The Fizz #46: Martha Stoumen has seen California winemaking change for the better
In this issue, Martha Stoumen talks about the benefits of dry farming, the difficulties and joys of starting a wine business, and how she's seen California's industry change.
For this issue of The Fizz, I spoke with a winemaker many of you may already be familiar with—Martha Stoumen. Although I mostly focus on up and coming makers for this newsletters, it’s a joy to be able to speak with a winemaker who has many years of experience in the wine industry under her belt, to get her take on how the industry has changed in her time, and where she sees progress being made.
In this issue, we speak about the changing landscape of California’s wine industry, the difficulties and joys of making wine in a state with a challenging landscape—where both land/grape costs and excitement around wine are constantly increasing. Martha touches on her inspiration and experimentation, as well as her passion for sustainability and environmental stewardship.
[All photos in this issue are from Martha Stoumen’s Instagram, taken by Andy Lee.]
Margot: You grew up in Sebastopol and have been making wine in the region for quite some time. How have you seen the California wine industry change and grow for better or for worse in the time that you've been making wine?
Martha Stoumen: I started making Martha Stoumen wines in 2014, but I did have experience in California in the industry when I first was getting my start in wine. My first California internship was in 2007. I worked for a medium sized winery, non-natural winery, but they were an estate, so they grew all their fruit, which meant we got to engage with the viticulturist there.
There's two things to keep in mind at the top level when we're talking about California viticulture. One is that it's gotten increasingly more expensive. I wish I had a way to quantify it in terms of magnitudes, but even since I've started, the cost of my fruit, which includes labor in the vineyard, has almost doubled since 2014. In less than a decade, I’ve seen a one hundred percent increase. That seems noteworthy on the cost of land.
The other thing that's important to know, and this could be connected to the cost of farming in California, is that there's been a huge amount of consolidation across the landscape in terms of wineries. Going way back before Prohibition, you would see grape growers who farmed wine grapes but didn't make wine, and generally sold them to larger wineries. Prior to Prohibition, California was big business in terms of wine production.
A lot of the grapes would get transported down in rail car—the biggest winery in California at the time was in Richmond. Grapes would get shipped to Richmond, which created a sort of grape co-operative there. Not a co-op in the sense that it was worker-owned, but in that there were many many small growers bringing in grapes or wine, which was then made into blends. When you fast forward past Prohibition, you start seeing the growth of the estate model, which is fashioned more on Europe where people who own wineries also own their land and their vineyard.
Now we're moving towards more small producers like myself who've come onto the scene and who know that in California, unless we have family money or outside funding, we cannot buy land, and so we work with growers to purchase fruit.
There's things that I think about as a small producer—how to push the needle forward toward better farming practices when you're really teeny and you don't have much purchasing power. I think one way to do that is to make something that's really popular. There's this thing in the wine world where any sort of industry metric you read, people are like, “how are we ever going to attract millennials back to wine, or gen Z? And it's like, they all like wine! They just don't like this type of wine, wine that’s archaic in terms of farming practices.
Making a lot of noise in the space is one way to do it. Then also being supportive of other small winemakers and really trying to lift one another up almost creates a chorus, even though we all have slightly different practices and slightly different ways of doing things—it’s more in the same vein.
Margot: Definitely. Has there been much of a change in farming practices that you’ve noticed?
Martha: I do feel like everyone is more aware that they need to farm responsibly. Carbon has come into the equation in the last five years, and climate change has been part of the equation—not just, is it organic? What are you actually applying in the vineyard? What's your total carbon footprint?
Margot: Have folks asked you about your carbon footprint?
Martha: We have talked about it. I am small and have no way of actually getting that number right now but we're starting to look into tools. That's a goal for us this year is to at least get a little bit of an idea of what the carbon footprint is for us. Unless there's some sort of open source toolbox that we can find, we won't know that really, unless we hire a pricey consultant.
I do see a lot of collaboration happening. There's a place called Paicines Ranch, south of San Francisco, and they have implemented some interesting systems that I've worked with in Europe, where there's absolutely no till, and there's no tractor work. The vines are trellised in such a way that they can have year-round sheep in the vineyard. I think they have the resources to be the test site for some of these regenerative practices, which is cool.
