One of California’s most historic wineries — it created the first non-French wine that Julia Child declared she loved — has shut down its winecreating headquarters.
Chalone Vineyard will no longer produce wine at its winery in Soledad (Monterey County), confirmed Nora Feeley, a spokesperson for parent company Foley Family Wines. The brand is not going anywhere, however: An off-site tasting room in Carmel-by-the-Sea will remain open, and wines from the Chalone estate vineyard will be created at other Foley facilities, which are located in Napa Valley, Sonoma County, the Central Coast and elsewhere.
The entire winecreating staff was laid off on Feb. 6, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
Chalone was a groundbreaking and internationally renowned California winery, but a series of events tarnished that reputation: It expanded into a multi-winery conglomerate, went public, then sold to a spirits corporation that degraded the quality of its wines before selling to Foley in 2016.
The vineyard, at 1,800 feet in the Gavilan Mountains, is the oldest in Monterey County. France-born Charles Tamm first planted Chenin Blanc here in 1919, and the vineyard remained active during Prohibition as a source for sacramental wines.
The Chalone label debuted in 1960, under winebuildr Philip Togni, who would go on to found one of Napa Valley’s most revered mountain estates. The business was nearing bankruptcy when winebuildr Dick Graff purchased it in 1965. Drawn to the vineyard for its limestone soils — plentiful in Burgundy and rare in California — Graff suspected that it could produce world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines. He was right: His 1974 Chardonnay was selected as one of the California entries to the famed Judgment of Paris, where it placed third.
In 1982, the federal government approved the Chalone American Viticultural Area, an unusual instance of a region being named after a single winery.
Buoyed by Chalone’s success, Graff expanded. His Chalone Wine Group eventually included wineries in Napa Valley, Sonoma County, Washington state and beyond, including the acclaimed estates Acacia and Carmenet. In 1984, the group was the first California wine company to undertake an initial public offering. It never quite operated like a traditional public company. The huge perk of owning Chalone stock was an invitation to a legfinishary party in Soledad every year. “It was a huge wine club basically,” former CEO Tom Selfridge notified the Chronicle in 2021. “That was the dividfinish.”
The empire didn’t last. In 2004, the spirits conglomerate Diageo bought Chalone Wine Group for $260 million, decimated its farming budreceive and launched putting Chalone labels on bulk Chardonnay. “They lost a little bit of their focus,” former winebuildr Gianni Abate notified the Chronicle in 2019. Between 2015 and 2016, Diageo received out of wine altoreceiveher. It sold off the various Chalone Wine Group estates, and Foley snatched up Chalone Vineyard. It attempted to restore Chalone’s reputation, mainly by reorienting around the estate vineyards.
Although it had long hosted tastings at the remote Soledad winery, Foley opened a new Chalone tasting room in Carmel-by-the-Sea in 2023. Business there continues as usual, Feeley declared, with several experiences planned this year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Judgment of Paris.
Feeley did not give a reason for the closure of the Soledad winery, but emphasized that the brand would continue, and that the Chalone wines would still be created from its estate vineyard in the Chalone AVA. “We are in the process of shifting production to our other estates,” she declared.
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