82% Zinfandel, 9% Alicante Bouschet, 5% Petite Sirah, 4% Mataro

Food pairings: Barbecued or dry-rubbed baby back ribs, Carolina pulled pork, grilled Tuscan-style sausages with herbs, spiced turkey, duck confit, game, mushroom and fennel pizza with aged Parmesan, and aged cheeses.

Winemaking: The Pagani Ranch grapes are hand-harvested, destemmed and crushed, and fermented on their native yeasts, pumped over a floating cap, followed by full malolactic fermentation on naturally occurring bacteria. The 2022 aged for fourteen months in air-dried American oak barrels, 15% new and half neutral, and was pad filtered at bottling with the minimum effective sulfur, in keeping with Ridge's "pre-industrial", minimal-intervention philosophy. 2022 was a third year of drought; spring rains helped the vines but caused shatter in the Zinfandel, reducing the crop, and two heat spells pushed an early harvest: Pagani, usually Ridge's last pick, came in over five days in mid-September. Selected blocks of old vines planted between 1896 and 1922 give depth of flavor and texture, while younger vines add intense fruit and racy acidity. It will be most enjoyable over the next ten years.

Vineyards and terroir: Pagani Ranch lies along Highway 12 near Kenwood, on the western side of Sonoma Valley, and with its Victorian house and barns it is one of the most photographed vineyards in the valley. Before it was a vineyard the land was part of the Wildwood Dairy Farm. Its turn-of-the-century vines are mostly Zinfandel and Petite Sirah, with smaller amounts of Mataro and the red-fleshed Alicante Bouschet. They grow on rolling, east-facing slopes of gravelly clay loam, where the roots must dig deep, keeping berries small and flavors intense. Cool, foggy mornings give way to warm days, a cooler climate than Geyserville or Lytton Springs, so the fruit ripens slowly and completely.

Family and history: Felice Pagani, one of fourteen children, left Lake Como for California and bought the ranch in the late 1880s, when only a few vines grew on its western side. He planted the many small vineyard blocks in stages, from the late 1890s to around 1922, and tended them until his death in 1926; his son Louis farmed the vineyard for the rest of his life. Louis's niece Norma Pagani Amantite and her family moved back to the ranch in 1973, and today her son Dino Amantite, the fourth generation, cares for the vines. A lesser site would have been abandoned during Prohibition or the Depression; its survival is proof of its merit. Ridge, founded on Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a champion of single-vineyard Zinfandel since 1964, has made a Pagani Ranch bottling every year since 1991.

In the pictures: A century-old Zinfandel vine at Pagani Ranch at dusk (photo: Lawrence Piggins, Tempered-Light.com, courtesy of Ridge Vineyards); and Paul Draper, Ridge's longtime winemaker and now winemaker emeritus (photo courtesy of Ridge Vineyards).