Ridge Vineyards

The history of Ridge Vineyards begins in 1885, when Osea Perrone, a doctor who became a prominent member of San Francisco's Italian community, bought 180 acres near the top of Monte Bello Ridge.

He terraced the slopes and planted vineyards; using native limestone, he constructed the Monte Bello Winery, producing the first vintage under that name in 1892. This unique cellar, built into the mountainside on three levels, is Ridge's production facility. At 2600', it is surrounded by the "upper vineyard."

In the 1940s, William Short, a theologian, bought the abandoned winery and vineyard just below the Perrone property; he replanted several parcels to cabernet sauvignon in the late 1940s. From these vines — now the "middle vineyard"— Ridge was founded in 1959 by three electrical engineers from Stanford Research Institute, and their wives: Dave and Fran Bennion, Hew and Sue Crane, and Charlie and Blanche Rosen. Most of the '59 crop, about six tons, went to Mario Gemello's winery. Dave Benion made one barrel of the first Ridge Monte Bello that year. The quality of that 1959 Cabernet Sauvignon from the vines re-planted in the 1940’s was superior to anything being made in California in that era. Wine knowledgeable friends convinced the partners to take the idea of an actual, functioning, possibly profitable winery seriously.

The name "Ridge" was chosen, despite qualms about starkness and the lack of a modifier. 

Paul Draper joined Ridge as winemaker in 1969. And in Paris, the 1971 Monte Bello Cabernet placed fifth in a field of ten–including first-growth Bordeaux–at the now-famous Académie du Vin Paris Tasting.

In the '70s, production and distribution were increasing with each vintage. A clear priority was restoration of the winery, and improvements to the winery–and to winemaking techniques–were the major focus. With the advent of the '80s, vineyard practice and technique began to assume greater importance. More attention was paid to the individual blocks and their distinct personalities.

At Steven Spurrier's ten-years-later re-creation of the '76 Paris Tasting, the '71 Monte Bello came in a close second to Clos du Val and outshone all the Bordeaux’s including the '70 Ch. Montrose, '71 Leoville, and '70 Mouton. In 1988 Paul Draper took on the job of C.E.O. while continuing as Winemaker. In 1989 David Gates joined as Vineyard Manager.

In the 1990’s, thirty years of experience, research and experimentation came together to produce the most consistently great decade of Monte Bello vintages: 1991, ’92, ’94, ’96, ’97, ’99 and with ten more years of bottle age 1995.

Though the first decade of the new century is a bit recent to classify as "history," they were important years. Paul Draper appointed Eric Baugher and John Olney as winemakers, each with more than ten years experience at Ridge. Paul remains as C.E.O. and overall head of winemaking, involved in all major tastings and decisions while Eric and John make the day to day decisions and with David Gates and their crews, do the hard work.

That Monte Bello Cabernet was among California's finest wines of the era. Its quality and distinctive character, and the wines produced from these same vines in 1960 and '61, convinced the partners to re-bond the winery in time for the 1962 vintage.

The first zinfandel was made in 1964, from a small nineteenth-century vineyard farther down the ridge. This was followed in 1966 by the first Geyserville zinfandel. The founding families reclaimed the Monte Bello terraces, increasing vineyard size from fifteen to forty-five acres. Working on weekends, they made wines of regional character and unprecedented intensity. By 1968, production had increased to just under three thousand cases per year, and in 1969, Paul Draper joined the partnership. A Stanford graduate in philosophy—recently returned from setting up a winery in Chile's coast range—he was a practical winemaker, not an enologist. His knowledge of fine wines and traditional methods complemented the straightforward "hands off" approach pioneered at Ridge. Under his guidance the old Perrone winery (acquired the previous year) was restored, the finest vineyard lands leased or purchased, the consistent quality and international reputation of the wines established. Cabernet and Zinfandel account for most of the production; Syrah, Grenache, Carignane, and Petite Sirah constitute a small percentage. Known primarily for its red wines, Ridge has also made limited amounts of chardonnay since 1962.

Lytton Springs, in Sonoma County, became part of the Ridge estate in 1991. A quarter century's experience with this vineyard had convinced us that it was an exceptional piece of ground. Forty consecutive vintages of Geyserville attest to yet another stunning combination of location and varietals. Though born in the early sixties to the post-Prohibition world of modern California winemaking, Ridge relies on nature and tradition rather than technology. Our approach is straightforward: find intense, flavorful grapes; intrude upon the process only when necessary; draw the fruit's distinctive character and richness into the wine.

