Marin County's Extended Growing Season

From a topographic standpoint, Marin County is situated in just the right geographic location to reap the benefits of lower summer temperatures and more winter precipitation than its immediate neighbors to its north, Sonoma and Napa counties. Combining such weather patterns along with its terrain and rich fertile soils, Marin County's grape-growing season is extended beyond its neighbors because the fruit take longer to ripen. This results in a wide variety of wines that are more balanced, have a superb natural tang and maintain a lower alcohol level, usually under fourteen percent.

Because of its awesome landscape, its irregular climate, its viticultural tendencies and the high quality wines its wine industry produces due to its extended growing season, Marin County has been said to be much more similar to Burgundy, the world renowned giant of French wine country, than it is to Sonoma and Napa, the wine country of Northern California. And like Burgundy, Marin County produces the elegant Merlots, the Pinot Noirs and the Riesligs.

Marin County's viticulture began when the vitis vinifera grapes were introduced at the same time as San Rafael Mission opened its door. Wisely, the residents of Marin County immediately recognized the value of their natural assets and their potentials. Seemingly overnight and regardless of their size, just about every family in Marin County began to cultivate small vineyards on their own plots.

The vineyards that were established by the San Rafael Mission and worked by the local Native Americans were soon snatched by General Mariano Vallejo who first banished religion and than had the vineyards pull up and moved to his own lands in Sonoma County.

Vallejo's actions and the Prohibition in the 1920s significantly slowed the budding wine industry of Marin County but what truly brought it to a full stop was the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937. With Marin County being conveniently reached via the new Golden Gate Bridge, all eyes turned away from its vineyards to its lands and housing.

With twenty-five winemakers of today, the wine industry is slowly being resurrected in Marin County. In spite of their efforts and the first-rate wines they produce, Marin County's wine industry is still being kept in the shadows cast by its gigantic neighbors, Napa and Sonoma Counties.

The Marin County Grape Growers Association has helped by encouraging and motivating its members to persist with their industrial endeavors. They meet every other week to acquire news about the industry, to brainstorm, to discuss and to inspire.

The fact is that Marin County has only 200 acres of vineyards and merely twenty-five wineries while Sonoma County has better than 40,000 acres and nearly 300 wineries and Napa County has 45,275 acres and 316 wineries. Those are facts indeed. But there is still one more fact that I would like to share with you and that fact is that Marin County had the extended growing season and produced the first-class cold-climate wines that Sonoma and Napa Counties could only dream about.