East Rincon Block 2 is a very special vineyard block to me. It’s the oldest block that we farm, planted by my father in 1984, the year I graduated from high school. It’s also the closest vineyard block to the winery and my office, so I get to see these vines every day. Finally, it makes some of the very best Pinot Noir that we grow.
Bud break occurred 3 weeks ago, in early March. I love to see the very uniform shoot growth, a harbinger of excellent quality for the coming harvest. We’ve made a pass through the vineyard with the flail mower to mow the grass and chop the canes left after pruning, as well as the weed knife to control weeds in the vine row. The next step will be shoot thinning, when our ladies crew will remove suckers and weak shoots to promote vine growth to support the 2025 crop, which will mark 41 years since these vines were planted.
After the historically small 2024 crop, my expectation is that our crop this year will be a bit more generous, and my ambition, just like every year, is to produce the best wine we’ve ever made from these vines.
– Brian Talley
This April, we’re celebrating the story and significance of the Rincon Vineyard—with a special focus in our tasting room. Our Rincon Collection | Legacy Tasting offers guests a rare chance to experience the full range of wines sourced exclusively from this legendary site, including our newest releases of Rosé, Rincon Chardonnay, Rincon Pinot Noir, Grenache, Syrah, and Don’s Blend.
It’s a lineup that speaks to the depth and diversity of this vineyard—and a glimpse into what makes it truly Grand Cru–worthy.
This limited-time flight is available through the end of April and leads up to the Rincon Vineyard Lunch on May 3, where we’ll celebrate the land, the season, and the wines that began right here. Join us at the table among the vines and experience Rincon where it all began.
The story of Talley Vineyards began when my grandfather, Oliver Talley, began growing specialty vegetables in the Arroyo Grande Valley in 1948. In 1982, his son and my father, Don Talley, planted wine grapes on a rolling hillside parcel unsuitable for vegetable farming. Four years later, in 1986, he and my mother Rosemary founded Talley Vineyards.
Talley Vineyards is located in the San Luis Obispo Coast American Viticultural Area (AVA) which is recognized as the coolest AVA in the state of California due to its direct proximity to the cold Pacific Ocean. Within the San Luis Obispo Coast, there are two smaller AVAs, the Arroyo Grande Valley and the Edna Valley, and our family owns vineyards and farms in both valleys. The cool climate of the area, coupled with calcareous clay and shaly loam soils, makes it ideally suited to grow Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Talley Vineyards’ specialties.
Since the founding of Talley Vineyards, the goal has always been to produce estate grown wines that capture the unique character of the vineyards we farm. There are now a total of seven vineyards owned and farmed by my family: West Rincon, East Rincon, Rosemary’s, Monte Sereno and Las Ventanas in the Arroyo Grande Valley as well as Oliver’s and Stone Corral in the Edna Valley. The signature bottlings of Estate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, which date to the inaugural 1986 vintage, blend these vineyards together to produce wines meant to capture the essence of the larger San Luis Obispo Coast region: energetic citrus infused Chardonnay and savory, ethereal Pinot Noir. In addition, single vineyard bottlings are produced from most of our vineyards, and these are meant to reflect the distinctive character of each site.
Optimum quality and long-term sustainability are the two principles that guide our winegrowing decisions. I work with Eric Johnson, our Director of Viticulture and Winemaking, to continually strive to improve fruit quality while ensuring that vineyard practices work in harmony with the natural conditions of each vineyard site. Certified sustainable practices are employed in the vineyard: grapes are gently hand harvested at night and no herbicides are used.Classical winemaking techniques are gentle and noninterventionist. Native yeasts are employed in fermentation, all Chardonnay is barrel fermented and completes malolactic fermentation, while Pinot Noir is fermented in small open top fermenters and punched down by hand. The wines are gently bottled, generally without fining or filtration. All Talley Vineyards wines are certified sustainably produced and all are vegan.
Talley Farms and Talley Vineyards continue to evolve. There are now four members of the fourth generation of Talleys involved in the family farming and winery operation, which has grown to include more than 30 commodities and 6 wine varieties. Our fruits, vegetables and wines are shipped all over the United States and exported to more than eight countries. We are proud to share the bounty of the San Luis Obispo Coast with anyone who appreciates the authenticity and commitment to excellence that is the result of our four-generation family farming legacy in this very special region.
Autumn is the season of abundance in our farming operation. Over the past 76 years, since my grandfather started Talley Farms in 1948, that abundance has expanded immensely in both scale and diversity. This fall we harvested more than a dozen different kinds of vegetables, six varieties of wine grapes, as well as lemons, avocados and three kinds of berries. It’s fulfilling for everyone who works here to see all of their hard work pay off.
