Ridge Vineyards
Santa Cruz Mountains & Sonoma County, California, USA
If California wine has a shortlist of genuinely historic producers, Ridge sits very close to the top. Not because it follows trends particularly well, but because it mostly ignores them and keeps making wine that ages beautifully instead.
The story begins on Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where vineyards were first planted in the late nineteenth century. Ridge itself emerged in the 1960s before becoming one of the defining names in American wine under legendary winemaker Paul Draper.
Monte Bello remains the flagship. A Cabernet-based wine grown high above Silicon Valley that somehow combines power, freshness, minerality and longevity in a way very few California wines manage. It became internationally famous after the Judgment of Paris tastings, but the wine itself has never really changed direction chasing fashion.
The Zinfandels deserve equal respect. Geyserville and Lytton Springs helped prove old-vine Zinfandel could produce serious, site-driven wine rather than simply huge alcohol and jammy fruit. Blackberry, spice, dried herbs and remarkable balance remain the signatures.
What keeps Ridge relevant is that many of the things now discussed endlessly in wine, vineyard expression, minimal intervention and transparency, were already part of the philosophy decades ago. The labels may look almost unchanged from the 1970s. Thankfully the wines still hold up remarkably well too.
