Ridge is one of the defining names in American wine. High in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Monte Bello Ridge was first terraced for winemaking in the nineteenth century. It was later abandoned, recovered in the 1940s by a group of amateurs, then famously developed from 1969 by Paul Draper. Draper unlocked the real potential of this extraordinary site, and under his tenure, Ridge Monte Bello was one of the wines on the winning team at the 1976 Judgement of Paris.
Up on its eponymous ridge, Monte Bello is a breath-taking site. It looks down onto Silicon Valley (one way) and (in the other way) out into the bay, where the fog was just breaking when I visited. I was also busy watching my feet, as there is a sign that warns of the presence of rattlesnakes. The vineyard is perched on a rare combination of limestone and Franciscan rock. The altitude and the bay air bring cool night air, supplying the diurnal temperature variation that probably underpins all great wines, setting freshness against ripeness.
Ridge is in fact two wineries, not one. Draper also realised that California possessed an unexploited treasure trove of old-vine Zinfandel vineyards. That realisation was the impetus behind the second winery which Ridge maintains at Lytton Springs, in Sonoma County. Ridge have been making wine from the Lytton Springs vineyard since 1972, and acquired it in the 1990s. And their East Bench vineyard, on the border between Dry Creek and Alexander valleys, is planted to Zinfandel clones propagated from pre-Prohibition parcels. (NT 30/08/23)
