2017 Martin Ray Vineyards & Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Santa Cruz Mountains 750 ml

Martin Ray was a pioneer of California viticulture, right alongside legends like Don Chappellet and Robert Mondavi. Mentored by the legendary Paul Masson, he crafted single-varietal wines from 1943-1972 at what is today the Mount Eden winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains. His wines were known far and wide and were enjoyed by Presidents Johnson and Nixon. 

If Martin Ray had the opportunity to taste a wine like this 2017 release, he’d be proud. Benham and his team have harnessed the energy and structural ageability that makes Drape’s Ridge Montebello so special while giving dramatic lift, layers, and muscular complexity to one of the finest 100% Cabernet Sauvignons from the Santa Cruz Mountains that we’ve tasted. 

Winemaker Courtney Benham has been working toward this since 1990. After finding some of Ray’s still-aging wine in a warehouse, Benahm was inspired to purchase the Martin Ray brand, and as he set out to revive Ray’s mission of producing single-varietal artisan wines from a new home in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma.  

Singular, seductive, and imbued with the power and concentration of high-elevation California Cabernet, the wine was fermented in small, open-top fermenters with pump-overs three times a day to maximize flavor extraction, and an incredible 30-day skin maceration to bring out the deep, inky-dark color. After all that, the shimmering black Cabernet wine is aged in 60% new French oak for 16 months. 

The first single-vineyard source, Beauregard Vineyard, is inland from Bald Mountain in the Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, and near the Napa-Sonoma border. This exquisite site enjoys a wide range of diurnal temperature shifts, ushering in warm days and cool nights. Benham credits the site’s well-draining, loamy soils for delivering naturally high acidity in his finished wine along with an iron-like earthy minerality distinct to Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon.

The other is Fellom Ranch, planted atop a plot of land purchase by the late Senator Roy Rellom in 1929. The vineyard was planted by his grandson, Roy Fellom III, who painstakingly shaped steep hillsides into perfectly terraced pinnacles of high viticultural achievement. Those vines enjoy views of San Francisco’s South Bay and Silicon Valley at their 2,200-foot elevation, along with cool Pacific breezes and high midday warming sun, allowing grapes to ripen slowly and evenly.

Benham’s 2017 Martin Ray Vineyards & Winery Cabernet Sauvignon is a shining example of his commitment to carrying on Ray’s legacy. Sourced from two vineyards on Montebello Ridge—the same Santa Cruz Mountain range that is home to Paul Draper’s iconic Ridge Montebello—this black-fruited, assertive, and chiseled Cabernet earned 94 points from former Wine Spectator European Bureau Cheif James Suckling, who found it “tight and focused with plenty of dark fruit and flavor,” and an “excellent value.”