Dan Karlsen - Winemaker & GM Talbott Vineyards
Dan Karlsen - Winemaker and GM Talbott Vineyards
Dan Karlsen is a renowned Chardonnay and Pinot Noir specialist, who brings three decades of winemaking, viticultural and management experience to his role as winemaker and general manager for Talbott Vineyards. Guiding the winery’s dedicated team, Dan champions a meticulous approach to farming, designed to coax the full potential from Talbott’s storied estate vineyards. In the winery, he combines technical skill and know-how with intuitiveness and artisan techniques to create benchmark Monterey County wines—wines that embody the lush elegance of Santa Lucia Highlands’ Sleepy Hollow Vineyard, and the compelling purity of Carmel Valley’s Diamond T Estate.
As the winemaker and general manager for Talbott, Dan’s passion for estate viticulture has helped to usher in a new era for Talbott’s legendary vineyards. From his belief in sustainable practices to a focus on meticulous pruning and vine homogeneity, Dan champions a vineyard-first approach to winemaking. In the winery, his comprehensive knowledge of both Old World and modern winemaking techniques has inspired a renaissance for the Talbott winemaking program. By emphasizing whole cluster pressing and cross-flow filtration for the Chardonnays, and warmer fermentations, punch downs and select amounts of new French oak for the Pinot Noirs, Dan is guiding a subtle stylistic evolution for Talbott—crafting wines that fuse the grace of cool-climate viticulture with the ripe, vibrant appeal of great California winemaking.