The 2024 wine grape harvest, our 38th since the founding of Talley Vineyards in 1986, was small, and quality appears to be exceptional. An ideal growing season was capped with perfect weather during the crucial periods of ripening and harvest. Pinot Noir production was about 30% below average and Chardonnay was down about 20%. Fermentations have filled the cellar with gorgeous aromas of baked brioche and framboise, and, most importantly, have been clean and uneventful. I have high hopes for the 2024 vintage. Most of the other crops that we grow have been both high in quality and production, which puts a smile on all of our faces.
Over the next few weeks, we will turn our attention to bottling the majority of wines that we produced in 2023, and I look forward to sharing these charming wines with you in early 2025.
The 2024 harvest at Talley Vineyards began on September 3 with a small pick from West Rincon Block 5, one of the best sections of that vineyard. This was 2 weeks earlier than our start in 2023 and one day later than we picked the same section in 2022. On September 4, we picked Rosemary’s Block 7, the original planting of Pinot Noir in Rosemary’s Vineyard, which my father planted in 1987. We made the strategic decision to harvest this block just before a heat wave which started the next day and persisted through September 11, when things cooled dramatically. So far, yields are running at between about ½ and 2/3 of normal and quality looks great. In many respects, it reminds me of the very successful 2022 vintage, which also saw low yields.
Overall, this has been an excellent growing season with cool weather persisting throughout the summer, until our September heatwave. We were generally unaffected by the major heatwaves that impacted most of the United States in July and August. We received just about 23 inches of rain this season, which is just above our annual average of 20 inches per year. This was the second year in a row of above average rainfall, and it really benefited the vines.
People often ask what explains yields that are above or below average. I attribute our low yields this year to a couple of factors. First, we had historically high yields in 2023, and in my experience, grapevines are somewhat alternate bearing, meaning that a high yield year is often followed by a lower yielding vintage. In addition, much of the potential crop for the year is dictated by the weather conditions during the spring and early summer of the previous year when a process called bud differentiation occurs. If you recall, 2023 was a historically wet year with about 50 inches of rain (more than double our average rainfall in the Arroyo Grande Valley) and we experienced consistently cloudy conditions during the spring and early summer.
A challenge this year has been intermittent power outages (almost daily from mid August through mid September) due to a combination of PG&E’s extremely sensitive equipment settings to mitigate wildfire risk and some aging and damaged wires in a very remote area to our east. PG&E appears to have resolved the issue and we’ve experienced less frequent outages since mid September.
The unseasonably cool weather we’ve experienced through most of September has resulted in intermittent harvest as we wait for sugars to increase and flavors to develop. This is a common occurrence and one of the reasons that the San Luis Obispo Coast experiences one of the longest harvest seasons of any winegrowing region in the world. Hot weather is predicted starting tomorrow (October 1) and I anticipate that this will dramatically increase the pace of harvest. As with most years, the vast majority of Chardonnay will be harvested in the month of October.
Join Our Crush Crew!
For the first time, we’re excited to share a little harvest tradition with you. For over 30 years, we’ve been creating custom crush crew t-shirts for our team. Each year, the theme naturally comes to us — from “Be Happy, Drink Chardonnay” and “Make Wine, Not War” to “2020 – Wines to Remember from a Year to Forget” and “The Year of the Wasp,” finally arriving at the year of “Banger Clusters.”
This year, we’ve been embracing the perfect pairing of wine and music. We sang “Lavender Haze” at the Secret Spot Dinner at the Lavender Farm, danced to the Molly Ringwald Project in our vintage band tees at Homecoming 1984, and enjoyed picnics with live music for the Adobe Encores. So, it only made sense for our t-shirt this year to be a Talley Vineyards Crush Crew Band Tee!
A glamping adventure at Talley Vineyards could be yours if you join us and the SLO Wine Collective for a virtual Harvest on the Coast.
The 30th anniversary of Harvest on the Coast will look a little different this year. While the SLO Wine Collective is unable to host you for the grand tasting event on the coast, you are cordially invited you to the virtual online auction. Register to bid and then meet us for the virtual auction November 7, 2020 at 3PM.
Enjoy a weekend filled with outdoor adventure, local cuisine and Talley Vineyards cool climate wines while glamping under the stars in our vineyards.