Historical Timeline

1885: San Francisco Doctor Osea Perrone buys 180 acres on Monte Bello Ridge.

1886: Dr. Perrone plants vineyards and begins construction on the stone and redwood Monte Bello Winery.

1892: Construction completed on the Montebello Winery and the first wine under the Monte Bello label is produced.

1920: The original vineyards are abandoned due to the enactment of prohibition in the United States.

1949: William Short who owns abandoned vineyard land adjacent to the Perrone property replants Cabernet Sauvignon and plants Chardonnay for the first time on Monte Bello.

1959: Three scientists from Stanford University's Research Institute (SRI) purchase the property from Mr. Short and make a small amount of wine from the ten year old Cabernet vines in the small winery on the property.

1962: The new owners form a partnership that becomes Ridge Vineyards.  They re-bond the winery to again produce wine for commercial sale.

1966: Ridge purchases the old Monte Bello winery and a small part of the Perrone vineyard property.

1966: First vintage of Geyserville.

1969: Paul Draper joins Ridge Vineyards as winemaker.

1972: First vintage of Lytton Springs.

1976: Ridge comes in fifth among French and California wines, at the Paris Tasting, which later becomes known as the Judgment of Paris.

1986: Ridge Vineyards is purchased by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

1988: Paul Draper appointed as Chairman and then as Chief Executive Officer. Ridge buys replanted portions of the Perrone property.

1991: Ridge buys the Lytton Springs Winery and the old vineyards surrounding the winery in Sonoma County.

1995: Ridge buys the large western portion of the Lytton Springs vineyard.

2000: Paul Draper is named "Man of the Year" by Decanter magazine and receives the "Distinguished Service Award" from Wine Spectator magazine.

2003: Paul Draper receives the first "COPIA Award" for winemaking.

2004: Ridge completes construction of a new winery and tasting room at Lytton Springs with a focus on the production of Zinfandel.

2005: Paul Draper receives the "Lifetime Achievement Award" from the German wine magazine, Wein Gourmet.

2006: The 1971 and 2000 Monte Bello cabernets win first place in both the original vintage wine and new vintage wine categories at the "Judgment of Paris 30th Anniversary Wine Tasting" in London and California.  Les Grand Prix Du Vin in Paris names Paul Draper as Personnalité de L'Anné.

2007: Paul Draper is given The James Beard Award for winemaking.

INDUSTRIAL WINE Jancis Robinson, one of the UK's foremost wine critics, has said that over 90% of the wine produced in the world today is "industrial." Taking off from that statement, our winemaking at Ridge for the last fifty years can best be described as "pre-industrial." In 1933, after thirteen years of Prohibition, there was only a handful of winemakers trained in pre-Prohibition traditional techniques who were young enough to come back to their old jobs. Those winemakers, at historic Fountain Grove, Larkmead, Nervo, La Cuesta, Simi, and Inglenook - to name a few, produced a number of truly great cabernets and zinfandels. In the 1970s, I was privileged to taste a broad range of those wines when they were thirty-five years old and older. The majority were still showing beautifully, and I found several of them to be as complex as the great Bordeaux vintages of the late 1940s. These were pre-industrial wines.

With the end of Prohibition, the University of California at Davis stepped in to fill the need for winemaker expertise in this country, and began, year by year, to reinvent winemaking as an industrial process. In 2010, in Issue 30 of The World of Fine Wines, one of today's top wine publications, Master of Wine Benjamin Lewin describes how all too many California cabernets are made today: "The move to harvesting grapes with brutally high sugar levels has led to some ingenious ways of adjusting alcohol levels...When you have a must that is simply too high in Brix, you add some water to bring the sugar level down to a level that will ferment, then you bleed off some juice as fermentation begins to mitigate the effects of dilution. Some winemakers add acid to musts of high Brix before adjusting concentration..."

The style of red wine this approach produces - generally referred to as the "international" style - can involve use of reverse osmosis; the addition of Ultra Purple, a 2000 to 1 concentrate; and chemically sterilizing the wine with Velcorin (Di-methyl dicarbonate). Many of these are in use around the world. Some in Bordeaux use micro- oxigenation, reverse osmosis or room-temperature evaporation, among other techniques. California should not be singled out. Industrial wines can be heavy, rather than fresh. When tasting 2007 cabernets recently, Eric Asimov of the New York Times noted: "...we were disappointed to find so many uniform, monochromatic wines with little finesse...Instead of complexity, the rule seems to be all fruit, all the time, with power deemed preferable to elegance."

