Marin County Wine Industry

Due to its geographic location and topographical features, Marin County vineyards are colder than those of the neighboring Sonoma and Napa counties. In fact, the climate and terrain of Marin County are more like Burgundy, the famous wine country of southern France, than California. It’s safe to say that the Marin County wine industry produces wines that easily complement those produced in Burgundy.

Marin County’s chill factor allows for an extended grape growing season with the fruit hanging longer on your vines, producing higher quality grapes. The Marin County wine industry celebrates wines with more balance, outstanding natural acidity, and many varieties of their wines have lower alcohol levels (typically below fourteen percent) than those produced in wineries in the wine region. close.

Marin County is endowed with a mix of soils that has just the right amount of fertility and nutrients to support the vines, its unique terrain and weather patterns give the Marin County wine industry great potential to produce a wide range of wines, particularly fresh ones. climatic varieties that include the most elegant Pinot Noir, Riesling and Merlot.

According to various historical accounts, vitis vinifera grapes were introduced to Marin County when the San Rafael Mission was built in 1817. Local residents soon realized that the county’s very rugged winters and extremely arid summers, the good Variety of fertile soils, varied topography, and plenty of California sunshine made it an ideal place to grow wine grapes. Soon enough, almost all the resident families cultivated a small vineyard on their land.

However, historians and researchers also claim that Marin County’s budding viticulture was delayed when Mission San Rafael, which was originally established for the rehabilitation of Native Americans who began to wither under Spanish rule and who worked in nearby vineyards, was taken over by General Mariano Vallejo, who banished his religious affiliation and ordered that local vineyards be uprooted and moved to his own property in Sonoma.

Marin County’s wine industry was further frustrated by the Prohibition era of the 1920s and the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937 moved Marin County’s economic focus away from wine to focus on real estate and the housing market.

Today, Martin County’s wine industry is growing slowly, but it is still relatively small and low profile, as its next-door neighbors Napa and Sonoma counties, which are so well known around the world As teachers in California’s wine country, they continually overshadow it. . Currently, a handful of Marin County winemakers, twenty-five in all, are quietly working to produce premium wines and preserve that part of Marin County’s rich history and culture. The Marin County Grape Growers Association has even been established and its members meet every other month to discuss issues and brainstorm possible innovations and improvements in grape growing, wine production and in the Marin County wine industry in general.

With a rough estimate of 200 acres of vineyards in Marin County vs. In the more than 40,000 acres in Sonoma County, Marin County’s wine industry may not have the quantity, but they certainly have the quality.

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