The summit of the mountain
We visit Ridge vineyards at the very top of the Santa Cruz mountain and then descend, into the dingy depths of Santa Cruz Pier. By Kate
Up early for the 2 hour drive down to the Santa Cruz mountain for our visit to Ridge vineyards. It was Amit’s birthday, so there were two things to be excited about. More pressingly though, we were growing concerned about Amit’s car. He was displaying a remarkably carefree attitude towards the preservation of it, mounting the edges of pavements with gay abandon when taking corners and sailing through both red lights and stop signs. The convertible roof had ceased to function despite a prolonged bout of fiddling by almost everyone except me and it had somehow acquired a large dent and a scratch down one side. It also apparently smelt very much like an amazingly unsavoury boozer. The car party on Saturday night in Healdsburg may have had something to do with the latter problem.
We started running late almost immediately thanks to more commuter traffic, particularly around San Francisco. Is there anywhere left in the world where this is not a feature of everyday life? We are living in the days of the end of oil but despite rising prices, there is very little to indicate that this is so.
Eventually this thinned and we started moving again, coming eventually to the base of the mountain, turning off onto it. I have been here before, so had steeled myself for the ascent, which from memory, had left me a white knuckled, quivering wreck, but happily, the 8 years of driving to inaccessible wineries all over the world since have clearly had a beneficial effect and this seemed steep, but relatively easy.
Finding where we were supposed to be once we got there was a lot less easy and we were soon driving aimlessly along tiny dirt tracks between the vines, the view spreading beneath us. We went round in circles a few times, Amit’s dishevelled car bouncing along in front of us, looking increasingly so as it acquired a thick layer of dust. We eventually found someone who knew who we were and where we were supposed to be going and sent us off to the crush pad. I had warned everyone the night before that while this would undoubtedly be a fantastic visit, I had not been told that we were going to see Paul Draper and so did not expect to, except perhaps, if we were very lucky, in passing. Yet as we drove onto the expanse of concrete which is the first stop for the arriving grapes, there he was, perfectly silhouetted against the cerulean sky with the valley stretched below. Everyone was instantly charmed and remained so for the rest of the visit.
Paul Draper famously studied philosophy before being enticed into wine and he could easily be mistaken for an academic. His kind, professorial persona is a million miles away from the pumped up, hysterical milieu the wonderful wines he makes often find themselves in which makes it that much more unexpected when you first meet him . One of our Green & Blue customers attended a tasting he did for the Wine Society in London a few years ago and was really rather perplexed by it. "He was so.........quiet', he said.
Much to be said for quiet men, particularly if their heads are as full of astounding facts on everything to do with wine as Paul's is.
His 2005 Chardonnay has just been rated as one of the greatest wines in the world and of course there is now not a single drop left anywhere, for anyone. He seems genuinely exasperated by the silliness of this and by the fact that it means that loyal customers of the wine who have enjoyed it for years will now not be able to buy any till the next release as it has all gone to the slavish followers of fashion.
We stood looking out over the valley below us while he explained that Ridge was based quite literally on a ridge on the north plate of the South Andreas fault, a piece of land known as ‘exotic terrain’. This means that it is a slice of the earth formed many, many miles away from where it ended up, millions of years ago. Below the thin, poor top soil (guaranteeing low yields), is pure limestone, which is what gives these wines their exquisitely refined, chalky minerality. Limestone is by no means widespread in California, with only small outcrops in Paso Robles that he knows of. Ridge is also at 800m, much higher and therefore much cooler than Napa or Sonoma and ideal for both Bordeaux varieties and Chardonnay. It routinely snows in winter and in spring, the wind whips off the ocean so strongly that it can interfere with flowering. Temperatures also tend to plummet at night, so while days are often warmer and sunnier than in Bordeaux during the growing season, nights are always much cooler.
So cool is this microclimate that acidities here are routinely higher than in Bordeaux – something which has fooled me time and again in blind tastings where Ridge is concerned – while something about the fruit hints at the new world, the crisp, sinewy edge does not. Apparently, in 1 or 2 years every decade they really will struggle to ripen the fruit, with much more reticent, muscular wines being the result.
