Andre Tchelistcheff considered Louis M. Martini — along with Herman Wente of Livermore Valley fame, and Laurence Marshall, pioneer in bringing winegrowing to Lodi — one of the three “apostles of the modern California wine industry.” Martini was a founder of the Wine Institute in 1934, who ten years later spearheaded the Napa Valley Vintners Assn. to be hailed as “the grand old man of Napa Valley wines.” He was the first winery to install mechanical refrigeration for white wine fermentation, introduce vintage labeling, and emphasize varietal winemaking. The Martini brand and its full-line palette of wines equated with excellent value, and Louis Martini Winery became one of the most famous and beloved wineries in Napa Valley.
When Louis Michael Martini (1887–1974) came to St. Helena in 1933 to establish his new winery and open the premium-wine winemaking chapter in his life, he was already a twenty-seven-year veteran of the industry. In 1900, at age twelve, young Louis M. Martini was sent by his mother from his seaport home in Italy to America to help his father, Agostino, in his thriving business harvesting and selling fresh fish, clams, and mussels, and making and selling wine in the local San Francisco neighborhoods. They built a small winery, 40′ x 75′, behind their home and sold their wine by the gallon. At age nineteen, he went back to Italy for eight months of formal winemaking instruction at the enology school at Alba, returning to San Francisco in time for the family’s 1907 vintage. Later, at a leased vineyard in the East Bay, he and his father made commercial wine between 1911 and 1918. He worked at the large Guasti Vineyards operation in Cucamonga. In 1922, Martini went to Kingsburg, in the San Joaquin Valley.
L. M. Martini Grape Products, Kingsburg, San Joaquin Valley – c1938
On a seven-acre tract in Kingsburg, this large, sprawling winery-distillery plant was built in 1902 by the Italian-Swiss Colony — with a million-gallon capacity, it was the biggest the company owned. The distillery, the largest in the valley, could easily take care of 5,000 tons of grapes. As a member of the California Wine Association, the plant flourished until Prohibition closed it down. In 1922, shortly after the onset of Prohibition, Louis Martini and two silent partners bought the facility and established L. M. Martini Grape Products Co., where they produced sacramental and medicinal wines, as well as “grape bricks” and “grape concentrate” (one they called Forbidden Fruit) for home winemakers. During these dry years, the winery grew in size until, just before Repeal, Martini was one of the dominant producers in California, ranking with Italian-Swiss Colony, Colonial Grape Products, and Beaulieu. In 1932, these companies joined Martini in establishing the Grape Growers’ League of California, the precursor to the Wine Institute.
L. M. Winery, Kingsburg, Office Building – 1938
Located in the center of the San Joaquin Valley on the banks of the Kings River, about twenty miles from Fresno, Kingsburg, for most of its history, beginning in 1873, has been surrounded by grape vineyards and an Eden for giant facilities that handled enormous vintages. Even before Repeal, L. M. Martini’s ambition was to produce top-quality dry table wines, like those from Napa Valley. After he built his new winery in St. Helena in 1933, the Kingsburg plant remained operative throughout the 1930s, used as the center of the Martini winemaking and business operations. From 1934 through 1940, with a total storage capacity of over a million gallons, Martini annually produced more than a half-million gallons of wine. It was not until March 1940, when the St. Helena Star headlined “L. M. Martini Sells Kingsburg Plant In Big Winery Deal,” that he cut ties with San Joaquin Valley and moved permanently to St. Helena. Central California Wineries, a new conglomeration of twenty valley wineries, purchased the winery for $1,000,000 and provided Martini with ample capital to fulfill his dream.
Louis M. Martini, St. Helena, Napa Valley, Sherry Cellar – 1960s
This postcard, and its companion following, showing the beautiful old ivy-clad stone wine cellar where Martini stored his Pale Dry Sherry “in tiers of small casks to mellow to perfection,” are two of only three postcards commonly seen that illustrate Martini Winery. (The other one is Monte Rosso Vineyard.) But, what about this “old, ivy-clad stone cellar”? What is his story? Louis Martini came to Napa Valley at the end of Prohibition, at a time when many wineries were closed, overgrown with ivy, some becoming “ghosts.” We applaud Louis Martini and his utilization of a few of these old ghosts in his winemaking endeavors, and in doing so, greatly enriched our wine country history.
