High Highs: Santa Lucia Highlands 2023

BY BILLY NORRIS | JULY 3, 2025 

The story in the Santa Lucia Highlands (SLH) is one echoed up and down California in 2023. Following a punishing hodgepodge of vintages marked by wildfires, severe drought, extreme heat and painfully low yields, Mother Nature loosened her grip and allowed winemakers to breathe a collective sigh of relief. The struggles of the recent past faded away as a long, cool, even-tempered growing season settled in. No skyrocketing ripeness. No fear of smoke taint. No shoot-from-the-hip pick calls or all-hands-on-deck harvests. No pitiful yields. Just clement weather and nothing but time to make the best decisions possible in the vineyard and the winery. For winemakers in the SLH and its environs, the sky was the limit in 2023. But it wasn’t quite that simple.

Pinot Noir vines at Morgan’s Double L Vineyard.

The narrow, 18-mile-long stretch of vineyards to the south of Monterey Bay that makes up the Santa Lucia Highlands experienced an unusual amount of rainfall to begin the 2023 growing season, as did much of the rest of Monterey County. The typically dry SLH saw rainfall accumulations upwards of 40% above average. That glut of rain replenished the depleted groundwater reserves and delayed the entire vine growth cycle by several weeks. After six to eight years (depending on who you ask) of sustained drought conditions, the surfeit of rain primed vines to set a prolific amount of fruit and grow large canopies. Eventual yields in 2023 clocked in around 20-25% above the SLH’s historical average, which was especially welcome after the paltry 2022 harvest (down about 50% across the region).

Summer temperatures were on the cool and steady side, which limited the typically beneficial diurnal shifts and drew out the ripening process. Harvests commenced across the region in late September. Sabrine Rodems, of Wrath, mused, “We were a full month later in 2023 than 2022.” Scott Caraccioli, of Caraccioli Cellars, shared the same experience at their estate vineyard, adding, “The 2023 harvest was the latest ever at Escolle. Ever.” The majority of operations picked Pinot Noir and Chardonnay all the way through mid-October, in many cases several weeks later than in 2022. Syrah harvests pushed into November, helped along at the finish line by a slight warm-up in temperatures.

From left to right, Adam Franscioni, Gary Franscioni and Mark Pisoni in the rows at Soberanes Vineyard.

Following numerous years of unpredictable challenges, it’s not uncommon for growers and producers to adopt a sort of “self-protection” mentality—a “fear of the unknown” echoed by more than a few winemakers I met with for this report. Winemaker Jeff Pisoni, of Pisoni Estate, stated simply, “You never know when the other shoe is going to drop.” Conservative practices in the vineyard become second nature, so when you get a heavy crop load, instinct tells you to preserve as much fruit as possible as a buffer. The SLH is a region with a rich history of agriculture and traditional farming, and that classic farmer’s mindset permeates the ethos here, in good times and bad. Pisoni (whose family still operates a full-scale agriculture operation in the adjacent Salinas Valley) elaborated, “Coming off so many difficult vintages, you’re inclined to leave as much fruit hanging as you can, just in case things go wrong. That’s a classic farming principle. We’ve seen it forever with vegetables. You just don’t want to end up with nothing.”

Looking northwest from the row-crop-dominated floor of the Salinas Valley, with SLH vineyards rising up the mountainside in the distance.

A considerable downside of retaining such a large crop, however, can be dilution in the resulting wines. Augment a sizable haul of clusters with generous, healthy canopies that shade the berries from the sun, and your efforts to preserve a plentiful harvest can actually be a recipe for excessively light wines that lack concentration. In a vintage like 2023, winemakers had to confidently drop fruit and extensively remove leaves from the canopies in order to ensure adequate development. Those who did just that reaped substantial rewards and crafted some of the best wines to ever come out of the SLH.

The Wines

The inherent risk of a cool growing season with very late harvests is that fruit hanging on the vine might never make it all the way to full sugar ripeness and/or phenolic ripeness. That can manifest in the form of wines with angular contours, light bodies and insufficient fruit density to compensate for those deficiencies. For Pinot Noir—arguably the SLH’s flagship variety—there’s no missing the fact that the 2023s are lighter across the board. This is especially obvious when juxtaposed against the riper, darker, unashamedly more forward 2022s. In a number of cases, that lightness deprives the 2023 Pinots of some of the structural gravitas that is such a regional signature, almost as if the volume knob has been turned down. The cool 2023 season also ushered in a return of the SLH’s hallmark bright, juicy acidity that was also generally absent in 2022.