The land here was first planted to vines in 1866 and the local district council have very recently given Ridge agricultural rights to more of it, as long as they promise not to build any houses. Not a problem as this is not something that is remotely on the agenda, the plan obviously being to plant more vineyards. Production will therefore eventually increase once these are mature enough.
Famously, they also have two vineyards up in Sonoma – Lytton Springs and Geyserville, and fruit is trucked down from here when ripe, for fermentation at the mountain winery. This travels down in narrow, stainless steel bins and after the three hour journey, it goes straight into the crusher.
Currently, they have 36 parcels on the mountain and each of these will be fermented separately, using only natural yeasts. This is fantastically labour intensive, but it does give a very broad palate from which to draw when assembling the final blend. Once the malolactic fermentation is finished, they start to taste, only doing six wines at a time so that they remain sharp and focused, able to spot the essence of Montabello as well as fabulous balance and complexity . The essence is what they are really after though and if they don’t find it, the wine will go into the Santa Cruz Mountain blend.
We sell this as well as Montebello and I have to say that it has to be one of the best value wines in the world. True, it does not have quite the depth and intensity of its big brother, but it is damn fine all the same and retails for a fraction of the price at £25.50.
There was a good breeze, sweeping through the sunlight and keeping us from feeling too warm, although it did not stop the burn – we were all rather pink and glowing from just the 45 minutes we had spent out on the crush pad before following Paul down into the relative chill of the Montabello barrel cellar. This wine, like the top growths in Bordeaux, is treated to 100% new oak barrels every year and Paul designed this particular cellar himself a few years ago, so that all the different parcels could easily be kept separate at this stage as well. I asked him why he famously has always only ever used American oak for Ridge, even when the trend was relentlessly in the opposite direction.
When Paul had first been approached by the owners of Ridge in the early to mid 60’s, he had already been working in wine, having set up a winery in Chile, travelled Europe and made it his business to drink as many of the classics as he could. He spotted the incredible potential in Ridge from the moment he tasted it but was always completely clear that he was not interested in making imitation Claret. Relentlessly trying to shoehorn wines into moulds created thousands of miles away is always fundamentally a waste of time and never produces the fix that true addicts of terroir crave. We were all very impressed.
Being a scholar, he began reading up and investigating and came across a book which detailed the findings of an exhaustive study into different oaks, first published in 1900. This had finally concluded that the best oaks were Baltic, not French. Given this, why on earth spend time and money transporting casks from France when potentially, what was readily available almost next door (figuratively speaking) was at least as good? A terribly environmentally friendly conclusion to reach all those years ago – think of all the oak miles Mr Draper has saved in his long years of wine making!
I asked why it was that it was almost impossible to detect the innate American-ness of the oak on his wines, when with many, it adds a thick layer of sweet vanilla/coconut ice-cream, somewhat squashing the fruit. The secret, apparently , is in the fact that they air-dry all the wood for their barrels. This matures and softens it in a way that Kiln-drying simply isn’t capable of, giving appetising buttered roundness which very much plays a supporting role to the fruit, never overwhelming it. Today, they use 12 different coopers as a form of insurance, although their favourites tend to do best every year. Since 1987, 100% of Montabello has gone into new oak thanks to that being a very small vintage. As they had enough wood to do this, they decided to see what would happen. The results were so good that they have done the same every since.
The Santa Cruz Mountains blend starts in 100% new oak but after blending, 50% goes into second fill barrels. Lest it begin to appear that Paul Draper is a bit of an oak fiend however, do note that he believes firmly that Bordeaux varieties are among the only ones that are capable of integrating new oak – Pinot, Sangiovese, Nebbiolo, among others, are all examples of varieties that really can’t. His Zinfandels only have around 25% new wood, which is as much as they can stand.
We tasted from two different 200litre barrels of the 07 Montabelllo, the intense, lush fruit warming us right through, which was handy as certainly myself, Rebecca and Emily, in our thin cotton sun dresses, were beginning to look rather blue of lip in the chilly cellar. Although I could have tasted these wines all day – they had not started to go slightly spiky and four square which they often do after bottling, all the succulent baby fat was still there – I don’t think any of us were particularly depressed when we had to move on. I was beginning to loose sensation in my toes.
