The Data

Country   USA

Appellation   Paso Robles

Varietal   Grenache Blanc

Retail Price   $30

ABV   13%

Score   4 Stars/93 points

In the Glass

Brilliant, medium gold/green color.

The aromatics are very intense offering scents of lemon curd and wet stones with supporting notes of citrus zest, meringue, lemon grass, guava, and honeysuckle.

The palate echoes the nose delivering a green fruit-driven core with flavors of white peach, bees wax, pear skins, and hints of quince. The finish is tart with dry tannins.

Medium-bodied and perfectly balanced with a vibrant texture.

Cool Factor

Tablas Creek is a unique winery in California seamlessly marrying Old World and New World winemaking and setting the standard for Rhône varietals in California. What could be cooler?

Value Grade

Selling at $25 a bottle this California-made and Rhône-inspired white checks all of the boxes for accessibility, complexity, and pure hedonistic pleasure. It's a bargain in our book.

Analysis

Incredibly, this is Tablas Creek’s eighteenth bottling of its 100% Grenache Blanc and this vintage is among our favorites. All of Tablas Creek wines are wines that tell the story of the vintage. Among all of Tablas Creek’s wines their Grenache Blanc shows perhaps the greatest swings in style and direction. In 2019 their Grenache Blanc was the most generous in fruit than any previous samples we analyzed while the 2020 shows Grenache Blanc’s ability to deliver complex fruit while being very austere and even a bit tannic. This character shown through in their white blends containing Grenache Blanc as well. This versatile and great varietal is most often used in white blends and rarely offered as a single varietal wines. The Tablas Creek Grenache Blanc 2020 was fermented in stainless steel to retain freshness and then aged in large, neutral wooden vats (foudres) to add texture and roundness. The wine was blended in March 2021 and bottled in June 2021.

How to Enjoy

This gorgeous wine needs nothing but a glass but it really needs to be decanted for at least 15 minutes — 30 minutes is better. It's a terrific food wine that excels with most any bold seafood preparation.