Happy Hour Wine Tasting Featuring the Wines of Marimar Estate With Special Guest Rob Stegall, National Sales Manager

Just like becoming an expert in wine, you learn by drinking it, the best you can afford.”



―Julia Child





We drink only the best and money is not an option when it comes to “Drinking the Good Stuff First”. 



March is full of visitors as South Florida is the greatest place in the world to be this time of year.  So, when I heard that Rob Stegall, National Sales Manager for Marimar Estate was coming to town I jumped at the chance to share these wines again with our “Wine Drinking People”.    We had Christina Torres here over a year ago and she was nice enough to open up her library of older vintage chardonnay and pinot noir so we look forward to tasting new newest releases from Marimar Estate but really look forward to sharing some of these older vintage wines that we have here in the store.

The fee for this tasting is $75 + tax.  For reservations call 954-523-9463 or e-mail andy@winewatch.com.

Happy Hour Wine Tasting Featuring the Wines of Marimar Estate

With Special Guest Rob Stegall, National Sales Manager

Thursday, March 19th

6pm



2021 Marimar Estate Albarino Russian River Valley

2020 Marimar Estate Chardonnay Marimar Acero Russian River Valley

2001 Marimar Estate 'Dobles Lias' Chardonnay, Russian River Valley

2018 Marimar Tempranillo Russian River Valley

2018 Marimar Pinot Noir La Masia Russian River Valley

2018 Marimar Estate Pinot Noir Mas Cavalls Sonoma Coast

2017 Marimar Cristina Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast

2006 Marimar Pinot Noir Cristina Russian River Valley

Menu



Selection of Cheese and Charcuterie

Goat Cheese and Peach Flat Bread with Lemon Zest and Red Pepper Puree

Pork Belly with Mushroom Soy Reduction and Sesame Sauteed Snap Peas

Coffee Five Spice Dusted Duck Confit Spring Roll with Cherry Demi Glaze

Epoisse and Raspberry Tart



The fee for this tasting is $75 + tax, for reservations call 954-523-9463 or e-mail andy@winewatch.com.

A bit about Marimar Estate:



Marimar Torres is the driving force behind her California winery, named after herself. Born in Barcelona, Spain, she is fluent in six languages and holds a degree in Business and Economics from the University of Barcelona.  She is also a graduate of the Stanford Executive Program, and studied Enology and Viticulture for a year at the University in Davis.  At Marimar Torres Estate, she directs the activities at the winery and its Don Miguel Vineyard (named after her late father) in Sonoma County's Green Valley.   As a young woman, Marimar was of strong will and iron determination to make her way into the family business.  That being the multi-million dollar Spanish wine empire built up by her father, Don Miguel Torres, from the ruins of the Spanish civil war into one of Spain's finest.  As she was the youngest of three children and the only daughter, her intrusion into the traditionally male Spanish wine business was not welcomed by her family.  She was raised to play tennis and marry a rich lawyer. Marimar, however, had other plans.  After threatening to leave home, she started out traveling with her father, representing the family's wines overseas.





It was at a dinner in San Francisco that Marimar's life took a major turn.  She was told by one of her distributors that an American wine and food writer, Bob Finigan, had rated a particular vintage of Torres Gran Coronas among Spain's finest wines.  Marimar was encouraged to meet the man in person.  She married him.  She and her husband settled in the San Francisco bay area in 1975.  In California it is difficult not to become interested in food; and, through Finigan, Marimar met chefs and restaurateurs who were sweeping away decades of tradition and establishing new ways to grow, buy, cook and eat food.   She began to study cooking and became known for her paella, a Spanish dish in which poultry, seafood and sausage are combined with rice and flavored with saffron and other spices.  She is currently the author of two books.  Her first, The Spanish Table: The Cuisines and Wines of Spain was published in 1986.  She followed it in 1992 with The Catalan Country Kitchen.  It dealt with food and wine from the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean seacoast of Barcelona.   Although Marimar's marriage to Finigan didn't last, they are still friendly and have a daughter together.





