Ridge, Geyserville Vineyard 2024

71% Zinfandel, 19% Carignane, 8% Petite Sirah and 2% Alicante Bouschet, organically grown in Alexander Valley.

Geyserville is effectively an old-fashioned field blend: varieties planted together and grown on the same distinctive gravelly soils formed by an ancient washout of the Russian River. Ridge has produced the wine continuously since 1966, with some of the old-vine material dating back to the nineteenth century.

The grapes were hand harvested, destemmed and crushed, then fermented with native yeasts and naturally occurring malolactic bacteria. The wine spent 16 months in air-dried American oak, only 15% new, allowing the vineyard rather than the barrel to dominate.

Founded in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1962, Ridge Vineyards has become one of California's most distinctive and revered producers. Its beginnings were remarkably unconventional: a group of scientists from Stanford Research Institute bought an old vineyard on Monte Bello ridge as a weekend retreat and began making Cabernet Sauvignon from its vines. The results proved rather more serious than expected.

Paul Draper joined as winemaker in 1969. A Standford philosophy graduate rather than a formally trained oenologist, Draper developed Ridge's now famous philosophy of "pre-industrial" winemaking: exceptional vineyards, native yeast fermentations and minimal intervention, allowing site and vintage to speak for themselves.

Today Ridge is celebrated both for the great Cabernet-based wines of Monte Bello and for its extraordinary old vine Zinfandel-led field blends from Sonoma. Geyserville has been produced continuously since 1966 and Lytton Springs since 1972. These are wines with a remarkable ability to combine unmistakable Californian generosity with freshness, structure and longevity.