Grape Pomace & Must
Fall weather has been beautiful in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The harvesting of grapes that were delayed due to mid-October’s rains are now steadily coming in. The Martins are pressing out juice from Syrah grapes and making room for harvest of the Estate Cabernet grapes soon to be coming in. Therese is seen here shoveling out the remainder of the must from the initial fermentation process. The must will go to press once again to retrieve the remaining juice to add to barrel for the final fermentation process. The leftover must, called pomace, is added to the compost pile and is later added back to the Martin Ranch Winery vineyards for soil nutrients.
A Short History of the Wine Press
Pressing the grapes through a wine press creates the final “juice” that goes into the barrel. The Martins use a modern wine press that is run on electricity and efficiently presses the grapes dry without damage to the skins of the grapes. This process limits the excess tannin that could be released from breakage of the skins and seeds into the juice. Since the wine making process has been around, various types of wine presses have been in existence. In ancient times, wine was pressed through a stomping process. Yes, folks would use their feet and body weight to extract the juice! Later wine presses were wooden screw types, bladders and continuous screw variations. Fortunately, today’s wine presses are clean, efficient and less damaging to the overall quality of the juice that eventually becomes award winning wine.
October has been an interesting month weather wise. The Santa Cruz Mountains Appellation experienced pleasant weather throughout the beginning part of the month. The grapes were ripening on time, the sun was shining and slight breezes were blowing. Then on October 13th, a huge storm hit the Santa Cruz Mountains! And it turns out, this storm was a “real” storm, some even call it a gullywasher. The Martin Ranch received 11 inches of rain in one day! Never, it’s being said, has California experienced a storm this big, this early in the rainy season, according to the T.V. weatherman. The pond filled rapidly, and Dan & Therese donned rain suits and rubber boots to brave the stormy conditions and monitor the road and vineyard soils. Fortunately, no damage was done, however, harvesting of the Estate grapes is on hold. The grapes have absorbed quite a bit of water, and that has reduced the brix (sugar) count. Now, the team is waiting for the brix count to climb back up to harvestable levels. It looks like harvest will continue well into November.
Harvest continues even though the rain has set picking back a bit! Dan Martin and David, the Cellar Master, are finishing up pressing Zinfandel grapes from Madeline Vineyard. The grapes were picked on October 10th and October 23rd, the grapes were pressed after fermentation was complete. The pressed grapes then go to barrel. The 2007 Therese Vineyards Madeline Vineyard Zinfandel, from the Santa Clara Valley, was a delicious and zesty Zin, possessing layers of berry jam and hints of pepper, with a luscious finish of subtle oak tannin nuances. The Martin Ranch Winery is looking forward to sharing the exciting 2009 Zinfandel.
The Martin Ranch Winery is proud to be the featured and participating winery at the “Farm to Table” Dinner Series hosted at the lovely 
Recently, the Martin Ranch Winery became a Certified Wildlife Habitat with the 
Our year round pond is host to many diverse aquatic, bird and wildlife visitors. Just the other day, Dan and David saw 2 Bald Eagles flying over the lower vineyard! That was very exciting, as Eagles are fish eating raptors, and the pond certainly supplies large fish for them to feed on. Blue Herons are also seen frequently hunting on the top feeding fish in the pond.
Dinner at Cafe Cruz in Santa Cruz is always an enjoyable and delicious dining experience. 
Martin Ranch Winery is proud to announce that 
Wine Enthusiast Magazine and Wine Enthusiast Online is conceived and executed by a team of 
The Martin Ranch Winery is deep in the heart of harvest. Picking of the Estate Cabernet Sauvignon grapes has begun. The weather is turning cool and their is a threat of rain in the near future, so it is important to get the grapes picked and crushed as soon as possible. Therese is calculating the Brix count daily to determine which vineyard gets picked next.
Once the grapes have finished initial fermentation in the large stainless steel tank, the “free run” juice is then pumped over into the press to make a final pressing before the juice goes into the smaller tanks for malolactic fermentation. After all the juice has been pumped out, the remaining product left in the tank is called pumice. This is end result of the fermented grapes and skins. The pumice goes one more time through the press to release any remaining juice. The final dry pumice then goes into the compost pile which will get spread back into the vineyard in the early spring.
