Here’s How Ridge Vineyards Changed California Wine Forever

Up behind the town of Cupertino, California, there’s a long, steep, winding road. If you follow it, you will eventually come to a graceful redwood building. From there, you can see, far down below, distant and silent, the tech fervor of Silicon Valley. This is Ridge Vineyards. 

Not long ago, I went there to chat with Ridge’s chairman emeritus, Paul Draper, an icon of California winemaking whose career more or less encompasses the entire modern era of California wine, as does Ridge itself. The winery was founded in 1959 by a trio of Stanford engineers; Draper joined them in 1969.

Things were different then. “There wasn’t remotely as much interest in wine in the U.S. at that time,” Draper recalls. “And California wine from the 1940s, ’50s, and then ’60s, none of them were as complex or would age as well as the best Bordeaux. I thought, ‘Jesus, are we at that much of a disadvantage that we just can’t do that?’ But when I came up here, I sat down and was given a taste of the ’62 and ’64 that Dave [Bennion, Ridge’s original winemaker] had made with his partners, and they were two of the best California wines I had ever had in my life. Wow. Right there. And so I said to myself, ‘Well, for Christ’s sake, you can do it in California.’”

In 1960, there were only 271 wineries in all of California. Today, there are over 4,800, and they’re in almost every part of the state. Draper’s realization about the potential of California wine in that moment has been proved over and over again. Under his leadership, Ridge has also been a forerunner for trends in California wine that have over time become mainstays.

First, a realization of the value of historic, old-vine vineyards and the rise of single-vineyard wines. They’ve shepherded organic viticulture (Ridge, which has a second winery north of Healdsburg, is the single largest organic grape grower in Sonoma County) and ingredient labeling (still on the forefront there). And finally, an early move — now echoed by many of California’s best producers — away from a reliance on technology and chemical adjuncts in the winery, toward what Draper calls “preindustrial winemaking.”

He says, “It means using native yeasts, not filtering, not doing anything intrusive. Not using any of the current 60 or whatever additives that are allowed, and none of all the heavy-duty processing that you can use — what people call their ‘tool belt’ to make better wine. What I thought instead was, ‘I’m going to turn back time, and we’re going to make wine the way they were making it in the late 19th century.’ That’s preindustrial winemaking.

You can taste everything Draper is talking about in all of his wines, but particularly, for me, in the winery’s Geyserville red ($56), an in-the-vineyard blend of Zinfandel, Carignane, Petite Sirah, and Alicante Bouschet. The heart of its character comes from the “old patch” of the vineyard, which was planted over 130 years ago in Sonoma County’s Alexander Valley. It’s a wine that’s always fragrant with aromas of currants and peppery spices, bursting with brambly dark-berry flavor, unabashed in its richness yet somehow elegant as well; and a portrait of California wine history in a bottle.

2023 Ridge Grenache Blanc ($35)

Ridge winemaker John Olney sources Grenache Blanc (and a little Picpoul and Roussanne) from several Paso Robles vineyards for this melon-pear flavored white; full-bodied and mouth-coating, but with lime-citrus acid with a salty zip on the end.

2022 Ridge Paso Robles Zinfandel ($46)

1920s era vines at the Benito Dusi Ranch in Paso Robles provide the fruit for this impossible-not-to-love Zinfandel. It’s bright and juicy, with classic Zinberry flavors (basically, if there was a berry that somehow crossed strawberry, raspberry, boysenberry, and blackberry, that’d be a Zinberry).

2022 Ridge Lytton Estate Petite Sirah ($47)

Sourced from Ridge’s Lytton Estate property, this powerhouse red deserves either a few years in a cellar or else a large and very juicy steak. The flavors are all purple and red fruit, plums and mulberries, embraced by emphatic tannins and a tangy, mineral finish.

2022 Ridge Lytton Springs ($56)

This is the 50th anniversary vintage of Lytton Springs, and it’s as distinctive and complex as ever. Blackberry-rich and laced with clove and mocha hints, it’s structured but plush all at once. Like most of Ridge’s red wines, this Zinfandel-driven blend goes into American oak barrels, which can give a distinctive vanilla note; because only 17% of those barrels were new in this vintage, that’s more like a faint, alluring whiff, which lifts above the wine’s juicy, dark, lasting fruit.

2022 Ridge Geyserville ($56)

The heart of this wine comes from the “old patch” of Ridge’s Whitten Ranch vineyard, a gnarled, seven-acre block of vines (Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Carignane, Alicante Bouschet, and others) planted in 1891—they’re some of California’s oldest. The 2022 vintage is classic Geyserville, with blackberry-plum-currant fruit, warm spice notes, and soft tannins. Drink it now, cellar it for a few years, or hide it away and open it in a couple of decades.

2021 Ridge Monte Bello ($295)

Ridge’s Monte Bello is one of California’s great Cabernet-based wines, in this vintage a blend of 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 31% Merlot, and 5% Petit Verdot. The aromas spring from the glass—red cherries and cassis, a hint of vanilla oak, violets—and are echoed in the flavor, which is carried along on fine-grained, substantial tannins and lifting acidity.

Tasted in October 2024, it’s still incredibly young, and has decades ahead of it. Wine lovers used to top-level Napa Valley Cabernets won’t find the oomph of extraction and richness they’re used to here—Ridge’s high-altitude Santa Cruz Mountain vineyards don’t work that way—but this is a thrillingly complex red, deceptively powerful and lasting, and not to be missed.