Ridge Vineyards

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Ridge Vineyards is a winery with two locations: the original headquarters, located at an elevation of 2,300 feet on Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains near Cupertino, California, and a secondary winery at Lytton Springs in Sonoma County. Predecessors at the site of the Monte Bello winery date back to the 1890s.

Under the direction of winemaker Paul Draper since the 1960s, Ridge has become one of the most widely acclaimed wineries in California, and an influential pioneer in several aspects of winemaking, including their emphasis on natural, ecologically sustainable farming and fermentation, their focus on the particular characteritics of different growing sites, and their development of the Zinfandel grape as the basis for highly refined and complex table wines. Draper is known for drying his own oak staves for use in barrels, which may be a component of the dusky "Draper perfume" that is characteristic of Ridge wines.

The signature wine of Ridge is their Monte Bello, a "field blend" of Cabernet Sauvignon mixed with varying percentages of other grapes grown in the same location, usually including Merlot and Petit Verdot. Monte Bello's international reputation was enhanced when it competed very successfully in the historic Paris Wine Tasting of 1976. Its reputation has been secured by subsequent international competions, including "The Wine Rematch of the Century," the the 30th anniversary retesting of the same red wines evaluated in the 1976 Paris competition. In this blind tasting, held both in the US and the UK, judges in both countries ranked Ridge Monte Bello number one among all tasted wines. It received a score of 137 points compared to the highest ranking French wine (Chateau Mouton-Rothschild), which received a score of 105 points.

Ridge is also reputed for Zinfandels or mostly-Zinfandel field blends, which constitute the bulk of the winery's production. Using grapes from selected sites from all over the state, Ridge Zinfandels emphasize the particular characteristics of each growing site, and are reputed to benefit more greatly from aging than do most zinfandels. Among the best known of the Ridge Zinfandels or Zinfandel-blends are those from Geyserville, York Creek, and Lytton Springs.