Ridge, Three Valleys 2024

67% Zinfandel, 17% Carignane, 8% Petite Sirah, 5% Alicante Bouschet and 3% Mataro (Mourvedre), sourced from ten vineyards across Sonoma County.

The grapes were hand-harvested, destemmed and crushed before spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts and naturally occurring malolactic bacteria. The wine then matured for 12 months in air-dried American oak, 19% new.

Unlike Ridge's great single-vineyard wines, Three Valleys is deliberately about blending different sites: Zinfandel supplies the core fruit, old vine Carignane acidity and brightness and Petite Sirah spice, colour and tannin.

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.