The tool that Therese uses to determine the Brix, is called a 
One of Santa Cruz County’s local papers, The Good Times, has featured the Martin Ranch Winery as the “..Homegrown Wine Pick of the Week,” in the October 8th edition. Josie Cowden, wine and food critic for the Good Times and the Santa Cruz Sentinel, attended the annual Martin Ranch Wine Club BBQ held in August, and wrote a nice review of the winery and how she enjoyed the J.D. Hurley 2008 Sauvignon Blanc. She mentioned most of the Martin Ranch wines that won in recent wine competitions and cited how popular the winery is. It is very exciting for the Martin Ranch wines to be recognized and enjoyed by local wine reviewers. Thank you Josie!
The Martin Ranch Winery was open this past weekend for the Santa Clara Valley Wineries Passport weekend. The weather cooperated nicely and we had beautiful, cool, fall temperatures and skies. Folks from the Santa Clara Valley were able to enjoy the Martin Ranch wines and to see the Winery during harvest. We had a nice turnout of friendly people and look forward to the next Santa Clara Valley Passport.
Harvest is in full swing at the Martin Ranch Winery! The crush continues with Syrah grapes grown by a local Santa Clara Valley vineyard called 
Once the de-stemmed grapes go into the fermentation tanks, one of the daily tasks is to punch the grapes down. This is done several times per day in order to keep the grapes wet and to make sure all the color leaches from the skins to give the red wine it’s characteristic deep red color. After the grapes finish primary fermentation, they are then run through a press and into smaller stainless steel tanks to finish the 
Since the late 1800’s, the 
The team at Martin Ranch Winery was on hand to pour several of their award winning wines at the local 
The unusually cool weather of spring and summer 2009 gave our garden a bit of a slow start this year, but the vegetables are starting to come in! The 
The Winery has begun harvest of local Santa Clara Valley Appellation Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from the Dos Rios Vineyard located at the end of Redwood Retreat Rd. The location of the vineyard has some very 
The Martin Ranch Winery is excited to announce the release of Therese Vineyards 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon from the Dos Rios Vineyards. This is a fabulous and delicious wine and is a Double-Gold winner from the San Francisco International Wine Competition 2009. 
The Martin Ranch Team was proud to pour their award winning wines Saturday at the 
The season’s final “Bottle Your Own” event is Sept 26th and 27th. Make sure and 
On Friday night, the Martin Ranch team along with wine club members and several other folks, set sail aboard the 
Throughout the summer months, the Chardonnay II offers 
And so, harvest has begun! We are starting out the harvest season with 3 tons of Sauvignon Blanc grapes grown locally here, right down Redwood Retreat Rd. Two tons are coming from Denise Vineyards and one ton is coming from Madrone Vineyards. We pressed the grapes on Thursday, and they are now in a large stainless steel tank going through a slow cold fermentation process. The temperatures in the tank are between 55º and 60º and the juiced Sauvignon Blanc grapes will go through the cold fermentation process for about 3 weeks and then will remain in the stainless steel tanks for a few months. Then we will transfer the wine into neutral barrels for several months to give the wine a hint of oak. We love the Sauvignon Blanc wine chilled in the summer months and look forward to a great 2009 wine!
We are excited to be selling our wine at several 
The fabulous and fun “Bottle Your Own” event is back! We filled up fast when we offered the Bottle Your Own last May, and we are now filling up fast for the event to be held September 26th & 27th. This is a really fun way to experience the bottling and labeling process and to be able to bring home some delicious wines at great prices. 
David, our Cellar Master and the Martin Ranch Winery team have been busy filtering and bottling wine. This last batch we filtered and bottled, is a J.D. Hurley 2007 Zinfandel. This Zinfandel is a blend from 4 vineyards. Filtering the wine is a process that takes time and thoroughness. The Zinfandel fermented in oak barrels for 21 months before the filtering process began. We then took the wine from the barrels and pushed it through coarse filters, into a stainless steel tank to create one blend of wine. Then from the stainless steel tank, we pushed the blended wine through a much finer filter back into another stainless steel tank and is ready to bottle. The wine will be bottled on Monday and stored until the release date. Looking forward to sharing this tasty Zinfandel with everyone in the future.
At the wine club BBQ last weekend, we had over 400 wine club members, guests and staff all eating delicious BBQ food. We were really excited to present the food on completely biodegradable picnic ware. The picnic ware was purchased through 