We walked out into a wall of warm air which was terrific; finding ourselves in another bit of the winery, on a walkway right next to the lab. Paul explained that all his business partners at Ridge are scientists and when he decided that he wanted to make his wines without the use of any chemicals at all (other than the minimum amount of Sulphur Dioxide), the decided to develop a top of the range, all singing, dancing and literally fortune telling lab. They certainly succeeded as this is believed to be on of the most sophisticated wine laboratories in the world for a winery the size of Ridge (really not very big). They have the capability here to measure absolutely everything and can keep control that way instead of reverting to what Paul called ‘Death Star’ (although I believe that this name is not official). DS is a chemical additive which kills all known wine bacteria, taking most of the good living organisms with it and leaving wine which is clean, but in an advanced stage of rigor mortis by the time the cork in pulled. Not much joy to be had there then.
To the left of us were the fermentation tanks, ranging from really teeny tiny to on the small side, compared to the norm. An awful lot of work is done on controlling tannins during fermentation, so that 80% of the time, fining isn’t necessary.
We moved through there and into the offices on our way to the old cellar. While those who were, at that stage, profoundly desperate, dashed to the loo, the rest of us stood around admiring probably the best dog in the world. Bodhi is a Samoyed, which none of us were familiar with, apparently bred as sled dogs in the Artic who would then double up as duvet/hot water bottle in the evening. They are now therefore terrifically friendly, loving the proximately of people although Bodhi was too engrossed in his nap to take much notice of us. We all had a go at stroking his incredibly thick, off white fur. It helped warm my still fairly frozen fingers.
We regrouped, Emily and Wade looking considerably less fidgety, and moved off to the old cellar, built in 1886. Down a rickety wooden flight of stairs and onto the first wooden landing crammed with barrels and overlooking the cellar proper which lies down a further flight of stairs. Apparently the building remains virtually completely unchanged since the original construction and it certainly feels suitably historic, with the scented smell of old wood and dust, underpinned by rich tones of maturing wine. Here was were the Zinfandel lay and we proceeded to taste barrel samples of the 2007 components of both Lytton Springs and Geyserville, full of feral intensity which is what I love about these wines so much.
Paul told us how in his time in Ridge, he has probably worked with over 100 different vineyards, all containing 19th century plantings of Zinfandel and its preferred blending partners, but that the above two were still the best; producing fruit that was much more long lived and intense. This is thanks partly to their particular soil structures. Gravel and clay in Geyserville and gravely loam in Lytton Springs. He made wine from both for years before they were able to take over the vineyards and now, thankfully, there is no danger of either being whipped away from under their noses. We commented on the fact that both were powerful, muscular wines but that the tannins were fabulously integrated in both. He attributed this integration to handling the wines as little as possible. The minute the bond between tannin and body breaks – which it does through over manipulation – the result is overly skeletal and hollow.
We left the old cellar and stepped back outside, climbing the short incline up to a table which had been set for a tasting, with some bread and cheese, just below the crush pad.
2004 Montebello Chardonnay
Typically, about 25% new barrels are used for this wine, on average. The aim is to try to pick vineyards in parcels as they ripen with the fruit then going straight to barrel to ferment with natural yeasts. They practise whole cluster pressing which minimises the amount of solids (typically only 1%) in the juice. The juice is then aerated, just to very slightly oxide it and after that it is racked into barrel at which point they leave it entirely alone. Fermentation is long and cool, taking two months, with malolactic fermentation starting around December and finishing around April. The do a bit of lees stirring and then mix in a tiny amount of Sulphur Dioxide before leaving it to settle, so that they don’t need to do any filtration prior to bottling, just a very light fining with isinglass.
Delicate lemon and mineral on nose. This carries through on the palate with fresh but balanced acidity, lots of mineral coming through the lemon butter and some underlying toasted nut flavours . Excellent length and beautifully clean, mineral finish.
Only 5% of production here is white and while I like this, I have never felt the same profound attachment to the chardonnay that I have to the reds.
