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The owners of Carlisle, California’s leading producer of quality Zinfandels, will call it quits after the 2024 vintage, Wine Spectator has learned. Co-founders Mike and Kendall Officer informed their wine club members of their decision today.
“It was a decision that was a long time in coming,” Mike Officer, 62, said. “Financially, Carlisle is doing wonderfully. It’s just the owners of Carlisle are exhausted. Kendall and I and Jay Maddox, our winemaker—we’re all in our 60s and we all want to retire before we’re 70. Doing business in California and complying with all the idiotic regulations in the states to which we ship have worn us out. We needed an exit strategy.”
The Officers sought out potential buyers. “There was lots of interest, but it’s kind of indicative of the state of the industry. There’s reluctance to take on brands unless they can be had for a bargain,” said Officer. “We also wanted someone who really shared our passion for wine and old vineyards, and also someone who we felt was going to succeed going forward with the brand. Unfortunately, we came up empty on that search.”
A Winery Started in a Kitchen
Officer started making wine as a hobby in 1987, fermenting grapes in the kitchen of his apartment in San Francisco, before moving to Santa Rosa in Sonoma County in 1991, where he became a true garagiste. He went pro with the 1998 vintage, producing 650 cases. Since then, 21 Carlisle Zinfandels have earned classic scores of 95 points or higher on Wine Spectator’s 100-point scale. No other Zin producer has matched that achievement. (Five Carlisle Syrahs have also rated 95 points or above.)
One of the founders of the Historic Vineyard Society, a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of California’s historic vineyards, Officer specializes in single-vineyard, old-vine Zinfandel, predominantly from Sonoma County. His best-known bottlings include Papera, Pagani and Montafi ranches, as well as his own Carlisle Vineyard.
Ironically, Officer never wanted to be a farmer. He grew up on a farm in northern San Diego County, where his father grew tangelos and avocados, and he set off to study pre-med at Pomona College until he realized blood made him nauseous. He switched to computers. Even then he was interested in wine. “I was probably the only kid who kept a little wine cellar in his dorm room,” said Officer.
He was working as a software developer in the investment management industry when he launched Carlisle and for six years he commuted from Sonoma County to his job in San Francisco. He finally quit his programming job in 2004 to focus on the winery.
“Kendall and I wanted to be darn sure the winery thing was going to work out before we cut the ties to our full-time jobs,” he said “We also needed our jobs to provide capital to our business. Those were some tough years.”
Still a Boutique Operation
Approaching its 27th harvest, Carlisle has remained a small winery with only a handful of employees. Typically producing about 8,000 cases annually, the 2024 harvest will be significantly smaller for Carlisle, producing only about 2,700 cases from five vineyards: Mancini, Old Hill, Papa’s Black, Papera and Carlisle. The future of the Carlisles’ own 9.5-acre estate vineyard in Russian River Valley is up in the air. Officer might continue producing a bottling for a few more vintages—about 750 cases at the most—but it’s too soon to tell.
In the meantime, the Officers aren’t going away anytime soon. It will take two to four years to wrap things up and sell the last of their inventory. “We have no regrets,” said Officer. “Unlike an aging professional athlete that doesn’t know when it’s time to retire, I feel like we’re going out on top of our game. When I think about everything that I dreamed of doing in the wine industry and accomplishing, I feel like I’ve done that. I feel good about it.”
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