Sea Cliff mansion’s $20M sale ranks second in resi price for 2023

The longtime Sea Cliff home of The Wine Group founder Arthur Ciocca sold for $20 million this week, the second-biggest sale in San Francisco so far this year. 

Ciocca and wife Carlyse have owned the oceanfront home with a heated pool in its front courtyard since the 1980s, according to property records. At 7,540 square feet, the five-bedroom, 6.5-bath with, of course, a wine tasting room, sold for about $2,650 per square foot. 

Cioccia, whose TWG is the second-largest wine company by volume in the country with mass-market brands such as Franzia, Cupcake and Chloe, died in December 2021. The home first listed for $32 million in September last year. The price dropped to $28 million in February and was in contract at about a 30 percent discount from that lowered price by early April. It closed less than two weeks later, indicating an all-cash deal. 

Agent Neal Ward of Neal Ward Properties at Compass held the listing.

“Many factors have changed in the marketplace since the listing hit the market,” agent Neal Ward of Compass said via email of the final sale price, which is second only to a $34.5M sale in Pacific Heights last month in top San Francisco deals. An $11 million penthouse sale is in third place, and also closed in April. 

“It now seems that buyers are re-engaging in the market versus what we saw this past fall and earlier in the year,” said Ward, who also represented the buyers on the penthouse deal.

Malin Giddings of Compass represented the unknown buyer of the Cioccas’ longtime home at 9 25th Avenue and did not reply to a request for comment. 

The 1941 ocean view bluff-top home had another famous longtime owner: Michael Taylor, the interior designer known for developing the “California look,” a popular midcentury style featuring neutral tones and open spaces. He owned the home from 1970 until his death in 1986, and is responsible for adding the heated courtyard pool, one of just a handful of private pools in the city. The south-facing courtyard has shell-themed sconces and is surrounded by walls and towering trees for privacy.

The Cioccas bought the property for $2.35 million in 1987, according to property records, and completed a down-to-the-studs remodel, using the same architects hired by Taylor, according to the listing notes. 

Even though the home needed work, Carlyse Ciocca told Mansion Global when the home first listed that the couple “bought it in 10 minutes after seeing it with no contingencies. That is how special it is.” 

The new owners of the three-level home may want to revamp it as well. Listing photos include some “virtually staged” versions of the home’s now-dated dining room, kitchen and living room. But the buyers also clearly saw the value in the home’s pre-war bones, large square footage, multiple unobstructed ocean view terraces and Sea Cliff location. 

“Despite the challenges presented by today’s economic landscape,” Ward said, the sale is an indication that luxury buyers “are keenly aware that properties of this caliber embody a rare and enduring legacy that cannot be replicated today.”