2006 Lytton Springs
Paul told us how he believes that Petite Sirah is by far the most important complement for Zinfandel, giving depth and structure where it would otherwise be lacking. Almost all grapes varieties bought in during the late 19th century were to complement California’s dearly beloved adopted variety - Zinfandel. Syrah was initially tried, but the two never really related terribly well to each other and eventually someone thought to use this progeny of Syrah and a variety called Peloursin.
Red and black berries with a distinctly leafy edge. Still a bit young and edgy with oak showing through but good berry and coffee flavours with a fresh, herbal edge. Great length and good, rich finish.
2006 Geyserville
The Carignan vines in this vineyard are 130 years old and are the magical ingredient here, giving an amazingly gentle complexity for such an earthy wine. Geyserville has been made for over 40 years – since 1966, while Lytton Springs dates from ‘72. During the late 70’s and early 80’s, Ridge did not have access to the vineyard, because the owner wanted to make his own wine (inspired no doubt by the fantastic results Paul had achieved) Ridge managed to take over part of the vineyard in 1985 and by 1990 heard rumours that he was interested in selling, so it was not really until then than they had both the eastern and western half of the vineyard under their control. Definitely a plot of land worth waiting for!
Geyserville is really more feminine than Lytton Spring which is more earthy and masculine. Paul finds it impossible to decided definitively on which is best and neither can we. We’ll just have to love them both equally.
Rich, animal, musky nose with some red and black fruit. This carries through onto the palate with beautifully rich, perfectly balanced red and black fruit and underlying musky, animal scent. Great length again with even more musk on the finish.
I think that today, Geyserville has the edge but I know that this can, and probably will, all change the next time I taste them side by side.
2005 Montabello
And finally to the towering older sibling. 2005 was an exceptional vintage here as it was over the pond and Paul believes that it will easily rival the best of the first growths in years to come.
The blend for Montabello does vary slightly from year to year but in this instance, it has 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot, 6% Petite Verdot and 2% Cabernet Franc. Paul is particularly interested in Petite Verdot which ripens here 7 or 8 years out of 10. In some, there is none at all, or a mere 1 %. He is adamant though that it is essentially not a stand alone variety, needing the others to give it depth, particularly in California. In Bordeaux, the belief is that it is one of the greatest compliments to the other varietals, but it does struggle to ripen fully in all but the best vintages.
This wine is a baby – albeit one of epic proportions. Amazingly intense red and black fruit, still full of youthful vigour and no hint of any secondary aromas on the nose. This intensity is on the palate too, with taut, rich fruit complexity still not yielding much and buttered oak which is still a bit edgy. The underlying minerality is as pure and clean as always and the edge is fresh and crisp. Despite the obvious youth, the mid-palate has no holes in it and the length is superb.
1995 Montebello 69% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% merlot, 10% Petite Verdot and 3% Cabernet Franc
The highlight of the show, but first a bit of Ridge history. The vines replanted here post prohibition were all Cabernet Sauvignon as everything had died during the years of neglect. If vines remain unpruned, they put on more and more and yet more grapes until they finally die of exhaustion which is what had happened to these vineyards. Cabernet reappeared in the late 1940’s and then more abandoned blocks were replanted in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s with Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petite Verdot.
Paul did this primarily because he felt that the best examples of Cabernet from France were blends and while he was not trying to do an exact imitation, he was trying to make the best wine he possibly could. He was never tempted by Malbec though, finding it infinitely more ordinary than the other 4; lacking in finesse.
While Pinot Noir is a stand alone variety, it really comes into its own in Burgundy where each tiny plot of land gives the wine unique character, distinctly different to that of its neighbour. Here, the Montabello terroir is the common thread, binding all the different components together cohesively with any differences between parcels being very minor. Paul believes that many wines which are blends from far flung vineyards or even regions show primarily the influence of the wine maker rather than the grower and at Ridge, they prefer to think of themselves as growers. He pointed out that the old word was ‘vinter’ , not wine maker. There was no conferring of a creative role on the person responsible for keeping an eye on fermentation.
