Billy Norris on the 2024 Santa Lucia Highlands Vintage

In his newly released regional report, Billy Norris of Vinous explores a Santa Lucia Highlands vintage that initially appeared almost unusually normal.

After several years marked by extremes, the 2024 growing season began with replenished soils, healthy vines and a relatively moderate summer. Yet beneath that outward calm, the vintage was developing a character of its own. Across the appellation, berries were notably small, with especially thick skins. A brief late-August heat spell was followed by an unusually cold stretch in September, temporarily slowing ripening before harvest accelerated again toward the end of the month.

At ROAR, the season culminated in an unusually compressed harvest. As Gary Franscioni shared with Norris, all varieties were picked over four weeks, compared to the six to eight weeks harvest would typically span.

“These things tend to happen in a warmer vintage, but 2024 was not exceptionally warm,” Gary told Norris. “For a vintage that seemed so normal, it actually was a little unusual when you think about it.”

That contrast is reflected in the wines. Norris describes the 2024s at ROAR as “successful across the board,” with special attention given to a Chardonnay collection defined by texture, energy and vivid vineyard expression. The Pinot Noirs are deeper, more powerful and more structured than usual, reflecting the distinctive shape of the vintage.

Norris singled out the Sierra Mar Vineyard Chardonnay as the finest Chardonnay he has tasted from the Franscioni family and Winemaker Scott Shapley, praising its energy, minerality and vivid expression. Across the Chardonnay collection, the wines balance breadth and richness with the natural freshness of the Santa Lucia Highlands.

The Pinot Noirs reveal another dimension of 2024. Norris found the Sierra Mar Vineyard Pinot Noir to be one of the standouts of the vintage, while the Pisoni Vineyard Pinot Noir showed depth, polish and a distinct sense of place. The Garys’ Vineyard Pinot Noir, more restrained in its youth, reflects the structure and long-term promise that define many of the vintage’s strongest wines.

“The 2024 whites from ROAR have reached new heights and are on equal footing with the finest Chardonnays being produced anywhere in California.”

Billy Norris, May 2026

Ultimately, Norris presents 2024 as a vintage shaped not by obvious extremes, but by the precision required in farming and harvest decisions in a Fall harvest season that unfolded in distinct phases. In those conditions, the details of farming and timing became especially clear in the finished wines. At ROAR, the vintage yielded Chardonnays of texture, freshness and energy, alongside Pinot Noirs of depth, structure and ageability.

Vinous Full Report