The smaller producers—we don't have that many resources at our disposal. There are people who do have a lot of resources in wine, cause it's both an interest for people in terms of the business, and an interest in terms of a larger hobby. Those people who are looking at it as not needing to necessarily make a return on their investment, and have an eye towards sustainable practices are doing some interesting things. I think some of that research that they do or their little test sites could potentially be applied to grapes, and to other perennial woody crops, like orchards.
Margot: How do you see your alignment in the work that you do with wine-making and farming as a part of agriculture?
Martha: What drew me to the type of winemaking that I do, which is very minimal intervention, has to do with the fact that as I became more interested in this type of winemaking and low intervention farming, I felt like the wines were so much more evocative of place and culture. I had studied environmental studies before I became a winemaker. There was no resistance to choosing this philosophy for me, because the wines taste amazing. I think they're more evocative of place, and that it’s better for the earth.
A lot of people misconstrue natural winemaking for being better for the planet or better for your body. While there may be slight advantages to natural winemaking in terms of those two lenses, I really do it more for the fact that I think it shows place and culture a little bit more.
It's a very clear conduit to what the farming practices are—there’s nothing really to hide behind. It's about bringing us back to a certain level of quality.
Margot: You farm some of your land yourself. What have you learned or has there anything surprising about growing grapes?
Margot: I'm trying to tease out what extreme weather events are climate change related. I leased vineyards in an area that's actually got a really deep wine growing history in California around Ukiah, in Mendocino county. I contract fruit from areas that are very close-by to the vineyard that I lease.
I work with a fifth generation grape farmer who helps me with the vineyard that I lease, and I purchased fruit from his vineyard and a few other third, fourth generation farmers. I’ve asked them what seems normal and what doesn't. I have been surprised by how difficult things are year to year. Obviously yields go up and down—that's a normal thing, that's expected, but I have noticed that instead of making decisions about fruit flavor—could we get it a little riper, more nuanced things like that—it’s more of do we have to harvest all the fruit now because the vine is going to collapse because it has no water and it's a major drought? The decisions feel more high stakes, and with more risk.
Luckily when I started making wine, I really wanted to be able to have a lot of creative freedom, so I didn't use the traditional method of having single vineyard, single varietal wines which are the same every year. I tried to prime people for the fact that the wines would change and the blends might change. I wanted creative freedom myself, but I also wanted freedom in terms of making natural wines. I know that they're more variable. Instead of using additives, you need tools, like blending in the cellar, that can be really helpful. I'm really glad I did that because I feel like that's only becoming more the case with the way that farming is going now.
It's definitely highly variable. When we have to harvest, like last year, we had to harvest our Negroamaro when it was still quite tart, just because the vines were suffering so much. We traded the perfect ripeness that we wanted last year for better vine health long term.
Margot: That makes sense. Those are tough choices that you're kind of forced into making. You mentioned the vines were under stress from drought. I know that dry farming is something that's really important to you. Can you talk about why that's important for overall vineyard health?
Martha: I felt a similar kind of draw towards dry farming as to making natural wine, where knowing that I grew up in California and the messaging I've gotten my entire life is that water is a scarce resource here. It has become more scarce as California has become more populated. That alarm has only been dialed up more. From an environmental perspective, I felt like it was my duty to dry farm as much as possible. We do have a few vineyards that are irrigated that I contract from, but the vineyards that I lease—they're all dry farmed. Most of the vineyards we contract are dry farmed.
It's a much harder path. You really have to do it with intention. It's much easier to plan on dry farming from the minute you plant your vineyard, rather than convert an existing vineyard to dry farming, knowing that yields are going to be lower and potentially erratic depending on water and the winter rains.
It's important to also build that into your business model, to make sure that you have a really sustainable cashflow because of the fact that your yields are going to vary greatly. But on the other hand, dry farming, is more of a long-term approach. So a conventional irrigated vineyard, they say the lifespan is 30 years on that vineyard. That's when you can expect to replant it, which is very costly.
Not having to replant vineyards every 30 years—that's really appealing to me, not only from a financial and work perspective, but from a flavor perspective.
The fruit that I purchase from vineyards where the vines are in their seventies is just incredible. It makes my job as a winemaker so much easier, because everything feels in balance. I feel like usually picking those vineyards is a little more relaxed, too. It's not just under ripe or overripe over the course of 24 hours. Studies have shown that the flavor compounds are actually different because the vines are going deeper into the soil and soil profiles are not homogenous. You get organic matter on the top. Then the further down roots go, they usually go into more mineral rock layers.
