Kate MacMurray, of MacMurray Ranch

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Kate MacMurray takes the long view of life among the vineyards of MacMurray Ranch. “Life at the ranch still follows the cadences of the changing seasons,” she says, “as it has for as long as I can remember. There is a wonderful sense of timelessness here,” Kate says. “The seasons in the vineyard mark the gentle turning of the earth. I tell time by the vines.” Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris grapes were planted in the mid-1990s, and the first vintage of MacMurray Ranch wines arrived with the new millennium.

Kate sees parallels between her life today on MacMurray Ranch and her former life as an actor and writer in Hollywood. “One of the techniques actors use is called ‘sense memory’, reaching for remembered aromas or flavors to evoke a time and place and emotion. Tasting our Pinot Noir wines is like that…one sip reminds you of wild berries; the next sip is earthy and warm like a summer afternoon; the next carries the sense of cool ocean fog. You really get a whole movie in every glass.”

MacMurray Ranch Winemaker Susan Doyle and Kate together are creating the ongoing story of MacMurray Ranch. Kate loves to share Susan’s wines with her guests at the ranch, and she travels to all corners of the country to present the wines and tell their story.
“There’s a saying that you only get encores on stage, not in life, but every harvest here is a renewal for us, a promise kept and a new promise made in the wine itself.”

MacMurray Ranch, one of the premier Pinot Noir producers in the Middle Reach of the Russian River Valley, has been a farmstead since the early 1850s, when Col. Hugh Porter returned from the Mexican war and built a home there for his family.

He chose a place in a bend in the river, where Porter Creek now flows through meadows, vineyards, and hills on its way to join in the water’s rush to the sea. Clear springs ran out of the hillsides around the valley floor, and the land was generous. Wild oats grew in abundance, and wildflowers bloomed after winter rains.

Porter’s family lived on the land for several generations, farming livestock and market crops in the rich silt soils of the valley floor. In 1941, actor Fred MacMurray, a legend of Hollywood’s Golden Era, bought the ranch brought his family there to enjoy the natural wonders of Sonoma County and to share the solid, rewarding lifestyle of a gentleman rancher.
For MacMurray and his family, Hollywood was work, and the ranch was home. He raised prize-winning cattle, and the children rode horseback through the hills. He added on to the ranch, buying land when neighbors wanted to sell. For 50 years, the MacMurray Ranch was nurtured under his hand.
In 1996, the Gallo family bought the ranch from the MacMurray family and began their current term as caretakers of the land. They restored the original buildings, planted trees along the creeks, and planted grape vines behind the farmhouse.
Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris wine grapes now flourish where cattle once roamed. The ranch covers more than 1500 acres on both sides of the Russian River, and only about 450 acres are under vine. In addition to the Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris, the ranch carries a few acres of Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, and Zinfandel.

A variety of Pinot Noir clones are planted in the specific microclimates of the Lower, Middle, and Upper valleys of the ranch. Dijon, Pommard, and Wadenswil clones are each matched to specific places, block by block, row by row, to get the best results from every vine.
The old homestead is still shaded by giant oaks at the edge of a meadow. Most of the neighbors are now farming for flavor and making world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines. But there are still a few diversified farms nearby, dairy and cattle and market crops, that are signposts pointing to a past when land was everything, and the future was measured in generations.