This exclusive experience includes one night and two days of VIP glamping for up to four people. Your tents are loaded with local goodies along and bottles of Talley Vineyards wine to enjoy. Brian Talley will be your personal tour guide sharing stories of the vines and wines, while keeping the bears away at night.
Your day will be filled with hikes through the Rincon Vineyard, boasting spectacular views of the Arroyo Grande Valley and a picnic lunch of charcuterie and Chardonnay. After a leisurely afternoon, dinner will be prepared fireside and paired with a wonderful assortment of Talley Vineyards wines.
Finish the night off with stargazing and a nightcap. Wake up the following morning as the sun rises over the vines to a lazy morning of coffee by the campfire. Mid-morning we will host you for brunch at the barrel room. We’ll send you home with an assortment of 12 bottles to enjoy as a memento of your visit.
With views like this…
Take a look a photos from last year’s auction lot winner’s glamping adventure.
Rosemary’s Vineyard has become our most iconic vineyard, and has produced some of the most highly regarded Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in California. In fact it is truly unique as a site that produces two distinct wines of such high quality. Numerous vintages of Rosemary’s Vineyard Pinot Noir have been served at the White House and both Rosemary’s Vineyard Chardonnay and Pinot Noir have achieved scores of 98 points in Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. The 2002 Rosemary’s Vineyard Chardonnay was judged the best California Chardonnay in the 30th Anniversary Judgment of Paris Tasting in 2006.
I was 10 years old in 1976 when I moved to the place that would become Rosemary’s Vineyard. At that time it was an avocado orchard. Over the previous year, my parents, Don and Rosemary, had built an adobe house on top of a hill on the first piece of property that my family bought in 1966, which was also the year I was born. This site turned out to be poorly suited for avocados because it frequently froze which damaged the trees and caused the crop to fall off. Within a few years, my dad started removing the avocado trees and considering what to plant next.
Meanwhile, in 1982, he had started growing winegrapes in our Rincon Vineyard and was pleased with the quality of the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir that we produced from that site. In 1987, he set out to plant those varieties in front of his house. For Pinot Noir, he chose the same clonal selection he had planted in the Rincon Vineyard, UCD Clone 2A (often referred to as the Wädenswil selection). As with most of our original plantings, he planted ungrafted or “own-rooted” vines because he wasn’t concerned about phylloxera and because the vines were less expensive (own-rooted vines are now exceedling rare and prized for their singular varietal expression). A year later, in 1988, he planted the east side of the driveway to Chardonnay. Very soon after that, he decided to name the vineyard after my mother.
The very first harvest of Pinot Noir from Rosemary’s Vineyard was blended into our Estate Pinot Noir in 1990. In 1991, my dad decided to sell some of the grapes to Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat winery in Santa Barbara County, who produced a legendary single vineyard bottling, in fact the first to bear the moniker “Rosemary’s Vineyard.” We produced the first vintage of Talley Vineyards Rosemary’s Vineyard Pinot Noir in 1993, most of which was sold directly to the customers on our mailing list. In 1994, I began planting Pinot Noir in the area behind my parents’ house. I’ll never forget the day Vineyard Manager Rudy Romero and I were marking the vineyard when my dad came out of his house and noticed that the vines would be planted on 8 foot rows, too narrow for the D4 Caterpillar tractor we used for tillage at that time. I told him that this was how a world class vineyard should be planted and that we could buy a smaller tractor. He muttered something under his breath and walked away—but he let me have my way.
Over time, we expanded the vineyard so that now it very nearly surrounds my mother’s house and consists of 14 acres each Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Most of the original Chardonnay planting on the east side of the driveway has now been replanted with Pinot Noir, this time on 6 foot rows. The original own-rooted 2 1/2 acre block of Pinot Noir on the west side of the driveway remains.
Climatically, Rosemary’s Vineyard is the coolest site that we farm, which means that the grapes ripen slowly and maintain the refreshing acidity that is the hallmark of world class Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. The soil type, classified as “Lopez Very Shaly Loam” is distinct from the calcareous clays that we farm in the Rincon Vineyard or the sand or sandy clay loam of our vineyards in the Edna Valley. We employ gentle sustainable farming practices and classic old world winemaking to coax all of the potential out of this truly special site.
When I stand at the top of the vineyard and look to the ocean, just 6 1/2 miles to the southwest, I reflect on the blessing I’ve received to make wine from this special place. I do my very best to honor the legacy that began when my father began planting vines here in 1987. I think about him as I walk through the section he planted—the section that produces the very best Pinot Noir grapes that we farm—grapes that form the backbone of every bottle of Rosemary’s Vineyard Pinot Noir that we release.
