Saratoga winemaker indulges love for oddball grapes

When Marty Mathis says he can no longer drink the big cabernets he enjoyed in his youth, he’s speaking from almost 50 years’ experience.

“My stomach can’t handle cabernet like it used to,” says Mathis, who was a teenager in 1973 when he helped his mother Kathryn Kennedy plant a 7-acre vineyard on Pierce Road in Saratoga. “I might open a bottle for young people, and they’ll love it, but I’m more likely to have white wine open than red. Whites go with the lighter food we are eating now.”

The winemaker is taking a world view in developing white wines for his M. Mathis Winegrower line, particularly his Gruner Veltliner and Godello.

The former is Austria’s most well-known grape, made briefly popular in the US by a concerted marketing effort in the early 2000s. The latter hails from the center of Spain and was put on the radar by Robert Parker.

Mathis says his love for Austria goes back to when his mother took him out of school at age 14 so he could see a different view of the world.

“I took German instead of Spanish,” he recalls. “If you ever spend time in Europe, it changes your perspective.”

Although he didn’t drink wine on that visit, it prompted him to return later in life, doing a deep dive into Gruner. When Richard Alfaro planted some in Corralitos, Mathis knew he had to get his hands on it.

“Gruner is never easy to understand,” says Mathis, who released his 2020 vintage a couple of months ago. “You cock your head when you taste it—what is this? It challenges you; I consider it an ‘advanced wine.’ You think about it when you are drinking it.”

Mathis is always the first to pick Alfaro’s Gruner. “I’m looking for lower sugars and lower alcohol than the other winemakers who get the fruit,” he says.

In fact, in 2021 he got a bit of a surprise. “When I got the fruit back to the winery, I noticed two bins that looked really green. The other four were more yellow. I stopped right there and did chemical analysis on all of them. Sure enough, the green bins were a few Brix lower, so I processed them separately. I’ll be making an early-drinking ‘picnic’ style (10.5% alcohol) as well as a richer more age-worthy wine that will see some neutral oak to add a creamy texture. I love the Meyer lemon flavors.”

Inspired by Spain, Mathis planted Godello in a former cabernet vineyard in Saratoga. He says the village where it’s widely planted in Spain has very unusual black slate soils.

“All the houses are made of slate,” he says. “It’s their indigenous building material. Here, you find slate on the rooftops of multimillion-dollar homes.

Of the wine grown in this soil, Mathis says, “Godello is to me halfway between sauvignon blanc and chardonnay. It has richness and weight and importance, but is more acidic and green and lively than most California chardonnay. I consider it a bridge wine that people who love chardonnay but can’t handle sauv blanc’s grassiness would appreciate.”

He admits his first attempt at making Godello didn’t go well. So for 2021, he’ll keep it halftime in cask and half in stainless steel. It’s too early to tell how it will develop, but he is noting some elegance and texture starting to come out.

Mathis says failures are important to his growth as a winemaker.

“I do this to learn and to keep motivated,” he adds.

His European forays have inspired a love for the wines of Croatia and Italy’s Friuli region. He recently planted some Friulano, Gamay and a grape called Welschriesling, which is very popular in Austria, Croatia and Hungary.

“It’s called by many different names and it is not related to Riesling,” says Mathis of the latter grape. “They use it to make a very fruity, picnic-style wine. The Austrians are almost embarrassed to serve it, but it’s super tasty and fun.”