notes; long seamless.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Probably the leanest example of this cuvee I've tasted, the 2013 Esprit de Tablas Blanc checks in as 71% Roussanne, 21% Grenache Blanc and 8% Picpoul that saw 10 months in mostly neutral foudre. It offers pretty, salty minerality in its leafy herbs, citrus and stone fruits to go with a medium-bodied, juicy, straightforward (by this cuvee's standards anyway) personality.
-
Wine Enthusiast
This blend of 71% Roussanne, 21% Grenache Blanc and 8% Picpoul Blanc offers cut Meyer lemon, tangerine and pink-grapefruit aromas on the nose, along with the promise of a creamy palate. Instead, the palate is quite tight and restrained, starting tart but opening toward lemon rinds and pear flesh, and wiping up clean on the finish.
Full-bodied and flavorful, white Rhône blends originate from France’s Rhône Valley. Today these blends are also becoming popular in other regions. Typically some combination of Grenache Blanc, Marsanne, Roussanne and Viognier form the basis of a white Rhône blend with varying degrees of flexibility depending on the exact appellation. Somm Secret—In the Northern Rhône, blends of Marsanne and Roussanne are common but the south retains more variety. Marsanne, Roussanne as well as Bourboulenc, Clairette, Picpoul and Ugni Blanc are typical.
The largest and perhaps most varied of California’s wine-growing regions, the Central Coast produces a good majority of the state's wine. This vast California wine district stretches from San Francisco all the way to Santa Barbara along the coast, and reaches inland nearly all the way to the Central Valley.
Encompassing an extremely diverse array of climates, soil types and wine styles, it contains many smaller sub-AVAs, including San Francisco Bay, Monterey, the Santa Cruz Mountains, Paso Robles, Edna Valley, Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Maria Valley.
While the Central Coast California wine region could probably support almost any major grape varietiy, it is famous for a few Central Coast reds and whites. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel are among the major ones. The Central Coast is home to many of the state's small, artisanal wineries crafting unique, high-quality wines, as well as larger producers also making exceptional wines.