Dry farmed vineyards have very deep roots that go into different parts of the soil profile that irrigated vineyards just don't have.
Margot: There's something to say about, and I realize this is very romantic, but it’s not just the economic advantage of not replanting your vineyards every 30 years, and the flavor advantage of having more delicious, great material, but there’s also the history, right? The value of the history of these old vines.
Martha: Yeah, it's amazing. Every time I go out and help harvest one of my favorite vineyards, Ricetti, I think about the Ricetti family coming back from World War II and starting a vineyard. I think about the people who tended these vines and cared for them who now have passed on, and how now we’re getting to work with this same fruit and put our energy into making this wine. It's very, very special.
Margot: That is amazing. I feel like when I talk to winemakers in the United States, they either go through the UC Davis route or through the learn on the job route, and you've kind of done it both ways. Folks who are excited about going into winemaking, some kind of eschew the academic route for more on the job learning, which I completely understand, and is totally valid. What have you brought with your academic background into the work that you're doing today that you wish other people would take the time to learn?
Martha: I believe in the idea that wines made with low to no sulfur or without filtration or without sterilizers or stabilizers can really age very beautifully and very gracefully. But I do think there is a bit of science behind that.
You can learn this in many different places, but having a deeper understanding of grape chemistry and how the composition of naturally found compounds in grapes actually lend themselves to stability, and what environment they make for microbes is really important. What microbes will flourish and which ones won't—a lot of this is just pH chemistry. I think it's really important to understand that having lower pH is and natural acidity is just hugely beneficial to the longevity of wines. They also are more delicious with food in my opinion.
Being able to have extra loops in your tool belt is really helpful, and I think having the education helped me with that a lot. Also with grape-growing, I think having a pretty fleshed out map of what the current industry is in California helped me figure out ways where I could be different or push that envelope.
It’s kind of like going to art school—you learn all the techniques in order to be able to later break them. Going to school for winemaking is difficult. It takes money. So there's that whole piece of the puzzle. I don't think any one way is better. I know sometimes when I'm paying off my student loans [laughs], I definitely think about it!
Margot: I definitely feel that. You have many different wines in your portfolio, and you have these classics that you make year after year. How do you look at experimentation in your wine making process, and where do you find that snap of inspiration?
Martha: I think primarily it comes from the base material. If I'm out in the vineyard and I see something that's happening, that feels a little bit different than normal, I take note of that. I think of grapes in more elemental forms—tannin and acidity, juiciness, rather than like, oh, this one tastes like raspberry or fruitiness—more general terms. Sometimes I feel inspired just like when you’re cooking, improvising based on the ingredients you have.
For instance, the Nero d’Avola Rosato that we make came into being because in 2017, another drought year, the acidity was really, really high in the vineyard—it's already a high acid site. I thought, okay, if we make this into a red wine, which has tannin in it—tannin and acidity dial each other up in your mouth—then I'm going to have to age this red wine for maybe five years or something before I release it. I'll do a little bit of that, but I'm also gonna try to make a Rosato.
Let's foot tread it and let it soak on the stems, because that will help increase the pH and decrease the perceived acidity. Those are techniques that I learned in school. It ended up making a darker rosé, which was totally fine. I later read online that that is actually a traditional technique in Italy, after I'd done it [laughs]. You're never really reinventing the wheel in winemaking! Just listening to the base ingredients is inspirational.
I worked in the Mosel and every day we'd be basically picking grapes from sunrise to sunset. The vineyards are up on these steep terraces, everything has to be carried out in backpacks—there were no tractors in the vineyard. After that, we would take all the little crates with botrytised fruit and sort through them berry by berry. Learning about botrytis, and when it had good flavors, when it had bad flavors and what was mid grade.
Years later, there was a little bit of botrytis in the French Colombard vineyard that I get. I decided to keep it. It's not recommended to put the botrytis in still wines, but I think a little bit adds a beautiful flavor and that's something I learned when I was working with Riesling in Germany. A totally different region and grape, but I was inspired by that experience.
Margot: That’s awesome. You have worked in many different places all over the world. What do you see as unique in the wine industry in the United States?
Martha: Yeah, that's a great question because admittedly, when I was younger, I poo-pooed on the US wine industry a little bit. In some ways, Europe still represents this long unbroken culture of winemaking, and I think there's a lot to learn there. There's also a lot of baggage that comes along with that uninterrupted culture. I think the greatest benefit that we have in the states, culturally and bureaucratically, is that we can grow whatever we want wherever we want.