Marimar Torres, far from resting on her family's laurels, made her own dynamic contribution to the family business.  In 1975 shipments of Torres wines to the U.S. totaled 15,000 cases; ten years later they reached 150,000.  But she had her sights set a little higher.  Her vision, not surprisingly, was to have a vineyard of her own.  On the advice of her brother, renowned winemaker Miguel Torres, she enrolled at the University of California at Davis to study enology and viticulture.  During this time she spent two years looking for the perfect site to grow grapes.  In 1986, with the help and financial backing of her family, she purchased land in the Green Valley in Sonoma County.  Ten miles from the Pacific Ocean, with a climate comparable to that of Carneros, the Green Valley afforded Marimar with a long, cool growing season that would produce elegant wines of intense flavor and finesse.  Committed to making her vineyard unique and totally European, she embraced farming practices that encouraged low yields and full flavors. (These same practices yielded her a zero on a few quizzes at Davis.)  Long years of research in Spain had shown that if yields are kept low, wine quality is improved through high-density planting.  The Marimar Torres estate is planted with 2000 vines per acre, more than four times the average California density.  It requires highly skilled vineyard management and is very labor intensive.

The first release, a 1989 barrel-fermented Chardonnay debuted in April 1991 to great acclaim.  In the 1992 vintage a new component was added, a native Spanish varietal named Parellada, used mainly in the production of Spanish sparkling wines, to give the wines a bit of Catalan personality.  In 1992, a 15,000 case winery was built, and the Estate's first Pinot Noir was produced, which was released in September 1994.  Today, the dream Marimar envisioned more than a decade ago, when her father was still alive, to dedicate the estate to producing only top-quality Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from a vineyard unique in California, has taken another step forward.  Bill Dyer, formerly of Sterling Vineyards, has come on board as a consultant responsible for the wine production. Dyer's reputation was established with a series of vineyard-designated wines from Sterling's holdings within what was at the time an Estate winery.

The Marimar Torres Estate has acquired additional and adjoining property that will be planted with more Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.  This has solidified Marimar's commitment to a single-vineyard, top-of-the-line bottling of only Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.  Having only two labels may not be ideal to get lots of attention from the wine market, but it reflects her serious commitment to this long-term, focused project.



It is good to see the next generation of the Torres family getting involved in the family business.  Born in 1988, Cristina is the daughter and only child of Marimar Torres and a member of the fifth generation of the Torres family, whose winegrowing roots trace back to the 17th century. Cristina has inherited her love of the vineyard from her family and has grown up working alongside her mother her whole life. In early 2020, after gaining several years of experience outside the family business, she joined the company as Director of Sales & Marketing. The Torres family business has been handed down from father to son for five generations, but this is the first time that the baton will be passed from mother to daughter.

From a young age, Cristina learned about the wine business from her mother: working alongside her and receiving clients and visitors at the winery, coordinating events for the wine club, planning distribution strategies in collaboration with the sales teams and promoting the Marimar Estate wines both in the United States and abroad.

Cristina graduated from Princeton University in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in Economics. She spent the first two years after finishing her undergraduate studies in the world of fashion and worked in marketing and sales for ShopStyle (San Francisco), Georges Rech and Mango (Paris).



In early 2013 Cristina moved to London, where she joined John E. Fells, the U.K. wine importer and distributor. She spent two years there, first working as a member of the London Sales Team and then as Brand Manager for the French brands imported by Fells, which included the likes of Hugel, Guigal, Champagne Henriot and Bouchard Père et Fils.

In 2015 she moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to pursue an MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated with a degree in Management in May 2017 and did a summer exchange program that same year at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.

Upon her return to Sonoma County and, after working the 2017 harvest in the cellar at DeLoach, Cristina joined the Brand Marketing team at Jackson Family Wines in November 2017. In January 2020, she joined her mother at Marimar Estate as Director of Sales & Marketing, with a focus on the US market and Direct to Consumer sales, especially through Club Marimar and the tasting room at the estate.

Cristina achieved the WSET Level 3 certification from the renowned Wine & Spirit Education Trust and is in the process of obtaining the WSET Level 4 Diploma. Her other interests include yoga, skiing, travel and of course Bonita and Chico – the two English Springer Spaniels at home. She is fluent in Catalan, Spanish, English and French.