PRE-INDUSTRIAL WINES At Ridge, we felt from the beginning that these modern, increasingly industrial, wines lacked the complexity, the sense of place, and the ability to age and develop that the pre-industrial wines demonstrated. So we looked back to the 19th Century - to techniques used in the finest California wineries such as La Cuesta, and in the Bordeaux chateaux of that era. In a synthesis of past and present, we have taken the pre-industrial techniques and applied them in conjunction with the best, least intrusive modern equipment. We've been told that we have the most sophisticated analytical laboratory of any winery our size. Given our minimal use of SO2, we depend on lab analyses to alert us to any problem long before it could be perceived by tasting.

VINEYARDS We've employed these winemaking techniques at Ridge for fifty years, with the goal of making the best, most site-specific wines possible. The starting point is having great vineyards. We were blessed by having the 125-year-old Monte Bello vineyard, abandoned after Prohibition, and its now-sixty-year-old cabernet vines, replanted in the late 1940s. Searching for the best, most expressive sites, we made our first zinfandel in 1964 from eighty-year-old vines. In 1966 we made our first Geyserville- from vines that are now one hundred and thirty years old - and have made it every year since. 1972 marked our first Lytton Springs, from vines planted in 1902. Over the following years, we found that those two, out of more than fifty old-vine zinfandel vineyards we have worked with, were producing the highest quality wines - most complex and consistent in their individual character. In 1990, we took over the Geyserville vineyard on a long-term lease with right of first refusal. In 1991 and 1995, we acquired the eastern, and then the western, portion of the vineyard lands first planted by "Captain" Litton in the 1870s. They, with Monte Bello, make up our three estate vineyards. Farming them sustainably, we attempt to carry the soil, the microclimate - everything affecting the site - into the wine, and to gain a true sense of place. Today, the three provide 75% of the fruit we use, and they will soon be organically certified. That means we use cover crops, integrated pest management techniques, mechanical weed removal, and composted grape pomace in place of pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers.

Because taste is the overriding factor behind our harvesting decisions, we pick when the grapes are ripe, but not overripe. All our grapes (estate or purchased) are hand-picked, which allows for sorting in the vineyard.

To make the finest wines, you must start with great vineyards. Ridge was blessed with the 125-year-old Monte Bello vineyard (abandoned after Prohibition), and the cabernet blocks (replanted in the late 1940s). These vines produced our Monte Bello wines from 1959 to 1969. To supplement that limited production while we continued to re-plant the rest of the abandoned cabernet vineyards, we turned to California’s heritage of pre-Prohibition zinfandel vineyards, making a 1964 from vines planted lower on the ridge in the 1890s. Two years later, in 1966, we made our first Geyserville Zinfandel from Sonoma County vines planted in 1882. By the 1970s, the superb quality and immediate appeal of our old-vine zinfandels was clear. They perfectly complemented our cabernet, whose full complexity developed only with age. Together, the two have become our focus. We have made a Geyserville in every vintage, and took over farming the vineyard in 1990. 1972 marked our first Lytton Springs, from vines planted in 1902. We purchased that vineyard in 1991. They, with Monte Bello, make up our estate vineyards. Farming them sustainably, we have certified as organic the majority of blocks at all three; more acres will be added by 2014.

WINEMAKING Our winemaking philosophy includes fermenting entirely with native yeasts from the vineyard, rather than cultured yeast strains; extracting color, flavor, and tannins from the grapes without use of commercial enzymes; determining - by tasting for tannin extraction during fermentation how long to continue pump-overs; allowing malolactic fermentation to occur naturally, without inoculation; achieving wine clarity through settling and racking; making major winemaking decisions, including blending, based on tasting rather than a pre-determined recipe.

Through years of experience, we have found that minimal additions of sulfur are essential to avoiding the ever-present risk of wine oxidation or spoilage, which destroys the individual vineyard character of the wine. We add a small amount of SO2 when the grapes are crushed, after malolactic fermentation, and very small amounts at quarterly rackings, rigorously maintaining the minimum effective level for each wine.

Occasionally, if we have a wine lot (or an entire, assembled wine) with excessive tannin, we may fine it gently, using fresh egg whites. The egg whites precipitate to the bottom of the tank or barrel, improving balance by removing a portion of the tannin, and by further integrating the wine. When the whites have formed a firm layer, we slowly rack the clean wine off this sediment. Pad filtration then removes any remaining trace of egg white. We avoid membrane sterile filtration, a process which - to a minor but noticeable degree - affects flavor and complexity.

