Marin's wine industry tiny but growing(3)
While many winemakers are looking to replicate the food-friendly, lower alcohol, leaner pinots of Burgundy, California is capable of producing juicy, fruit-forward, somewhat higher alcohol pinot noir and of harvesting at the right time to capture the fullest flavor of the grape.
The great houses of Burgundy are beginning to take notice. In 2003, the Boisset wine family of Burgundy's Côte de Nuits purchased DeLoach Vineyards. DeLoach, known for its Sonoma wines, partnered with landowners in Marin to produce a series of Marin pinot noirs and a chardonnay, released earlier this year.
DeLoach's winemaker Brian Maloney, originally from Tomales, affirms the Burgundy taste connection but sees a deeper connection to Sonoma Coast wines.
"Marin offers the same high quality — elegant and dense but not too heavy — as wines from farther up the coast," he says.
The comparisons to Sonoma and Burgundy will continue; these regions are far better known than Marin and offer an insight to the character and flavor inside a bottle of Marin-grown wine.
Growing wine grapes here continues to be a grand experiment. Known for its eponymous olive oil, the 550-acre McEvoy Ranch planted about 7 acres in grapes five or so years ago.
"We've got about a third in pinot, a third in syrah and a third in grenache, mourvedre, alicante bouschet and viognier," among others, says McEvoy's head gardener Margaret Koski-Kent. "We're experimenting."
The first grape harvest was in 2009, but McEvoy has not yet released any wines and it may be a few years before we are able to taste the fruits of its labor.
Goldfield calls making wine in Marin "high risk, high quality, high personality." This year's harvest was particularly difficult but that's no anomaly; because of the small amounts of wine produced and years whan there's little or no harvest, many Marin wines are sold only by the winery with a few available at local restaurants.
Marin growers are dedicating more acreage to wine grapes, diversifying their plantings and as a result, are attracting new winemakers. With 13 wineries now operating in Marin and Marin grapes used in more and more bottlings, Marin's wine footprint is still small but growing — more reason to drink local this holiday season.