The Merlot planted in 1960’s was mature enough to be included from 1974. They did a 50/50 blend at first and found that it was really good.
Montebello is now completely organically grown although they are still waiting for certification. Like so many of the great organic and biodynamic wine makers of the world though, they won’t advertise this. Organic says nothing about how the wine is made - it could be run through every single mechanical processor in the world and it would still be organic. For them, making wine as simply as possible, with minimal sulpjur dioxide, is a lot more ‘organic’.
Paul thinks that the biodynamic approach is a little better but it still doesn’t tell you that you can’t blend vineyards, so it is more about the growing of the grapes. He does rightly point out that the situation remains amazingly complex. With organic viticulture, it may take many more passes through the vineyard with a tractor than with intelligent sustainable viticulture. Sometimes the option which is better in some ways is really not as good in others.
1995 was an excellent year as well and is only now beginning to reach a point that others would get to in 10 easily, with the tannins evolving at a glacial pace.
This is absolutely incredibly . Velvety fruit – still bright and vibrant, with a silky, sinewy structure and pure limestone mineral coming through underneath. This is still completely youthful – further down the line than the 2005 in that it is much less taut and the oak has integrated completely, but still the secondary aromas have not even begun to show themselves. The length is extraordinary and the finish is clean, pure mineral with a hint of ripe berry. The chalky minerality on this wine is absolutely delicious and after time in the glass, cedar wood and spice starts to come through more.
This is undoubtedly one of the great wines of the world.
We sat in the dappled shade with 1995 Montabello glowing ruby in our glasses, the perfume of it hanging heavy and thick in the air while we talked and nibbled away at cheese and bread. I think we all wondered how we had been extraordinarily lucky enough to be there, visiting the wise man on the mountain and tasting his phenomenal wines. I think it is one of those sun drenched moments that will be in my memory probably for the rest of my life.
Paul, not surprisingly had to go and so did we. Wade, Australian and not backward in coming forward, asked if we could take any of the open bottles with us and Chris from the tasting room very kindly agreed to release the 2005 Montabello and 2005 Chardonnay into our eager clutches.
The drive down was a cinch as was finding our motel on Ocean street in Santa Cruz. The last time I had stayed here, I had had breakfast at a distinctly unfashionable but fabulous diner on the pier as the morning sun lit up the water and illuminated the surfers bobbing on their boards, just behind the waves. It was full of elderly people who clearly had known both each other and the sweet but decidedly geriatric waitress for decades. The food was not good but it had been a memorable meal in spite of this.
I had to go straight to our room to do some work but Emily, Rebecca, Wade and Amit decided to go on a mission to find somewhere to celebrate his birthday that would let us bring our own wines - the left overs from Ridge and a bottle of Petite Syrah from Frogs Leap. I mentioned the Pier and the diner and off they went. None of them sounded particularly enthusiastic about it when we reconvened at 7.30pm, but we had all dressed for dinner in honour of the birthday and we had fabulous wine to drink, so how bad could it be?
The answer to that, sadly, was very. The extreme badness undoubtedly heightened by the fact that we had, not so terribly long ago, descended from the pristine, glorious heights of Ridge, several worlds removed from where we now were. We walked along busy streets, clogged with cars, fumes and people who were not really pristine at all, arriving eventually at the fun fair on the boardwalk, all neon and clanking, grinding machinery, before turning off onto the pier proper. Our arrival there was heralded by two groups of homeless people, one on either side, who traded drunken insults and comments on our group. I can’t say I blamed them. We didn’t exactly fit in, all spruced up and clutching bottles of wine.
Just like in Fort Bragg, the contrast between our day and our night was so incongruous as to be surreal but it felt even dirtier and somehow more desperate here. We do often move in a strange world of amazing privilege doing what we do, and we may talk all we like about how part of the philosophy of Green & Blue is to make small bits of true luxury (as opposed to empty, ostentatious rubbish) available to as many people as possible but at times like this it seems to ring particularly hollow. I don’t know what the answer to that is, apart from continuing to try to bridge the gaps however and where ever possible, but sometimes it feels hard to deal with – and being a South Africa, it is not as though I have not had years of practise.