Tasting the zinfandels throughout their time in the cellar allows us to select those lots that best express each vineyard's character, and combine them as the vineyard-designated wine. Lots with less intense individuality are held out.

MONTE BELLO AND ESTATE CABERNET SAUVIGNON For the Bordeaux varietals, which are all grown on the Monte Bello vineyard, the approach is somewhat different. After years of experience, we have found that the parcels can be divided roughly in half based on the style of wine each has produced in past years. One group is more approachable, and develops its full complexity earlier; from these, we select the Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (formerly the Santa Cruz Mountains). The other, though balanced and enjoyable as a young wine, begins to develop its full depth, complexity, and superb quality with a minimum of ten years' aging. The Monte Bello is selected by blind tasting from these parcels. The first assemblage for both takes place in early February, following vintage. A second, that considers press wine and lots that were not yet stable in February, takes place in May. Thus, from one vineyard, we make two wines - distinct in style, but sharing the vineyard's individuality.

In summary, Ridge bases grape-growing in each vineyard on long experience with the site, while simultaneously making use of the most recent advances in vineyard management. Pre-industrial winemaking begins with respect for the natural process that transforms fresh grapes into wine, and the 19th-Century model of minimum intervention. When you have great vineyards that produce high quality grapes of distinctive individual character, this is not only an environmentally and socially responsible approach, it's also the best way to consistently make fine wine.

Winemaker Profiles

PAUL DRAPER, CEO/WINEMAKER (second from right) 
Paul Draper grew up on an eighty-acre farm in the Chicago suburb of Barrington. After attending the Choate School and receiving a degree in philosophy from Stanford University, he lived for two years in northern Italy. Later he attended the University of Paris and traveled extensively in France, gaining practical experience in traditional winemaking. In the mid-sixties, with a close friend, he set up a small winery in the coast range of Chile and produced several vintages of cabernet sauvignon. He joined Ridge Vineyards in 1969, and presently resides atop Monte Bello Ridge with his wife Maureen and daughter Caitlin. He is known for his crafting of fine cabernets and chardonnays from the Monte Bello estate vineyards, and as a pioneer in the production of long-lived, complex zinfandels.

ERIC BAUGHER, VICE PRESIDENT, WINEMAKING - MONTE BELLO (second from left) 
A native Californian, Eric grew up on a small ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains where he raised animals, planted gardens and orchards, and rode horses. His love of the area kept him there for college; he attended UC Santa Cruz, receiving undergraduate degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. In 1994, he joined Ridge and in his first year, he organized the laboratory and developed new sophisticated analytical tests to support Ridge's traditional winemaking practices. In 1995, he took on production management and now oversees all day-to-day winemaking activities. His passion for wine and the stimulating juxtaposition of low-tech winemaking and high-tech analytic techniques keeps him totally involved and constantly inspired.

JOHN OLNEY, VICE PRESIDENT, WINEMAKING - LYTTON SPRINGS (right) 
John began traveling to Europe at an early age where he was introduced to the culture of wine in France and Italy. He frequently visited the south of France where he spent time with his uncle, Richard Olney, the celebrated food and wine writer. Through his uncle's relationships, John learned first hand many of the great European winemaking methods and traditions. Later, while attending a language exchange program in Provence, he chose to pursue wine as a career and, in 1994, enrolled in enological studies at the Lycée Viticole in Burgundy to learn the craft of winemaking in greater depth. Before coming to Ridge, John worked at Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant as well as with several European winemakers including Gerald Chave in the Rhone, Lucien Peyraud at Domaine Tempier, and Aubert de Villaine of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. 
In 1996, John began work at Ridge's Monte Bello Winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains. In 1999, he was put in charge of the Lytton Springs Winery where he oversaw the construction of the new 17,000 sq. ft. straw bale winery.

DAVID GATES, VICE PRESIDENT, VINEYARD OPERATIONS (left) 
He grew up on a 160-acre farm in central Minnesota. In order to escape the Minnesota winters, he attended the University of California, San Diego for two years. His love of plants and agriculture led him to UC Davis, where he received his bachelor's and master's degrees in Viticulture, and met and married his wife, Donna. For the next six years he worked as a viticultural consultant throughout northern California and southern Oregon, and as a vineyard manager in Napa Valley. Since joining Ridge in 1989, David's duties include managing the Monte Bello vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Whitten Ranch at Geyserville, and the Lytton Estate vineyards at Healdsburg, as well as monitoring and helping all Ridge growers in Sonoma, Napa, Santa Clara, and San Luis Obispo counties.