June 16, 2026 — Domaine Carneros shares with great sadness the passing of Eileen Crane, our founding winemaker, longtime CEO, and the woman who made Domaine Carneros what it is today.
Anyone who spent time with Eileen quickly understood that her gifts went well beyond the cellar. She had sharp wit and quiet conviction. She was elegant and tough in the same breath, a born optimist with endless creativity and a natural instinct for mentorship. She poured everything she had into her work, and into the people around her.
At eight years old, sitting at her family’s Sunday dinner table, she took her first sip of champagne and thought simply, “This is for me.” She never looked back. She earned a master’s degree in nutrition, trained at the Culinary Institute of America, and eventually made her way west to study enology and viticulture at UC Davis, where she was told outright by a male professor that a woman could never be a winemaker. She didn’t listen, and she kept going.
Her career reshaped American sparkling wine. After rising from tour guide to assistant winemaker at Domaine Chandon, she went on to build two prominent European sparkling wine houses in California, from the ground up, first at Gloria Ferrer, and then at Domaine Carneros, where the Taittinger and Kopf families entrusted her with launching their California sparkling wine house in 1987. Over 33 years as CEO, she led the winery with care and conviction.
From the start, the goal was Le Rêve, French for “the dream,” a Blanc de Blancs that she would later call her greatest triumph. She spent years developing the recipe, blending Chardonnay from the very best fruit of the vintage, finally landing on the blend with the 1992 vintage. To celebrate, Taittinger commissioned the ram’s head embossed bottle that has held the wine ever since. As Eileen described it, Le Rêve was meant to be “refined, understated elegance, nothing extraneous, everything brought together with a sense of effortless beauty. Think Audrey Hepburn in the little black dress.”
Eileen was a true steward of the land. She believed that caring for the earth was not separate from making great wine, it was the foundation of it. From the very beginning of her tenure in 1987, she championed sustainability in every corner of the winery, from the vineyards to the cellar to the way the operation was powered, long before such commitments were commonplace in the industry. She practiced natural pest management, composting, and water reuse. She was among the first winery leaders in California to embrace solar power, and when the array atop the pinot noir facility was installed in 2003, it was the largest on any winery in the world at the time. Years later, she led the build-out of a solar microgrid, the next step in renewable energy and resiliency, enabling the winery to keep running even when the power went out. Under her leadership, Domaine Carneros earned both the 2019 California Green Medal Business Award, one of only four wineries recognized annually, and certified sustainable status for the winery and vineyards. Her commitment to leaving the land better than she found it is one of the most enduring parts of her legacy.
Eileen’s vision for hospitality was as pioneering as her winemaking. Every visit was designed to be educational and immersive, guided by people who could tell the full story of the estate and the wines in the glass. She was among the first in California to build a wine club, creating a community of members who didn’t just buy the wine but belonged to the place. And she understood that great hospitality required great spaces. She opened the original château in 1987, one of the most recognizable wine country landmarks in California. In 2003, she added the pinot noir production facility and a dedicated wine club room, giving members a home at the estate. In 2018, she brought her vision full circle with the Jardin d’Hiver, a glass conservatory that became an instant landmark, a space as refined and alive as the wines she made.
Some of her most lasting work was on behalf of the women who came after her. A pioneer for women in the wine industry, she opened doors that had long been closed and then made sure others could walk through them. She took their calls, answered their questions, and gave them the guidance she hadn’t been offered herself. But to many of the women she mentored, she was simply the one who showed them it could be done. Author, wine educator and journalist Karen MacNeil dubbed her “the Doyenne of Sparkling Wine in America.”
Her influence ran just as deep inside Domaine Carneros. She set the standard for how the team works and how they treat each other, built an open-book culture, and instilled an expectation that never wavered: do the work well, and never lose sight of the people you serve.
“Eileen was Domaine Carneros,” said Erin Stauffer, Domaine Carneros’s chief sales and marketing officer who worked alongside Eileen for over fifteen years. “She built this place with her hands and her heart, and she shaped every one of us who had the privilege of working alongside her. Her standards live on in every bottle, every vine, every guest we welcome through these doors. We will miss her more than words can say.”
When commenting on Eileen’s vast contributions, Champagne Taittinger’s President Vitalie Taittinger shared on behalf of the Taittinger and Kopf families, “Forty-five years ago, when the Taittinger family embarked on creating Domaine Carneros, we knew that such an undertaking required a singular individual, someone capable of bringing together two cultures, two traditions and a shared pursuit of excellence. Eileen was that person. From the beginning, she understood that the ambition was not to reproduce Champagne in California, but to reveal the unique expression of Napa Valley. Under her leadership, Domaine Carneros became deeply rooted in its own terroir and identity. The wines spoke for themselves: excellence without imitation, authenticity without compromise. At a time when few women held leadership positions in the wine world, Eileen Crane opened a path. She forged her own way with determination, conviction and an unwavering commitment to excellence, and she showed what leadership could look like for future generations. Those who knew her will remember her high standards, her clarity of vision and the respect she inspired.”
Eileen retired as CEO in the summer of 2020 and continued on as consulting winemaker, never far from the place she made her life’s work. Throughout her career, she also gave generously of her time outside the winery, serving the Carneros Wine Alliance, OLE Health, Providence Community Health formerly Collabria Care, and Music in the Vineyards. She leaves behind a remarkable legacy, and a winery family that loved her.
Contributions to Communicare+OLE , Providence Community Health formerly Collabria Care or Music in the Vineyards in Eileen’s honor would be welcomed.