We walked to the end of the Pier, past the faded, dingy looking diner where I had breakfasted, to a place which was somewhat newer, but by no means more salubrious. It was Amit’s birthday though, we had fabulous wines to drink and here, there were lurid, plaster mermaids on the walls. Many small details to be thankful for.
And then the reasons to feel utter dismay started arriving. My shrimp salad, a gargantuan mound of barely defrosted shrimp atop a heap of tasteless iceberg lettuce was a new low in bad eating experiences and the others did not seem to fare much better. The waiter decanted the Petit Syrah for us (into a rather grubby looking water holder) and when we invited him to have a taste himself, proceeded to pour an extortionately large glass, slowly and very deliberately. We watched first in silent, fascinated horror and then Rebecca and I caught each other’s eye and fell about giggling helplessly when the robust flow remained unabated. He finally stopped, looked up and raised his overflowing glass to us in a gesture of thanks before gingerly carrying it off.
To be fair to him, he did go and share it with his fellow staff members at the bar which went some way to mitigating the waves of resentment periodically crashing over us. We had been thoughtless enough to arrive for dinner at 8pm, at a time when most tables were paying up and getting ready to go. Do Americans all go home and have completely unhinged parties for a few hours before bed? Or is the relentless cheer so many display the result of far too many hours of sleep every night? It is really very mysterious and something I never get used to.
Despite this, it was fun. The waiter, rendered cheerful by a great quantity of very fine wine no doubt, agreed to sing a lusty rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ to Amit, who was suitably mortified. We left and walked back through the chilly night. The lights along the Pier and at the funfair were off and the only noise was the loud, mournful barking of the sea lions, huddled in herds on what looked like concrete breeze blocks jutting out of the black water. Again, it felt like millions of tired, dirty, industrial miles away from the very top of the mountain.
We attempted a room party once we got back but as Amit had to hold his ipod in two places to get it to play anything and the bed and a chair had to serve as the dance floor, it was relatively short lived, despite encouraging sips of Petite Sirah. After an energetic wobble up and down (beds may be good for jumping on but they really are not a suitable dance floor) to some Prince, Jude and I retired to bed, as did the young ‘uns not too much later. At least our attempts at a civilized, neighbour friendly party seemed to have been successful as we barely heard them through our adjacent wall.
Up early for the 2 hour drive down to the Santa Cruz mountain for our visit to Ridge vineyards. It was Amit’s birthday, so there were two things to be excited about. More pressingly though, we were growing concerned about Amit’s car. He was displaying a remarkably carefree attitude towards the preservation of it, mounting the edges of pavements with gay abandon when taking corners and sailing through both red lights and stop signs. The convertible roof had ceased to function despite a prolonged bout of fiddling by almost everyone except me and it had somehow acquired a large dent and a scratch down one side. It also apparently smelt very much like an amazingly unsavoury boozer. The car party on Saturday night in Healdsburg may have had something to do with the latter problem.
We started running late almost immediately thanks to more commuter traffic, particularly around San Francisco. Is there anywhere left in the world where this is not a feature of everyday life? We are living in the days of the end of oil but despite rising prices, there is very little to indicate that this is so.
Eventually this thinned and we started moving again, coming eventually to the base of the mountain, turning off onto it. I have been here before, so had steeled myself for the ascent, which from memory, had left me a white knuckled, quivering wreck, but happily, the 8 years of driving to inaccessible wineries all over the world since have clearly had a beneficial effect and this seemed steep, but relatively easy.
Finding where we were supposed to be once we got there was a lot less easy and we were soon driving aimlessly along tiny dirt tracks between the vines, the view spreading beneath us. We went round in circles a few times, Amit’s dishevelled car bouncing along in front of us, looking increasingly so as it acquired a thick layer of dust. We eventually found someone who knew who we were and where we were supposed to be going and sent us off to the crush pad. I had warned everyone the night before that while this would undoubtedly be a fantastic visit, I had not been told that we were going to see Paul Draper and so did not expect to, except perhaps, if we were very lucky, in passing. Yet as we drove onto the expanse of concrete which is the first stop for the arriving grapes, there he was, perfectly silhouetted against the cerulean sky with the valley stretched below. Everyone was instantly charmed and remained so for the rest of the visit.
