Drive the length of San Martin Avenue on a Saturday in late September and you can hit a working airport, a wooden-propeller shop, a raw-milk dairy, four tasting rooms, and a pumpkin farm without ever getting on 101. That is a strange sentence for a town of roughly 4,000 to 7,800 people, depending on which count you trust. It is also the reason a fall weekend here does not need to borrow from Morgan Hill or Gilroy to fill itself out.
A town ordinance requires home lots to be a minimum of five acres to assist in keeping the open, rural community, and that single rule shapes the calendar you are reading. Businesses in San Martin sit spaced out along the frontage roads rather than stacked on a walkable main street, so the season reveals itself as a set of stops you connect on your own, not a downtown you stroll through. Here is what those stops are doing between now and Halloween.
The four corners
Think of the town as a rough square. CordeValle and Clos LaChance anchor the west side up toward the foothills. Little Uvas Vineyard and Kirigin Cellars hold the middle. The San Martin Airport and Wings of History Air Museum sit on the east side along Murphy Avenue. Uesugi Farms Pumpkin Park parks itself on Monterey Road at the north end. San Martin Milk Company on East Middle sits roughly in the geometric center.
Every one of them is doing something specific between mid-September and Halloween. None of them advertises to the people who already live within five miles, which is why residents sometimes miss them.
What is actually on the calendar
Dates and hours are current for the 2026 season. Confirm with the venue before you drive.
- Thursday, September 10 and Friday, September 11 — CordeValle. Cordevalle Winery, located in San Martin, is a Bay Area secret that hosts the KRTY.com Song and Wine Series and a Time for Wine Summer Series with local bands. Tickets for the September Thursday show run $68 and Friday runs $74.
- Thursdays through fall — "Corks & Pasta" at The Garage. Friday afternoons feature pizza parties, and Thursday nights they run "Corks & Pasta" events for $50, which includes wine and two pasta dishes.
- Every weekend — the Morgan Hill Wine Trolley. The Morgan Hill Wine Trolley runs every weekend year-round; it is an actual cable car that picks up at Luxe Flower Bar & Cafe at 1st and Monterey in downtown Morgan Hill, and the $149 per person cost includes a champagne welcome reception, a gourmet box lunch at the second winery, and tasting fees at three different wineries.
- Thursday, October 1 and Friday, October 2 — CordeValle again. Second and final KRTY weekend of the season.
- Saturday, October 17 — Wings of History Open House and Food Truck Fly-In. The museum partners with the San Martin Airport for the annual open house and Food Truck Fly-in on October 17, 2026.
- All of October — Uesugi Farms Pumpkin Park. Kayla's Corn Maze, Pumpkin Pete's Enchanted Hayride, and the Marigoldland walk. Free admission, weekday and weekend hours below.
The Thursday-through-Sunday shape of a Garage weekend
If you have not been to Little Uvas Vineyard yet, the tasting room deserves its own paragraph because nothing about it reads like the other wineries in town. Little Uvas sits at 255 Fitzgerald Avenue in San Martin, and the tasting room is called "The Garage" because that's exactly what it is; owners Rich and Rosy Bergin opened in 2022 and built the space around seven acres of estate-grown grapes, plus a collection of classic cars on display inside, sharing the building with the DeRose Tasting Room, so you get two wineries in one stop.
That combination sets the rhythm of the week here. Thursday is the pasta night. Friday is pizza and happy hour. There are picnic tables outside and Airstream trailers set up for tasting when the weather cools down, which is precisely when the picnic tables become the point. Weekend hours run Saturday and Sunday noon to 5.
The other short drive worth putting on a Sunday afternoon is Miramar Vineyards. Miramar sits on ten pastoral acres at 12255 New Avenue in San Martin, tucked into the eastern foothills; it's a smaller, quieter tasting room that feels like visiting someone's property rather than a commercial operation, open Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m., and if you want a mellow stop away from any crowds, this is it. Pair it with Kirigin Cellars, which has been making wine since 1916, which makes it one of the oldest continuously operating wineries in the state. That fact is the one most residents do not know until they check.
October 17: the Saturday to block off
The Wings of History Air Museum is the closest thing San Martin has to a hidden landmark, and its one big public day is coming up.
