caraccioli
Scott Caraccioli
Santa lucia Highlands
monterey - california
story…
The Caraccioli family have deep farming roots in the Salinas Valley area of the Santa Lucia Highlands. The Swiss-Italian descended family have been here for four generations farming the land, however it wasn’t until 2006 that the family, led by Gary Caraccioli (third generation) delved into grape growing & the idea of wine production as part of their business. Gary convinced his brother Phil & his uncle Jim to convert a portion of their land that wasn’t well suited for their other farming ventures over to grape vines for wine production. By chance Gary met a retired winemaker who had settled in the Santa Lucia Highlands that he was able to coerce out of retirement to help establish the wine production program for their new project. Gary had the idea of focusing on a specific style of wine, traditional method sparkling. It is important to note that at the time very few wineries made sparkling wine let alone gave it all their attention outside of the long established estates further north i.e. Schramsberg, Roederer Estate, Mumm, Domaine Carneros, etc.
This not so random retiree happened to be Michel Salgues, who was the longtime winemaker at Roederer Estate. In fact he was the winemaker who helped establish the Roederer Estate program. Michel was born in France & prior to moving the US he worked for Louis Roederer in Champagne which is how he eventually became the founding winemaker at Roederer Estate where he worked for the better part of two decades before retiring. Michel came out of retirement to help the Caraccioli family create a truly unique sparkling wine estate that showcased the unique characteristics of their region. Sadly Michel passed away in 2017, he was an integral member of the Caraccioli Estate until his death & even got to see their first 100% estate only bottled sparkling wines into bottle before his passing.
Today the estate is under the guidance of Scott Caraccioli, Gary’s son & fourth generation Caraccioli to farm this area of California. Scott manages most of the day to day activities as well as overseeing vineyard teams & the winemakering. Scott worked alongside Michel for several years before his passing & continues to honor the legacy that Michel helped establish for his family’s estate. Scott was also integral in the push to shift their sparkling wine production to utilizing all estate grown fruit. For many years they used a combination of estate grown fruit & sourced fruit from in & around the Santa Lucia Highlands. With the 2015 vintage bottling both their flagship Brut Cuvée & Brut Rosé are produced from 100% estate grown fruit off of their Escolle Vineyard.
philosophy…
From the beginning the focus has been to showcase & highlight the beauty of fruit grown in their small pocket of the Santa Lucia Highlands. Light-handed techniques are used in both the vineyard & cellar achieve the purest expression of their site. Their Escolle Vineyard is SIP sustainably certified which forms the basis of their minimal intervention practices. There are no herbicides used in the vineyard, all weeding is done by hand or with a weed knife. They employ cover crop throughout the year & only use irrigation in extreme weather conditions. Harvest is done by hand & fruit is transferred from the vineyard to the winery, which lies just 5 miles away, in small bins to limit any premature stress or pressure on the fruit.
Once in the winery the fruit is treated with the utmost care as it is guided from grape to wine. The estate does produce a handful of still wines, however sparkling is their primary focus. The sparkling wine production is based on traditional French law that was established for Champagne production. Under Michel’s guidance they took that base theory & fine tuned it even more. Using only the first 120 gallons of juice of each ton of fruit, French law requires the first 150 be used. By shrinking this they amplify the quality level of juice that is used for their wines. All of their wines are fermented in French oak barrels for most of the primary fermentation process, all fermentations start in stainless steel tank with Champagne yeasts strains for their production. Eighty percent of the wine finishes fermentation in barrel. The wines are then bottled on the fine lees for secondary fermentation & aging for 4 years. The wines are then disgorged & put under cork where they age a further year prior to release.
Vineyards…
As of 2015 all of the wine at Caraccioli is produced from their estate Escolle Vineyard. The vineyard was originally planted exclusively to Chardonnay & Pinot Noir in 2008. In 2018 they grafted over three acres of the vines to Syrah, then in 2020 & 2021 they grafted over four acres to Gamay & another two acres to more Syrah.
Escolle Vineyard
planted in 2008, consisting of 124 acres of vines in the northern sector of Santa Lucia Highlands | planted primarily to Pinot Noir & Chardonnay with 46 different combinations of clones & rootstocks | 220-500 fasl | granitic metamorphic schist base soil | chualar & alluvial sandy loam and parkfield clay topsoil