Scott Caraccioli presented an excellent lineup of 2023s, including his new value-oriented Private Property label.

Aside from the lifted, slightly ethereal 2023 Pinot Noirs in the middle of the pack, there sits a tranche of world-class, elite wines that reach new heights. Proactive farming was a fundamental part of the equation, meaning that winemakers who weren’t placated by the “easy” season and who didn’t rest on their laurels were able to coax an extra measure of depth and power from their fruit. Marry that with the lighter overall style of the year, and you end up with some absolutely magical wines that exhibit the platonic ideal of concentration without excess weight.

The 2023 Clarice Wine Co. Pinot Noir Garys’ Vineyard bears special mention, as it epitomizes the path to greatness in 2023. I consider it to be the wine of the vintage. Clarice’s Adam Lee is always active in the vineyard and adaptive in the winery, in this vintage settling on a final blend that included a higher proportion of new oak, which in turn compensated for the wine’s slightly lighter build and lent the Garys’ an incredible seamlessness. All three 2023 Clarice bottlings are excellent, impressively finessed wines that readers should make a point of seeking out.

The 2023 Clarice Wine Co. Pinot Noir Garys’ Vineyard is the wine of the vintage in the SLH.

Additionally, the muscular but elegant 2023 Pisoni Estate Pinot Noir, impeccably balanced 2023 Caraccioli Cellars Pinot Noir (as well as Caraccioli’s 2023 Passetoutgrain, which is 50% Pinot Noir and 50% Gamay) and the lush but lithe 2023 Wrath Pinot Noir 115/667 all rest atop the heap of pure, persistent, precise Pinot Noirs that belong in the conversation with best of the best.

Chardonnay is once again hit or miss in 2023. I chalk that up to two things: 1) There’s not a truly well-defined “SLH style” of Chardonnay, but the closest approximation would be a richer, rounder interpretation of the variety that the 2023 vintage just didn’t have in the cards, and 2) Chardonnay typically struggles to convey true site character here, so the wines can come across as somewhat anonymous. Aside from a couple of major outliers and overperformers, the 2023 Chardonnays wear the lighter vintage character on their sleeves. These are softer-textured, quieter, more mineral-driven wines that offer good upfront appeal but are generally near-term propositions.

Bibiana González Rave turned out two gorgeous, stratospheric Syrahs for her project, Cattleya Wines.

And then there’s Syrah. I will beat this drum every year. I will shout it from the mountaintops. Syrah is the true rockstar of the SLH. Stunningly expressive and absolutely singular, Syrah responds beautifully to the conditions in the region, even in the most challenging years. Given the supremely long hangtime in 2023 and the extra push of warm temperatures right before a November harvest, several of the 2023 Syrahs I tasted for this report touched the stars. Cattleya Wines’ two 2023 Syrahs, The Reward (from Soberanes Vineyard) and The Initiation (from Pisoni Vineyard), are showstoppers—powerful, graceful and intense yet supremely finessed. The 2023 ROAR Syrah Sierra Mar Vineyard is gorgeous as well, and the 2023 Lucia by Pisoni Syrah Susan’s Hill, tasted from barrel, could very well be a legend in the making. Most notably, the 2023 Syrahs balance their typical brooding intensity with tannins that are already supremely well integrated. These are exciting wines that I’d be thrilled to own.

This report also includes wines from neighboring appellations in Monterey County, such as Chalone, Carmel Valley and Arroyo Grande, as well as some wines from Sonoma, where many of the region’s winemakers call home.

I tasted the wines for this report in late spring and early summer 2025 in a series of tastings in the Santa Lucia Highlands, Sonoma County and my office in Florida. 

© 2025, Vinous. No portion of this article may be copied, shared or re-distributed without prior consent from Vinous. Doing so is not only a violation of our copyright, but also threatens the survival of independent wine criticism.

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