Martha Stoumen Young Vines Red

About Martha Stoumen Young Vines Red

Martha Stoumen Young Vines Red shows a juicy nose of wild blackberry, baking spice, and ancho chili — everything you want Zinfandel to smell like, but it rarely does. The splash of Vermentino gives white peach and citrus zest. A generous body balanced by moderate acidity and characteristically dusty tannins (Venturi Vineyard’s signature).

About Martha Stoumen

Martha Stoumen Wines was founded upon the desire to recapture a farming and winemaking culture that has all but faded away: a winemaking culture of patience. She grows grapes and crafts natural wine in Northern California. After 8 years of apprenticing around the world, Martha set out as a self-funded, first-generation winemaker to answer the question, “What does California taste like?” In her little corner of Northern California, Mediterranean grapes thrive and healthy vineyards allow Martha to create joyful balanced wines. The wines are made from unexpected varietals and offer new takes on California classics.

Martha does things the right way even if it’s not the easy or cool way. Of the dozen or so wines she makes every year, blends and flavors change but her desire to share the simple pleasures of natural wine remains the same. When Martha founded the company in 2014, she started by exploring warm and breezy regions that allow for natural farming. She was thrilled to find a handful of dedicated farmers, primarily growing Mediterranean grapes in the Ukiah area of Mendocino County, Contra Costa County, and Suisun Valley. She has been making wine from their fruit and laughing with them ever since. Martha also found two traditionally planted, head-trained, dry-farmed vineyards that she now leases, allowing her to farm 25% of the winery’s production.

Martha’s main goal is to create complex, delicious wines, and, simple as it sounds, the best way to do this is by using complex, delicious grapes. Healthy grapes contain every ingredient necessary to make wine. Each berry contains sugar and acid in the pith, tannin in the skin and stems, and a rich bloom of yeast and bacteria on the clusters. She embraces the idea that wine is an agricultural product, and no two wines should taste the same. Instead of using a single commercial yeast species, Martha embraces native fermentations and the many flavors a diversity of microbes bring to her wines.

In the cellar, she strives to create the conditions for the natural process of fermentation to thrive. Rather than trying to tightly control the transition from grapes to wine from within the juice, she prepares with a rigorous cellar cleaning. From there Martha intimately monitors every fermentation. Everyone in the winery works with their hands, feet, and human energy to bring these wines to life, and are energized by this process. Harvest heals, excites, inspires, and connects Martha’s team every year.