Louis M. Martini’s Boutique Wine: Folle Blanche
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Louis M. Martini opened a winery in Napa Valley with the belief that only good grapes could make good wine, and good grapes only grow on the best land. He came to Napa Valley with the intent of purchasing the best land he could find, and eventually bought land in both Sonoma and Napa Valley because according to him: My heart is in Napa, but my soul is in Sonoma. Martini’s passion is clearly in winemaking, putting both his heart and his soul into the wine he produces.
When he was just nine years old, Louis M. Martini made his first wine with his father, and even then, he showed amazing aptitude for winemaking. His father, recognizing his son’s talent, sent Martini back to Italy to study wine when he was 19. He returned to California in 1911, devoting his entire life to the raising and harvesting of grapes and to producing some of the finest varietals and Boutique wines the world has ever seen.
In the beginning of his career, Martini worked a variety of jobs in the wine world, including consulting winemaker and head winemaker. During the Prohibition, he made wine for religious purposes, and he eventually opened his own winery in 1922, later opening a new one in St. Helena after the end of the Prohibition. The St. Helena location is the winery that has been passed down to his children, and the family-owned winery currently makes one of the finest, rarified Boutique wines in the state.
The Louis Martini winery produces about 150,000 cases of wine every season, 800 of which are cases of Folle Blanche, a Boutique wine that is almost exclusively grown in France’s Cognac region. The wine is mostly used for blending in France, and it is hardly ever available in California, except from the Louis Martini vineyard. Folle Blanche is an excellently crafted Louis Martini Boutique wine. With its crisp, floweriness and subtle hints of citrus, it is the ideal partner for a summer evening.