The museum sits at 12777 Murphy Avenue, directly across from the San Martin Airport (still called South County by anyone who has lived here more than a decade). It boasts a collection of hundreds of model airplanes, the only certified wooden propeller manufacturing shop west of the Mississippi, and one of the most accurate full-size replicas of the airplane the Wright Brothers flew. On Open House day the hangars open wider than usual, food trucks line up on the airport apron, and small aircraft fly in for the afternoon.
If you have out-of-town guests staying through mid-October, this is the answer to what to do with them on a Saturday afternoon that does not involve driving to Santa Cruz. If you have kids who have already done Gilroy Gardens three times this year, same answer. Regular admission the rest of the season runs $10 for adults, $7 for seniors and teens, $5 for children 6 to 12, and free for kids five and under and active military. Regular hours are Tuesday 10 to 3 and Saturday 11 to 4.
The stops that do not need a date
Two places in town are built for the drop-in rather than the event.
San Martin Milk Company at 1565 East Middle Avenue runs on an honor system that most residents still find charming the tenth time they use it. The San Martin Dairy, home of the San Martin Milk Company, was purchased in 1993 by a second generation dairyman, and the operation continues to milk in a traditional California style milk parlor; after obtaining state permits from the California Department of Food and Agriculture in 2011, they began to bottle their own raw milk in the processing room, which is just a few feet away from the milk parlor. Payment is Venmo. Hours are 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., seven days a week.
Uesugi Farms Pumpkin Park at 14485 Monterey Road opens for the season in early October. If you have kids you already know it. If you moved here recently and think you know pumpkin patches, this one is a different scale. Pumpkin Pete's Enchanted Hayride travels through some of the most beautiful lands of Uesugi Farms, visiting Pumpkinland, the Sunflower Gallery, and the spectacular Marigoldland, filled with over 100,000 hand-sown flowers; the narrated hayride operates 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. daily. Kayla's two-acre corn maze runs weekdays from 1 p.m. and weekends from 9 a.m. Admission is free. You pay for pumpkins and rides.
A cheat sheet for the season
| Stop | Address | When |
|---|---|---|
| CordeValle KRTY Series | Off Hale Avenue, San Martin | Sep 10, 11, Oct 1, 2 |
| Wings of History Open House | 12777 Murphy Ave | Oct 17 |
| The Garage / Little Uvas | 255 Fitzgerald Ave | Thu 4–8, Fri 4–8, Sat–Sun 12–5 |
| Miramar Vineyards | 12255 New Ave | Sat–Sun 12–5 |
| Kirigin Cellars | 11550 Watsonville Rd | Check current tasting hours |
| Uesugi Farms Pumpkin Park | 14485 Monterey Rd | Daily in October |
| San Martin Milk Company | 1565 E Middle Ave | Daily 7 a.m.–8:30 p.m. |
| Morgan Hill Wine Trolley pickup | Luxe Flower Bar & Cafe, 1st & Monterey | Weekends year-round |
Why the calendar looks like this
Most towns build their fall season around a single festival that pulls everyone into one place. Gilroy has the Garlic Festival tradition. Morgan Hill has its Fourth of July parade and Taste of Morgan Hill. San Martin has the opposite structure. The five-acre minimum keeps density low, so the fall calendar spreads out across a working airport, a set of estate vineyards, a family dairy, and a farm that grows the pumpkins on site rather than trucking them in. The result is a season you have to assemble yourself.
That takes a little more planning than showing up at a street closure. It also means the crowds thin out fast on any given Saturday, and the people you run into at The Garage on a Friday night or in line at the museum on Open House day are almost always neighbors.
The San Martin Chamber of Commerce, which was formed in the last few years to give the unincorporated community more of a shared identity, has been pushing residents to think of the town as a place with a calendar of its own rather than an in-between space on the way somewhere else. This fall is a good test case.
If you are thinking further ahead than October, whether that means a change of address inside South County or figuring out what your acreage is actually worth in this market, Sold By Team Robinson has walked these roads for twenty-five years and would be glad to talk it through. Get a Free Home Valuation whenever you are ready.
