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Raspberry, pepper, licorice and a hint of vanilla, then black cherry, blackberry and plum with garrigue, bouquet garni herbs and baking spice. Polished, supple tannins, minerality and lifted acidity lead to a long, layered black tea finish.
Available in store
Close76% Zinfandel, 14% Petite Sirah, 7% Carignane, 2% Alicante Bouschet, 1% Mataro
Food pairings: Spiced grilled lamb skewers, lamb tacos with a sweet mole sauce, barbecued and grilled meats, and other bold, savory dishes; older vintages are excellent with lamb too.
Scores:
Winemaking: The organically grown estate grapes are hand-harvested, destemmed and crushed, and each lot is fermented on its native yeasts, followed by full malolactic fermentation on naturally occurring bacteria. The wine aged for sixteen months in air-dried American oak barrels, 19% of them new, and was pad filtered at bottling, with the minimum effective sulfur; true to Ridge's "pre-industrial" philosophy, every step is listed on the label. A cold, rainy winter and a cool summer pushed the 2023 season back and slowed ripening; picking ran from September 23 to October 24, and the twenty-eight parcels that gave the most typical Lytton Springs were combined and racked to barrel. Fine tannins, moderate ripeness and focused fruit mark the vintage: an elegant wine, enjoyable now, with the structure to evolve over the next ten years and more.
Vineyards and terroir: Lytton Springs lies just north of Healdsburg, on the benchland and rolling hills between Dry Creek and Alexander Valley. Its 100-plus-year-old Zinfandel vines are interplanted with Petite Sirah, Carignane and a little Mataro and Grenache, a field blend that has long been the quintessential Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel. Foggy mornings give way to warm, sunny afternoons and breezy evenings, and the weathered, gravelly clay soils hold moisture so the grapes ripen slowly. Ridge farms the estate organically, and its winery is essentially an above-ground cave with walls of vineyard clay, sand and straw, night-air cooling and solar panels on the roof.
Winery history: In the 1870s the land belonged to "Captain" William Litton, who developed the springs and built a hotel for San Franciscans who came by train to take the waters; by 1903 the name was spelled "Lytton". Paul Draper first saw the vineyard in 1972, when its vines were already about 80 years old, and made Ridge's first Lytton Springs that year from the eastern half, planted at the turn of the century. In 1991, on the 20th anniversary of that first vintage, Ridge bought the Lytton Springs winery and the old vines around it; by the early 1990s both the eastern and western portions, once a single property under Litton, were part of the Ridge estate. Ridge itself dates back to the Monte Bello Winery, built in 1885-92 in the Santa Cruz Mountains and revived in 1962 by four Stanford Research Institute engineers. John Olney, who oversaw the building of the straw-bale winery at Lytton Springs, is now CEO and Head Winemaker, and Shauna Rosenblum, daughter of Zinfandel legend Kent Rosenblum, leads winemaking at Lytton Springs.
In the pictures: The Ridge winery at Lytton Springs, rising above its vineyard; and gnarled old head-trained vines at Lytton Springs in early spring (photos courtesy of Ridge Vineyards).