Paul Draper famously studied philosophy before being enticed into wine and he could easily be mistaken for an academic. His kind, professorial persona is a million miles away from the pumped up, hysterical milieu the wonderful wines he makes often find themselves in which makes it that much more unexpected when you first meet him . One of our Green & Blue customers attended a tasting he did for the Wine Society in London a few years ago and was really rather perplexed by it. "He was so.........quiet', he said.
Much to be said for quiet men, particularly if their heads are as full of astounding facts on everything to do with wine as Paul's is.
His 2005 Chardonnay has just been rated as one of the greatest wines in the world and of course there is now not a single drop left anywhere, for anyone. He seems genuinely exasperated by the silliness of this and by the fact that it means that loyal customers of the wine who have enjoyed it for years will now not be able to buy any till the next release as it has all gone to the slavish followers of fashion.
We stood looking out over the valley below us while he explained that Ridge was based quite literally on a ridge on the north plate of the South Andreas fault, a piece of land known as ‘exotic terrain’. This means that it is a slice of the earth formed many, many miles away from where it ended up, millions of years ago. Below the thin, poor top soil (guaranteeing low yields), is pure limestone, which is what gives these wines their exquisitely refined, chalky minerality. Limestone is by no means widespread in California, with only small outcrops in Paso Robles that he knows of. Ridge is also at 800m, much higher and therefore much cooler than Napa or Sonoma and ideal for both Bordeaux varieties and Chardonnay. It routinely snows in winter and in spring, the wind whips off the ocean so strongly that it can interfere with flowering. Temperatures also tend to plummet at night, so while days are often warmer and sunnier than in Bordeaux during the growing season, nights are always much cooler.
So cool is this microclimate that acidities here are routinely higher than in Bordeaux – something which has fooled me time and again in blind tastings where Ridge is concerned – while something about the fruit hints at the new world, the crisp, sinewy edge does not. Apparently, in 1 or 2 years every decade they really will struggle to ripen the fruit, with much more reticent, muscular wines being the result.
The land here was first planted to vines in 1866 and the local district council have very recently given Ridge agricultural rights to more of it, as long as they promise not to build any houses. Not a problem as this is not something that is remotely on the agenda, the plan obviously being to plant more vineyards. Production will therefore eventually increase once these are mature enough.
Famously, they also have two vineyards up in Sonoma – Lytton Springs and Geyserville, and fruit is trucked down from here when ripe, for fermentation at the mountain winery. This travels down in narrow, stainless steel bins and after the three hour journey, it goes straight into the crusher.
Currently, they have 36 parcels on the mountain and each of these will be fermented separately, using only natural yeasts. This is fantastically labour intensive, but it does give a very broad palate from which to draw when assembling the final blend. Once the malolactic fermentation is finished, they start to taste, only doing six wines at a time so that they remain sharp and focused, able to spot the essence of Montabello as well as fabulous balance and complexity . The essence is what they are really after though and if they don’t find it, the wine will go into the Santa Cruz Mountain blend.
We sell this as well as Montebello and I have to say that it has to be one of the best value wines in the world. True, it does not have quite the depth and intensity of its big brother, but it is damn fine all the same and retails for a fraction of the price at £25.50.
There was a good breeze, sweeping through the sunlight and keeping us from feeling too warm, although it did not stop the burn – we were all rather pink and glowing from just the 45 minutes we had spent out on the crush pad before following Paul down into the relative chill of the Montabello barrel cellar. This wine, like the top growths in Bordeaux, is treated to 100% new oak barrels every year and Paul designed this particular cellar himself a few years ago, so that all the different parcels could easily be kept separate at this stage as well. I asked him why he famously has always only ever used American oak for Ridge, even when the trend was relentlessly in the opposite direction.
