Vermentino Blend 2024 Martha Stoumen 'Post Flirtation'
45% Vermentino, 27% Roussanne, 19% Marsanne, 9% Muscat blanc · California · 1,000 cases
This refreshing blend tastes like vacation in a glass, here to combat all your lingering winter blues. Lively aromas of ocean air mingle with a squirt of lemon for a libation that’s begging for sunshine and seaside vacations.
This mineral driven wine gives off aromas of fresh ocean air, white pepper and kiwi. A beautifully light bodied wine that would complement a variety of foods from Dim Sum to oysters. At only 9.5% alcohol this wine is great from brunch to aperitif to dinner and after. Take me anywhere!
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.
After 8 years apprenticing around the world, Martha set out as a self-funded, first generation winemaker to answer the question, “What does California taste like?” In our hot little corner of Northern California, Mediterranean grapes thrive and healthy vineyards allow us to create joyful balanced wines. Our wines are made from unexpected varietals and offer new takes on California classics. We do things the right way even if it's not the easy or cool way. Of the nearly two dozen wines we make every year, blends and flavors change but our 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 us to farm 25% of our production.
Image: A vine unfurling during springtime at Bricarelli Ranch.
Wine is an agricultural product. Just as with food, highly processed wines contain additives to mask flavor deficiencies in the base ingredient: grapes. And poorly farmed grapes (read: cheap farming that’s bad for our soils) will always need this flavor boost. Why apply harmful pesticides and herbicides when we know this kills essential microbes in the soil, the very things that assists in plant nutrition and grape flavor? In the vineyard we farm for healthy soils and vine longevity rather than high yields. We allow predatory insects the ability to outcompete pests rather than spraying insecticides, and do proper handwork to ensure healthy grapes come into the cellar ready to make flavorful, honest wines.
Image: Larry Venturi (grower), Martha, Tim and sort through a bin of just-picked Carignan.
