Delicato Family Vineyards

We are a family-owned winery with a rich history of farming grapes in California (since 1924)  and crafting superior quality wines (since 1935). We recognize that our family unity provides deep roots and values that keep us on course and focused on long-term growth, not short-term gains for Wall Street.

Our founder, Gaspare Indelicato came to America more than a century ago and planted a vineyard in Manteca, California. It reminded him of Sicily where his family had grown wine grapes for generations in Italy. With his three sons, he established a vineyard and winery while simultaneously building a solid reputation for making quality wines. Gaspare passed along a tireless work ethic and dedication to excellence to his sons, the second generation. They expanded the winery and purchased prime vineyard land, further rooting the family’s legacy in California wine.

Today, third generation family members run the company with the fourth generation in training to join their parents, aunts and uncles within the next few years.

“My grandfather Gaspare came to this country with nothing more than a dream. It took decades of hard work, but he was able to make that dream come true,” says Chris Indelicato, CEO and President of Delicato Family Vineyards. 

Quality is the overarching value and objective that drives our business. Our commitment to quality is evidenced in everything we do—with an unwavering goal to always exceed consumer expectations, at any price point.

We respect the land and believe that wine quality is derived from superior fruit. We act as long-term stewards of the land we farm. This sustainable philosophy favors natural over manmade controls and encompasses people, properties, practices and production. 

Delicato Family Vineyards is one of the fastest growing wine companies in the world, celebrating 90+ years of California winemaking and grape growing heritage. Family-owned and operated since the company’s founding in 1924, three generations of Indelicato family have fostered the winery’s commitment to innovation, quality and environmental stewardship – cornerstones that have harnessed the family’s long-term focus and solidified the winery as an internationally recognized leader in the industry.

Gaspare Indelicato planted his first vineyard on the family’s Manteca ranch nearly a century ago. He believed that farming his own grapes would give him the best chance at controlling the quality of his wines. Following that wisdom, we actively pursue great vineyards as the vital link to superior quality from the vine to the bottle. Today, 6,000 acres of thoughtfully farmed vineyards in diverse locations provide a unique quality advantage, allowing us to over-deliver and exceed expectations with every sip.

The Indelicato family's sustainable farming philosophy recognizes that growers are merely long-term stewards of the land they farm, and seeks ways to sustain the viability of the land they cherish. The Indelicato family favors natural over manmade controls and encourages biodiversity. With a large population of many different organisms, nature is able to create her own natural system of checks and balances, so that no single organism can grow sufficiently to cause economic harm.

The Indelicato family's stewardship has helped create a magnificent natural habitat that did not exist before at San Bernabe Vineyard. Among the full-time residents are wild boar, coyotes, rabbits, squirrels, gophers, badgers, deer, mountain lions, eagles, hawks, falcons, roadrunners, ducks, egrets, herons, doves, crows, starlings, vultures and a variety of fish.

The viticulturists at San Bernabe and Clay Station vineyards have developed specially-designed owl nesting boxes. These nocturnal predators hunt down and consume pesky rodents that damage tender young vines.

Native cover crops grow between the vine rows. These grasses and legumes harbor and encourage beneficial insects, which in turn prey upon insect pests. They also form a kind of organic carpet that minimizes dust in turn reducing harmful vine-snacking mites.

Delicato's San Bernabe Vineyard is a founding member of the Central Coast Vineyard Team, an organization formed by growers and University of California Extension specialists to identify and promote environmentally safe, viticulturally effective, sustainable farming practices. San Bernabe also supports and participates in the "Code for Sustainable Winegrowing Practices" promulgated jointly by the Wine Institute and California Association of Winegrape Growers.

Clay Station Vineyard proudly adheres to the Lodi Rules Program of Sustainability set forth by the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission.

The Lodi Rules program has two components: sustainable winegrowing practices standards (The Lodi Rules), and a Pesticide Environmental Assessment System (PEAS) that measures the environmental impacts of all pesticides, organic and synthetic, used in a vineyard during the year. To qualify for certification, a vineyard has to achieve a minimum number of sustainable farming practices points based on The Lodi Rules, and not exceed a maximum number of pesticide impact points calculated using PEAS.
– Source: Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission

The ultimate goal is to farm with as little impact on the environment as possible, and to ensure a healthy life cycle for all of the inhabitants of the vineyards. Every organism, beneficial or not, participates in the ecosystem at San Bernabe and Clay Station vineyards.

Wine quality starts in the vineyard, and a vineyard is first and foremost a living thing. Delicato Family Vineyards will always strive to farm with the health of the environment in mind, while still providing quality wines, mindfully farmed and vinified for our consumers.

Vineyard selection

• Family-owned and farmed vineyards in Napa Valley, Monterey and Lodi
• Farming matched to winemaking objectives and aligned with sustainability

Grape selection

• Our Winemakers and vineyard managers inspect the vineyards throughtout entire growing season to determine the optimal time to harvest each varietal by vineyard

Winemaking

• Winemakers complete sensory evaluations before we bottle, after we bottle, during library hold time, prior to release and following bottle age
• Wines are bottle aged to ensure that they are delicious at time of purchase
• Corks are subject to strict sensory evaluation and grading

Production

• Any employee may shut down the bottling line if anything is out of tolerance
• We validate and benchmark our own certified laboratory's analysis against independent third party laboratories
• Grapes are tracked from the vineyard source to the bottle through our proprietary software wine tracking systems
• Bottling lines are inspected by Quality Control for ten different attributes before it is allowed to run
• All packaging components can be traced to the supplier and the date of bottling which allows us to spot issues and deliver solutions