Marin County’s Gift of Wine
Because of its geographic location and topographic features, vineyards in Marin County are cooler than those of its bordering Sonoma and Napa Counties. As a matter of fact, Marin County’s climate and terrain resemble Burgundy, the famous wine country of Southern France, more than they do California. It is safe to claim that Marin County’s wine industry produces wines that easily complete with those produced in Burgundy.
Marin County’s chill factor allows for an extended grape growing season with the fruit hanging longer on their vines which yields higher quality grapes. Marin County’s wine industry celebrates wines with more balance, outstanding natural acidity and many varieties of its wines have lower alcohol levels (usually at under fourteen percent) than those produced in the wineries of the nearby wine country.
Marin County’s viticulture began when the vitis vinifera grapes were introduced at the same time as San Rafael Mission opened its door. Wisely, the residents of Marin County immediately recognized the value of their natural assets and their potentials. Seemingly overnight and regardless of their size, just about every family in Marin County began to cultivate small vineyards on their own plots
The vineyards that were started up by the San Rafael Mission to be used as therapeutic work for the Native Americans who did not take well to the Spanish rule were captured by General Mariano Vallejo. Vallejo promptly banned the Mission’s religious attachments, commended that the vineyards be dug out and replanted on his own property in the neighboring county of Sonoma. This action, of course, brought Marin County’s viticulture to a near standstill.
However, historians and researchers also claim that Marin County’s budding viticulture was set back when San Rafael Mission, which was originally established for the rehabilitation of those Native Americans who began wilting under the Spanish rule and who worked in the nearby vineyards, was taken over by General Mariano Vallejo who banished its religious affiliation and ordered the local vineyards to be uprooted and moved to his own property in Sonoma.
With twenty-five winemakers of today, the wine industry is slowly being resurrected in Marin County. In spite of their efforts and the first-rate wines they produce, Marin County’s wine industry is still being kept in the shadows cast by its gigantic neighbors, Napa and Sonoma Counties.
Today, Martin County’s wine industry is growing slowly but it still remains relatively small and keeps a low profile as it is continually being overshadowed by its next door neighbors, Napa and Sonoma Counties which are so well known throughout the world as masters over California’s wine country. Currently, a handful of Marin County winemakers, twenty five in all, are discreetly laboring to produce premium wines and to preserve that part of the Marin County’s rich history and culture. The Marin County Grape Growers Association has even been established and its members meet bi-monthly to discuss issues and t brainstorm about possible innovations and improvements in grape growing, in wine producing and in Marin County’s wine industry in general.
The fact is that Marin County has only 200 acres of vineyards and merely twenty-five wineries while Sonoma County has better than 40,000 acres and nearly 300 wineries and Napa County has 45,275 acres and 316 wineries. Those are facts indeed. But there is still one more fact that I would like to share with you and that fact is that Marin County had the extended growing season and produced the first-class cold-climate wines that Sonoma and Napa Counties could only dream about.
Leave a Comment