In Europe there are caps on how much you can produce, how many grapes you can actually grow, and usually what you can grow and how you grow it. If you're in a very strict wine region—if you make Barolo, for instance, there's so many certain things you have to do in the winemaking process to adhere to that winemaking style. I imagine it would be limiting to how creative you can be and how much you can actually listen to the grapes that year.
These things are rapidly developing. More grapes are now allowed to be put into our Bordeaux, for example. France in certain areas has just allowed hybrid grapes to be able to be put into wine, which is crazy because when I export wines to Europe, they actually have to be laboratory tested to make sure that they don't have any hybrid grapes in them. It’s so, so strict, whereas here we can put other fruit in our wine if we want to. We can do whatever we want.
We have a lot more restrictions to how we sell wine once it is made, but in terms of making it, it feels really wide open. There are financial hurdles to make wine in California, though. It's a constant struggle to be totally honest. But you don’t have to have an estate. If you have the excitement here in California, and a lot of determination, then I think you can make wine here, which feels really exciting to me.
Margot: What are those financial hurdles that you struggle with?
Martha: Sometimes I feel like a hamster on a really heavy wheel. Once you get the wheel going, it's a little bit easier, but when you first start out making wine—the investment you need to make before you ever sell anything, it's pretty huge. Just as an example, when I first made wine in 2014, and maybe I chose the wrong style, I made a sparkling wine, which took forever to age and was a lot more work. You have to purchase the grapes or purchase the land and grow the grapes, which is costly. Equipment is costly, even if you're buying used bottom of the barrel equipment and really using most of your own brute force to make the wine, renting hand crank machines and things like that.
Then you have to either have a facility to age the wine or pay to age the wine in someone else's facility, pay for bottles, which are not cheap, all the packaging, and then you sell it either to a distributor—which usually on their terms, they don't pay you for 30 to 90 days until after they've purchased it. This is many years until you actually see any money coming back in. All the licensing and permitting have costs attached. In the meantime, you're trying to make more wine to build up your stock.
Margot: Did you take loans or did you get investment?
Martha: Speaking of UC Davis, I got pretty good student loans, and I was a teaching assistant. I did enough assisting to get my tuition paid for, but I already had those loans. I just maxed out my student loans and got a decent amount of scholarship money. That was very helpful. I think I put $4,000 into the business when I first started it, which is like, laughable. Some friends put in a little bit of their money.
Like I said, search for basically almost broken equipment. A friend's parents had a big basement. We went through the process of bonding that with the state so we could make alcohol in the basement, and we literally shoveled grapes through a big water pipe down into the basement and then shoveled them into different containers and foot tread them. It was a lot of work. From there, I worked as an assistant winemaker during the day and worked at wine bars at night to try to keep money coming in a little bit.
It was really hard those first few years. I also lived in a closet basically, which was fine. I mean, I was excited to do it. It was all for a reason. I had an end goal in sight. Then once I started selling wine in 2017, I felt like I had like a clear proof of concept. I looked for investment and I did end up selling off about 18% of my business in order to get a little more funding. I could make more wine and then quit my day job.
I think that's another reason to have a lot of experience winemaking—then you're not fooled into thinking that you really need a lot of fancy equipment in order to make good wine. We do not need a state-of-the-art facility in order to make good wine. I mean, it is nice to have. It certainly is nice. As I get older, I definitely want to lean on technology a little bit more. My body's tired.
Margot: How has the perception of natural winemaking changed in California?
Martha: I feel like the industry has come such a long way, even in such a short period of time. That's been really exciting for me to see. I feel like I'm already seeing many more waves of people coming in making this style of wine, and really trying to build on the fact that grapes can be grown differently than they have in the past, more in harmony with nature. When I first started making wine this way, I’d get comments from industry veterans who would say natural winemaking is terrible, the consumer is not ready. All of this resistance. I can't believe you're not going to make Pinot or Cabernet—all of these comments. We need to give consumers more credit. People are so ready to experience different things.
Margot: I absolutely agree. Thank you so much for your time today. I’m really excited to continue to drink your wines and see all of your inspirations come to life in future bottles.
You can support Martha by buying her wines, and joining her amazing wine club. Follow her on Instagram here.
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