Louis M. Martini, Sherry Cellar, Overlooking Beautiful Napa Valley – 1960
Nestled into the western foothills at the end of West Zinfandel Lane just south of St. Helena, the lovely old vine-covered two-story stone wine cellar, included in Irene Haynes’ 1980 Ghost Wineries of Napa Valley, was built in the late 1880s by William and James Rennie, “energetic and well-educated” young brothers from Scotland. A few years earlier, they had purchased the 200-acre, well-kept farm from Martin Furstenfeld, who tended a small vineyard. By 1893, the brothers reported sixty acres in vineyard, their winery had cooperage for 80,000 gallons, half in oak, half in redwood. At this time, phylloxera was ever-present in Napa Valley, and the Rennies were fast losing at least twenty acres of their vineyard. Active in local wine affairs, they also traveled around the state helping with a statewide inspection tour of infested vineyards. In late 1900, a second terrible disaster struck the brothers when their wine cellar was gutted by fire, losing all of their cooperage and wine equipment. They must have closed their winery at this point, as they are found employed at Natoma Winery near Sacramento, and William soon became manager of the Barton Winery Estate in Fresno. In 1904, when James became Superintendent of the large vineyards and winery of the Leland Stanford estate at Vina, the Rennies sold their holdings on Zinfandel Lane to Dr. R. Bauske of Oakland as a summer home. When Louis Martini came to St. Helena in 1933, he purchased the vine-clad Rennie Bros. Winery as an aging cellar for his dry sherries and fine table wines, along with the neighboring ghost winery built in 1885 by Charles Brockhoff. Following Martini’s death in 1974, Bechtel president J. Komes and his wife, Flora, purchased both properties. The Brockhoff Winery was renovated as the family home, and in 1979, the old Rennie Bros. cellar became home to Flora Springs Wine Co. Since 2020, the historic properties have been under the admirable care of new owners Daniel and Florence Cathiard, a wine family from Bordeaux.
L. Martini Winery, St. Helena – c1930s
An absolutely brilliant early postcard of the immense new 1,250,000-gallon Martini Winery built on a ten-acre parcel one mile south of town, directly across the highway from Sutter Home Winery & Distillery. The Martini facility, one of the largest in the valley at 204′ x 144′, was equipped with several tanks of 50,000 gallons each, others of 30,000 gallons, all noticeably larger than those in most area wineries. For temperature control, the building featured double walls and a roof, with shredded redwood bark between as an insulating material. On the outside, the walls were tiled up, filling in the panels between the concrete columns. Begun in June 1933, the winery was ready for the expected crush of one million gallons during the coming Fall season. [SHStar,1933] Until the 1960s and the start of the “wine boom,” the Martini Winery remained the most technically advanced winery in the valley. During the ‘30s, Louis M. actively pursued vineyard properties in the area. In early 1934, he purchased retired banker James Eccleston’s distinguished 250-acre Villa del Rey farm three miles south of town for the new family home. The pretty plot, located on a heavily wooded hillside, included a seventy-acre vineyard, a handsome old residence, and a fine wine cellar.
Louis M. Martini, Monte Rosso Vineyard, Mayacamas Mts – 1960s
In 1938, Louis Martini purchased the prized 240-acre Monte Rosso Vineyard originally set out in 1885 by Benjamin Dreyfus & Co. of San Francisco. Situated at an altitude of over 1000′ on the Sonoma side of the ridge between Napa and Sonoma counties, overlooking Agua Caliente and the Valley of the Moon, Monte Rosso was described as “perhaps the most beautiful vineyard in California.” With Martini’s fervent interest in varietal wines, the vineyard became the backbone of his varietal production, particularly red table wines, Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, and Barbera; other vineyard notables included Dry Gewurztraminer, Semillon, and Folle Blanche. Here, the grapes attained their peak of perfection, truly “Mountain Wines,” as he labeled them. Other outstanding vineyard properties acquired during this period included the Eccleston vineyard on light, well-drained soil along the Mayacamas foothills near St. Helena, planted mostly to Cabernet, Gamay, and Chenin blanc. Martini, one of the first to see the potential of the rolling, gravelly hills in the Carneros district, planted his La Loma Vineyard to Pinot noir and Cabernet. He encouraged his fellow winegrowers to search out the varieties most adaptable to the different valleys and elevations, and to plant in the foothills, not riverbeds.
