Santa Cruz Mountains

Ridge Vineyards makes wines that compete in terms of quality and desirability with Bordeaux First Growths and Grand Cru white Burgundies. Founder Paul Draper has practised and engendered a practical, hands-off approach to winemaking at Ridge, one that has resulted in an exceptional and highly sought-after range of wines.

A dry, mild winter left the vines short of water. Fortunately summer fog cooled the nights, reducing stress. The grapes from each parcel where whole-cluster pressed and barrel fermented as separate lots. During malolactic, lees stirring added complexity. Fresh and wonderfully aromatic, this fine Chardonnay shows the elegance of the vintage. 

A retaste of the flagship wine, the 2007 Monte Bello (a blend from this famous estate of 79% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot, 9% Petit Verdot, and 2% Cabernet Franc) reveals a dense ruby/purple wine with a floral, blueberry, and earthy cassis nose and elegant mid-weight flavors with impressive purity and classicism. There is good acidity, firm tannin, and modest alcohol (13.1%). This is not the most concentrated or powerful Monte Bello, but one built on finesse and elegance. According to the back label, only 41% of the production made it into this wine from the 103-acre estate vineyard. Give this wine another good 5-7 years of bottle age and drink it over the following 20-25 years.
Robert Parker - Wine Advocate # 193 - Feb 2011

This fine blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot shows ripe red and black fruit, integrated barrel spice and elegant structure. Though enjoyable now, its tannins will resolve further as flavours mature over the next eight to ten years.

Ridge Vineyards makes wines that compete in terms of quality and desirability with Bordeaux First Growths and Grand Cru white Burgundies. Founder Paul Draper has practised and engendered a practical, hands-off approach to winemaking at Ridge, one that has resulted in an exceptional and highly sought-after range of wines.

This impressive 2013 is a Cabernet Sauvignon blend with less Merlot than usual, after the drought of 2013. This is an extremely concentrated wine, with powerful, seamless aromas of cassis and violet. A big wine, for sure, but drinking nicely from 2019 and onwards.

The great Ridge estate in California is justly renowned primarily for the sublime quality of its Monte Bello Cabernet, one of the world’s great wines. Less well-known, but equally worthy of note, are the Chardonnays produced from the estate’s vineyards grown high in the Santa Cruz Mountains. In exceptional vintages a Monte Bello Chardonnay is produced, but from the 2009 the main Chardonnay bottled here will be known as Ridge Estate Chardonnay. The cool climate and fractured limestone subsoil is highly evocative of Burgundy, and the Chardonnay from this location has a great resemblance to the great wines produced in that region. The bouquet exhibits a complex array of fruit aromas, including the tropical hints of pineapple and honeysuckle mingling with more temperate notes such as apple, pear and honeydew melon. On the palate there is a dash of butterscotch supporting the leesy, hazelnut-and-white peach flavour, with a touch of butterscotch from the oak. Five ages of barrel are used, with only 10% new to avoid imparting too strong a wood flavour, and the balance is 93% American oak and 7% French. Natural yeasts are used and the wine undergoes full malolactic fermentation, spending 15 months in barrel before bottling. One of the finest Californian Chardonnays on the market, brimming with lovely maturity and yet shot through with finesse.

The just-bottled 2010 Monte Bello combines pure structure and power in a rich, full-bodied style for this wine. Waves of dark red fruit, crushed rocks, flowers, mint and grilled herbs wrap around the long, insistent finish. Today, the 2010 is slightly more reticent than it was last year, but the wine comes to life the more it sits in the glass. Always classy, the 2010 Monte Bello impresses for its impeccable balance. Count me among those who will be thrilled to own this magnificent California classic. The 2010 is a decidedly virile, powerful Monte Bello, qualities winemaker Eric Baugher attributes to a year with a very cold summer and periods of heat that arrived only towards the tail end of the growing season. In 2010, the blend is 74% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, 4% Petit Verdot and 2% Cabernet Franc. Anticipated maturity: 2020-2040.
Antonio Galloni - Wine Advocate - Aug-2012

In the words of Antonio Galloni of Vinous.com – “I don't think there is a finer California Cabernet Sauvignon today at this price, but if there is, I would like to taste it!”. Ridge vineyards has scored highly again at a London re-run of the Judgement of Paris, 40 years on from the original tasting. The 2005 Ridge Monte Bello came 3rd out of 11 wines beating the likes of Chx. Montrose, Mouton-Rothschild & Léoville las Cases.

The superbly crafted Estate Cabernet Sauvignon joined the range in 1979 to offer a softer, earlier drinking companion to the famed Monte Bello, produced from vines deemed to be too young for the Monte Bello proprietary red. 

The bonus with this wine is that it may be from declassified “Grand vin” grapes whereby affording the drinking a taste in the form of a “Baby Monte Bello” but at a 1/3 of the price. The wines of Ridge confirm that they can compete with the best in the world. 

A second year of drought led to a mild winter, and February budbreak. The unusually early start, small crop, and warm summer, moved the harvest from October to September for the first time in fifty years. Tannins extracted quickly, and we pressed at five days to maintain balance. We selected and combined seventeen lots which were then aged in new and one-year-old american oak for twenty months.

This fine vintage has intensity, firm acid, and a complex mineral element. Enjoyable now, it will develop fully over the next decade to 2026.
75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, 3% Petit Verdot, 2% Cabernet Franc

Warm weather brought bud-break in February, and advanced the season for our earliest chardonnay harvest ever. Picked by taste at moderate ripeness, the fruit was whole-cluster pressed and barrel fermented. Natural fermentations finished quickly, allowing early assemblage. Additional aging allowed the wine to clarify; we bottled without filtration. This superb chardonnay will be most enjoyable to 2021.

Ridge Vineyards consistently make wines that compete in terms of quality and desirability with the best that France has to offer. Winemaker Paul Draper has crafted over 40 vintages at Ridge and his practical, hands-off approach to winemaking has resulted in an exceptional and highly sought-after range of wines, including championing historic Zinfandel vineyards.
Although a vineyard was first planted near the top of Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1885, it lay abandoned until four Stanford Research Institute engineers bought it in 1959. Ridge Vineyards was formed in 1962 and Paul Draper was appointed as winemaker in 1969.  Ridge Monte Bello’s original prominence worldwide came when the 1971 vintage was entered in the famous Judgment of Paris Tasting of 1976, a blind tasting, where it came in 5th out of 10 wines, behind Stag’s Leap, Mouton Rothschild, Montrose and Haut-Brion. 

A great vintage for a perennially high class ‘Californian Cabernet’ has produced a wine of intense colour with ripe, dark fruit, well balanced tannins and a lovely seductive sweetness at the finish. Jancis Robinson goes so far as to describe it as “almost Lafite like in its raciness”.

The 2011 Monte Bello (87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Merlot, 4% Cabernet Franc) emerges from the glass with tobacco, grilled herbs, smoke, incense and plums melding together in this soft, beautifully textured Monte Bello. The 2011 is a wine of exceptional textural finesse. The 100% new oak is totally integrated. In 2011, Ridge used a total of 18 of a possible 24 lots for the final blend. The presence of 88% Cabernet Sauvignon is the highest since the 1980s. I expect the 2011 to be a relatively early drinking Monte Bello, but time will be the judge.
Antonio Galloni - Wine Advocate - Issue#202 Aug 2012