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Dark and brooding, with black cherry, blackberry and inky dark fruit, chaparral and sage, black olive, cracked pepper and baking spice. Penetrating raspberry on the palate, firm acidity, supple tannins and a long, mineral finish.
Available in store
Close70% Zinfandel, 18% Carignane, 9% Petite Sirah, 3% Alicante Bouschet
Food pairings: Moroccan spiced lamb, North Carolina-style pulled pork with a vinegar sauce, roasted pork tenderloin with blue cheese potato purée, orange zest and pomegranate, crispy duck leg confit with red wine braised cabbage, and spiced roast turkey.
Scores:
Winemaking: Ridge calls its approach "pre-industrial": the grapes are hand-harvested, destemmed and crushed, fermented on their native yeasts with a floating cap and daily pump-overs, and go through full malolactic fermentation on naturally occurring bacteria. The wine then spends sixteen months in air-dried American oak barrels, 15% of them new, and is only pad filtered at bottling, with the minimum effective sulfur; Ridge lists these ingredients and steps on every label. Heavy winter rains in 2023 replenished the groundwater, and moderate temperatures were followed by a cool August and September that pushed the harvest late into October, the latest Geyserville harvest since the first vintage in 1966. The long ripening gave dark fruit and supple tannins balanced by beautiful acidity: enjoyable now, this classic field blend will keep evolving for the next ten years.
Vineyards and terroir: Geyserville, Ridge's Alexander Valley estate, lies three miles south of the town of Geyserville on the western edge of the valley. It is made up of three adjoining vineyards on a single soil type, a deep gravelly loam with large river stones deposited by an ancient washout of the Russian River, which drains well, holds warmth and gives the wine a distinctive mineral quality. Warm days are tempered by evening breezes and morning fog. The "Old Patch" holds the oldest vines Ridge farms, more than 130 years old, and the vineyard is a traditional field blend of Zinfandel with Carignane, Petite Sirah and Mataro; the relatively high share of Carignane is often credited for Geyserville's character and freshness. The site is farmed sustainably, with cover crops, composting, integrated pest management and hand harvesting.
Winery history: Ridge's story begins in 1885, when Osea Perrone planted vines high on Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains and built the Monte Bello Winery, still Ridge's production cellar today. In the late 1950s four Stanford Research Institute engineers, Dave Bennion, Hew Crane, Charlie Rosen and Howard Ziedler, made a little estate Cabernet there, and they re-bonded the winery for the 1962 vintage. The first Zinfandel followed in 1964, and in 1966 the founders bought fruit from the oldest vines on the Trentadue family's ranch near Geyserville: Geyserville is Ridge's longest continuous Zinfandel bottling, made every year since. Paul Draper, a Stanford philosophy graduate who had made wine in Chile, joined in 1969 and over nearly five decades established Ridge's reputation for long-lived, complex Zinfandels. Today John Olney, who joined Ridge in 1996 after training in Burgundy and working with Gérard Chave and at Domaine Tempier, is CEO and Head Winemaker.
In the pictures: Paul Draper, Ridge's winemaker emeritus, in the vineyard; a moss-covered old vine at Geyserville in spring; and the Monte Bello winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains (photos courtesy of Ridge Vineyards).
