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Twenty miles to the west, another idealistic estate, Tablas Creek Vineyard, had a very different experience. Like AmByth, Tablas farms biodynamically. In 2020, it became the country’s first vineyard to receive an award. regenerative organic certificationIt requires meeting standards of promoting soil health and promoting animal welfare and farmer justice.
Much larger than AmByth, with six times the bond. It has a guest center, a car park and a professional hospitality staff. When visitors head up the hill to visit AmByth, Robyn Hart greets them and pours the wine.
Tablas Creek also makes excellent wines, albeit more traditional than Ambyth’s. 16 Southern Rhone grapes.
Unlike AmByth, Tablas started with a serious plan. The owners are a partnership of two families with long experience in wine. The Perrin family in France’s Southern Rhône Valley, Chateau de Beaucastel, a revered estate of Châteauneuf-du-Pape for generations. The Haas family in the United States owned a successful wine import business. Vineyard Brands.
In the mid-1980s the families decided to seek property together in California to grow Rhône grape varieties. After a long search, they settled on 120 acres just 19 miles from the Pacific, west of the town of Paso Robles.
They chose the area because the rocky soils were geologically related to those at Beaucastel, the climate was similar to the Mediterranean, and they believed the annual rainfall would allow them to farm without irrigation, as they did at Beaucastel.
Planting did not begin until 2003, as vines imported from Beaucastel had to undergo quarantine in the United States. When they formed their first bond, Jason Haasthey tried to plant as densely as they did in Beaucastel, with many more vines per acre than is typical in dry-farmed old California vineyards.
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