2018 Martin Ray 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-variety wines from 1943-1972 at what is today the Mount Eden winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains. His wines were widely renowned and enjoyed by Presidents Johnson and Nixon. 

If Martin Ray had the opportunity to taste a wine like this 2018 release, he’d be bowled over and proud. Benham and his team have harnessed the energy and structural ageability that makes Draper’s Ridge Monte Bello 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, Benham purchased the Martin Ray brand and set out to revive Ray’s mission of producing single-variety artisan wines from a new home in Sonoma’s Russian River Valley.  

Benham’s 2018 Martin Ray Vineyards & Winery Cabernet Sauvignon is a shining example of his commitment to carrying on Ray’s legacy. Sourced from three vineyards on Monte Bello Ridge—the same Santa Cruz Mountain range that is home to Paul Draper’s iconic Ridge Monte Bello—this black-fruited, assertive, and chiseled Cabernet earned 95 points from former Wine Spectator European Bureau Chief James Suckling, who called it the “Best Santa Cruz Mountain cab for a long time from here.” 

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, brooding color. After all that, the shimmering Cabernet is aged in 50% new French and American oak for 18 months. 

The first single-vineyard source, Beauregard Vineyard, is an exquisite site that 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. Similarly, high-elevation soils from the storied, organically-farmed Cooper-Garrod Estate Vineyard evoke this wine’s power and concentration. 

Then there’s Fellom Ranch, which sits atop a plot of land purchased 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 ft. elevation, along with cool Pacific breezes and high midday warming sun, allowing grapes to ripen slowly and evenly.