Mt. Pisgah Winery / Monte Rosso Vineyard Winery, Goldstein Ranch Winery, Built 1886
In 1886, Benjamin Dreyfus began construction of his 250,000-gallon, three-story Mt. Pisgah Winery and Distillery on the site. After Dreyfus died later that year, Emanuel Goldstein, a major stockholder in the Dreyfus company, obtained control of the firm, and the property became known as the Goldstein Ranch. Goldstein had come to California from Bavaria as a young man and amassed a substantial fortune as a wholesale grocer in San Francisco when he became associated with Dreyfus & Co. in 1871. Later, as an affiliate of the California Wine Association, the wines were transported by wagon down the mountain to the rail line in the valley, and on to the Association’s large facility at Winehaven for bottling and distribution. During the Dry years of Prohibition, winemaking ceased. When Louis Martini bought the property in 1938, he recalled there were as many prune trees as vines, and stacks of stones were everywhere. He renamed the property Monte Rosso for its distinctive red volcanic soil. Today, Monte Rosso Vineyard contains almost 600 acres, with some two hundred acres planted to premium wine grapes. While the vineyard flourished, the winery sat idle for more than one hundred years. In 2014, the handsome old stone winery took a severe hit in the earthquake that shook Napa and the surrounding areas in Northern California, and has been declared structurally unsafe.
Louis M. Martini Winery, St. Helena – c1950
Louis M.’s son, Louis Peter Martini (1918-1998) finished his college degree at U.C.Davis in 1941 and returned to St. Helena to work with his father. Taking an increasingly active role in the growing winery, he became winemaker in 1954 and took charge of production in 1968, which reached 400,000 cases by the 1970s. During this time, Louis P. brought into the Martini fold the historic Edge Hill Vineyard estate near town. This magnificent old 1500-acre wine property on the edge of the Mayacamas Mts. was originally settled in the 1860s by Gen. Erasmus Keyes, a Civil War veteran and commandant of the Port of San Francisco. In 1867, next to his hillside estate, Keyes built a three-story gravity-flow winery of local stone whose 100,000-gallon storage capacity was one of the largest in the valley. The historied property counted numerous owners over the ensuing decades, until in 1952, Louis P. and Elizabeth Martini acquired Edge Hill for their family home. They remodeled and lived in the old stone winery and used the distillery as an old ‘barn’ and garage. After Louis P. died in 1998, Elizabeth was ready for a homeplace requiring much less upkeep. In 2000, she sold the property to Leslie Rudd, a well-known wine figure in Napa Valley.
Michael Robert Martini (1949-2022), the last Martini to be wine-master at Louis M. Martini Winery, was the founder’s grandson and son of Louis P. Martini. Like his father and grandfather, Michael Martini was a leader and an innovator in the wine industry. After forty years of making wine, beginning in 1977, he retired in 2015. Earlier, in 2002, E. & J. Gallo purchased the Martini Winery and its properties. Mike recalled that the two families were longtime friends, and Gallo approached the acquisition with admirable respect. He and his sister Carolyn Martini Cox, who spent forty years at the winery, the last seventeen as CEO, were retained and remained in place for thirteen years, heavily involved in the operations. As Mike Martini said at the time, “Gallo wanted a presence in Napa Valley, and we had a number of family members who wanted to leave and some who wanted to stay on. The idea right now is to continue to run as Louis Martini, with support from the mother ship, so to speak.” And that is exactly what is happening.
c1933 – L. M. Martini Grape Products
1942 – Louis M. Martini Winery
References
Adams, Leon. Wines of America. 4th edition. 1990.
Haynes, Irene. Ghost Wineries of Napa Valley. A Photographic Tour of the 19th Century, 1980.
Lapsley, James. Bottled Poetry. Napa Winemaking from Prohibition to the Modern Era, 1996.
Melville, John. Guide to California Wines. A Practical Reference for All Wine Lovers. 1955.
Sullivan, Charles. Companion to California Wine. An Encyclopedia. 1998.
Unzelman, Gail. Sonoma County Wineries. Postcard History Series. 2006.
