Q: TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF? WHAT DO YOU DO, WHERE ARE YOU FROM, AND WHERE DO YOU LIVE? ALL THAT GOOD STUFF…
I make wine, I manage grape growing, and I run a small wine business so I’m involved in everything else too: sales, compliance, finance, you name it. I named my business Martha Stoumen Wines—hey, men have named wineries after themselves for centuries, why can’t I? (Also, pretty much all of the other names I thought of were taken).
I live in Sonoma County, where I grew up. I didn’t come from a winemaking family—instead I fell in love with winemaking when I was working on a small farm in Tuscany where I went to practice Italian and escape real life after college. I continued apprenticing under winemakers around the world for the next eight years—working for room and board and, occasionally, a small stipend—to really learn the craft.
I gravitated towards natural winemaking and knew that in order to make really high quality natural wines I’d need to understand the science of fermentation and aging better, so I went back to get my Master’s in Viticulture & Enology at UC Davis in the middle of this eight year period as well.
In 2014 I used some of my unspent student loan money to make a tiny amount of my own wine while I was working as an Assistant Winemaker, and Martha Stoumen Wines was born. Three years later I moved on from my day job and started focusing on my own business full-time.
I now live with my husband Jon Patch and four year old son August Patch in Santa Rosa, CA, and am celebrating my tenth year of business!
Q: TELL US ABOUT WHERE YOU CREATE? WHAT HELPS TO GET YOUR CREATIVE JUICES FLOWING? IS THERE ANY SECRET RECIPE FOR YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS WHEN PLANNING YOUR NEXT RELEASE?
I create wines alongside my Assistant Winemaker, Tim Lyons, in Sebastopol, CA and in Sonoma, CA. Both wineries are shared spaces where other winemakers create as well, and the buzzing energy around harvest definitely builds among the group.
My creative process is truly led by nature—that’s my secret recipe!—listen to the growing season, the fruit, and take time for observation so I can see more clearly what a wine wants to become. My process is very similar to a chef’s at a farmers market: I let my ingredients guide what I make and don’t approach the process with any preconceived notions about what “dish” I want to create. There is a lot of real-time improvisation during the fermentation process—which is of course guided by 20 years of experience. During blending I pull in some of the cultural touchpoints that have inspired me in the food, wine, and art world during my eight years of apprenticing abroad.
Q: HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT BEING A MOTHER + BUSINESS OWNER AT THE SAME TIME?
Depends on what day you ask me, ha! Truthfully, it’s the most rewarding and also the hardest thing I’ve ever done. There are moments when I’ve struggled more. Harvest lasts three months of my year, and for at least a month of that time it requires 10 to 12 hour days, seven days a week. My first harvest as a mother August of course needed full time daycare—he was 9 months old—and I was unable to keep up nursing. There was a three day stretch where I didn’t see him at all because of my hours, and day three I went to the bathroom and just wept. It was also during the terrible fires of 2020, so I was very close to just throwing in the towel. But on the other hand, I had poured fifteen years of my life into honing this skill, and winemaking brings me immense joy. And wine takes years to make, it’s not a business you just walk away from—you have multiple years of inventory waiting to be released.
One thing being a mother has resolved me to do though is to make it worth it for my family. Few people talk about it, but it’s incredibly hard to make any money as a small wine producer in California, especially one dedicated to quality farming and winemaking, and to treating employees well. It’s still my greatest challenge and being a mother motivates me to solve it.
Q: IS THERE ANY DRIVING PHILOSOPHY THAT YOU HAVE THAT GETS YOU THROUGH THE DAY OR DURING CHALLENGING TIMES?
I think my dad instilled in me a philosophy to accept the impermanence of life, and to focus on the present. He also told me when I was younger that I sometimes push too hard, and that it’s ok to put down problems and come back to them (while at the same time instilling a love of problem solving).
I still have days where I have trouble motivating myself, or can’t get out of a funk, but keeping perspective helps. Also, seeing my son and husband at the end of every day brings me so much joy that it often breaks the spell of a bad day.
If all else fails, I take a walk outside, no matter the weather.
Q: IS THERE ANYTHING YOU FEEL VULNERABLE ABOUT AS A WOMAN OR INDIVIDUAL? IF SO, WOULD YOU MIND SHARING? (Could be about the earlier stages of navigating motherhood…)
The wine industry in the US is a night owl’s game—once I had a child I worried about not being out enough, not traveling enough, not staying relevant—especially because when I was coming up in the natural wine scene it was a party boy scene. Don’t get me wrong, I had fun! It still might be a party boy scene, I’m not out as much to know.
Honestly though, this thought doesn’t keep me up at night. I feel secure in the things I care about—my family, the environment, my team—and I’m really happy about what stage of life I'm in. If the business suffers because of that, then it wasn’t meant to be.
Q: AS YOU KNOW, WE ARE HUGE FANS OF YOU + YOUR WINES. WHY NATURAL WINES?
My goal behind making wine is to bring pleasure to people, and the first thing that means is to get away from chemical farming—there is nothing more antithetical to pleasure than pollution. So, working with natural and organic processes in the vineyard was a main reason.
As far as the natural winemaking bit, I think about the times when I tasted a beautifully grown, perfectly ripe garden tomato, or when the juice from a plum picked off the tree ran down my arm as a kid. You’re not getting that experience from mass-produced grocery store produce, and it’s sad to me that some people may never have those very human experiences. Up until recently wine was going in that direction—to a consistent, formulated product made from fermented grapes and a whole bunch of other ingredients—and the craft of winemaking was going extinct. Myself and a small group of winemakers worldwide are driven to preserve the very human experience of drinking wines that don’t fit within the modern industrial food and beverage model, but instead offer a glimpse of what incredible gifts nature provides us when we put the energy into preserving them. So really, pleasure motivates it all.
Q: WHAT IS YOUR GO-TO OUTFIT DAY TO DAY? DOES WHAT YOU ARE WEARING IN TERMS OF STYLE OR COMFORT AFFECT YOUR DAILY LIFE/WORK?
I can go from the cold cellar to the hot vineyard to pouring wine at an event all in one day, so functionality and comfort are essential. But just because I’m in work clothes doesn’t mean I don’t want to feel elegant. Materials and craftsmanship are key.
I always wear jeans or canvas pants—thinner pants rip on barrel hoops or don’t protect enough from long vineyard grasses and weeds. I also always wear boots: I might be on wet slippery cellar floors, or wanting to protect myself from the once-in-every-five-years rattlesnake encounter in the vineyard. I like chelsea-style boots for their design simplicity and because they are more waterproof than laced boots.
As for tops, a perfectly cut T-shirt and a button up shirt-jacket is the move. The Collectors shirt is perfect (you didn't ask me to say this—I will wear this SO much!)—it offers sun coverage and is thick enough to not rip when snagged on a vine, but also lightweight enough so that I won’t overheat. And pockets! Working with your hands you always need pockets—lots of them.
Q: DON’T OVERTHINK THIS...IF WE ASKED YOU TO PLAY ONE SONG WHILE YOU WORK WHAT WOULD IT BE AND WHY?
I love long, uninterrupted stretches of work, so music is usually just for down-time. But, sometimes if I’m having trouble getting into my normal deep-focus groove I’ll play Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports album, especially song 1/1 on repeat. Don’t analyze that too closely!
