Brothers Find a Following for Their Nebbiolo

The mere thought of making Chardonnay and Cabernet bores Nick Martin. Still, he does it. He is, after all, a wine maker, and, “Hey, we have to stay in business.”

Nick and his brother Tom started Martin Brothers, their modest Paso Robles winery, in 1981. San Luis Obispo County is not the Napa Valley, but the region does have a strong reputation for making excellent Cabernet Sauvignon.

But in the midst of the Napamania of the 1980s, marketing wine--any wine--from Paso Robles was no stroll in the park. To make things worse, the two brothers, who share a grand sense of fun, decided to make a wine from the Nebbiolo grape (the variety that makes the great Italian Barolos and Barbarescos).

A cynic would have had a field day with this decision. So would a psychiatrist. Consider: There was no market at all for this wine. Nor was there much Nebbiolo growing anywhere, nor even any wine maker who knew how to make it. Wholesalers were appalled at the thought, retailers were too, and the public wasn’t even interested in buying Italian Barolo and Barbaresco, much less a wine of that type from Paso Robles.

No matter; the brothers went ahead. In the mid-1980s they released their first wine, from the 1982 vintage. To be charitable, it was little more than another bottle of light red.

Oh, there was some character in the wine, and it was a project that the brothers liked because it was different--that word keeps popping up when you speak with them--so they continued to make it. I dubbed it one of the “orphan wines,” those that wander around the retail shelves, looking for someone to adopt them.

Today, the Martin brothers are selling all they make. And they make more of it--3,000 cases-- than anything else. “There’s kind of a cult for it. People have discovered our little orphan, and they are asking for it,” said Tom.

The Martin Brothers’ 1988 Nebbiolo, just released at $9.50 a bottle, is a strikingly fine wine. It still doesn’t remind me too much of Piedmont, but it’s getting there. Lighter in color than most Barolos, this wine is wonderfully fruity with a sour-cherry aroma and lots of flavor without much of the mouth-puckering tannins that rob a wine of its drinkability.

Tasting the 1986 Martin Nebbiolo the other day, I found it had developed a fascinating richness, an indication that these wines do age a bit.

Tom Martin admits being moonstruck by Nebbiolo, and he’s banking a lot on this odd (to California) variety. “We want to bring something genuinely different to the wine business, and we think this is it.”

The brothers do make Chardonnay and Cabernet (because it sells), and the wines are lovely. The better of the two is the 1987 Cabernet ($12), the first Cabernet Martin has made. The ripe black cherry aroma with a hint of roasted wood character is quite appealing, and the soft finish makes the wine approachable now, but it will age nicely for a few years.

The 1989 Chardonnay ($10) is a new approach for Martin because it went through a complete malolactic fermentation that softened the wine and changed the fruit character to something broader than past vintages. The wine is attractive to those who want a fleshier style of wine but still with excellent acidity.

The most successful white wine the brothers make is the Dry Chenin Blanc, and the 1989 version (just released at $5.50) is an amazingly fine value.

Part of the wine was fermented in barrels and aged in oak, and the complexity of this wine is so deep you might get the feeling it tastes like Chardonnay. That’s because it does, and it has a small amount of Chardonnay in it for complexity. It’s a stylish dinner wine and will fool wine snobs.

It’s the Nebbiolo, however, that the Martins feel closest to. Says Tom, “We know our future is the Italian thing.” So much so that the wine is now a blend of three vineyards--their own in Paso Robles, another nearby and a third in the Sierra foothills.

The wine is bottled in a brown Italian bottle, and the label for each succeeding release is a classical pencil drawing. Most of the drawings are from the works of Leonardo da Vinci.

To continue the classical themes of the winery, the brothers also have just released a 1989 Aleatico, a muscat-like red grape that Martin has fashioned into a delightfully different--there’s that word again--dessert wine that’s slightly pink.

Made with just 4% residual sugar, this wine is a marvel of complexity, smelling similar to strawberry guava and muscat. A dollop of aged brandy is added to bring the alcohol to 15%, but the wine’s so smooth you never taste it.

Moreover, it is packaged in one of the most beautiful 375-milliliter bottles I’ve ever seen. The slender, tapered bottle, which has a Botticelli drawing in the center of the label, would be worth keeping to hold vinegar or oil once the wine is gone. It is easily worth $10 for the half bottle.