When Paul had first been approached by the owners of Ridge in the early to mid 60’s, he had already been working in wine, having set up a winery in Chile, travelled Europe and made it his business to drink as many of the classics as he could. He spotted the incredible potential in Ridge from the moment he tasted it but was always completely clear that he was not interested in making imitation Claret. Relentlessly trying to shoehorn wines into moulds created thousands of miles away is always fundamentally a waste of time and never produces the fix that true addicts of terroir crave. We were all very impressed.
Being a scholar, he began reading up and investigating and came across a book which detailed the findings of an exhaustive study into different oaks, first published in 1900. This had finally concluded that the best oaks were Baltic, not French. Given this, why on earth spend time and money transporting casks from France when potentially, what was readily available almost next door (figuratively speaking) was at least as good? A terribly environmentally friendly conclusion to reach all those years ago – think of all the oak miles Mr Draper has saved in his long years of wine making!
I asked why it was that it was almost impossible to detect the innate American-ness of the oak on his wines, when with many, it adds a thick layer of sweet vanilla/coconut ice-cream, somewhat squashing the fruit. The secret, apparently , is in the fact that they air-dry all the wood for their barrels. This matures and softens it in a way that Kiln-drying simply isn’t capable of, giving appetising buttered roundness which very much plays a supporting role to the fruit, never overwhelming it. Today, they use 12 different coopers as a form of insurance, although their favourites tend to do best every year. Since 1987, 100% of Montabello has gone into new oak thanks to that being a very small vintage. As they had enough wood to do this, they decided to see what would happen. The results were so good that they have done the same every since.
The Santa Cruz Mountains blend starts in 100% new oak but after blending, 50% goes into second fill barrels. Lest it begin to appear that Paul Draper is a bit of an oak fiend however, do note that he believes firmly that Bordeaux varieties are among the only ones that are capable of integrating new oak – Pinot, Sangiovese, Nebbiolo, among others, are all examples of varieties that really can’t. His Zinfandels only have around 25% new wood, which is as much as they can stand.
We tasted from two different 200litre barrels of the 07 Montabelllo, the intense, lush fruit warming us right through, which was handy as certainly myself, Rebecca and Emily, in our thin cotton sun dresses, were beginning to look rather blue of lip in the chilly cellar. Although I could have tasted these wines all day – they had not started to go slightly spiky and four square which they often do after bottling, all the succulent baby fat was still there – I don’t think any of us were particularly depressed when we had to move on. I was beginning to loose sensation in my toes.
We walked out into a wall of warm air which was terrific; finding ourselves in another bit of the winery, on a walkway right next to the lab. Paul explained that all his business partners at Ridge are scientists and when he decided that he wanted to make his wines without the use of any chemicals at all (other than the minimum amount of Sulphur Dioxide), the decided to develop a top of the range, all singing, dancing and literally fortune telling lab. They certainly succeeded as this is believed to be on of the most sophisticated wine laboratories in the world for a winery the size of Ridge (really not very big). They have the capability here to measure absolutely everything and can keep control that way instead of reverting to what Paul called ‘Death Star’ (although I believe that this name is not official). DS is a chemical additive which kills all known wine bacteria, taking most of the good living organisms with it and leaving wine which is clean, but in an advanced stage of rigor mortis by the time the cork in pulled. Not much joy to be had there then.
To the left of us were the fermentation tanks, ranging from really teeny tiny to on the small side, compared to the norm. An awful lot of work is done on controlling tannins during fermentation, so that 80% of the time, fining isn’t necessary.
We moved through there and into the offices on our way to the old cellar. While those who were, at that stage, profoundly desperate, dashed to the loo, the rest of us stood around admiring probably the best dog in the world. Bodhi is a Samoyed, which none of us were familiar with, apparently bred as sled dogs in the Artic who would then double up as duvet/hot water bottle in the evening. They are now therefore terrifically friendly, loving the proximately of people although Bodhi was too engrossed in his nap to take much notice of us. We all had a go at stroking his incredibly thick, off white fur. It helped warm my still fairly frozen fingers.
We regrouped, Emily and Wade looking considerably less fidgety, and moved off to the old cellar, built in 1886. Down a rickety wooden flight of stairs and onto the first wooden landing crammed with barrels and overlooking the cellar proper which lies down a further flight of stairs. Apparently the building remains virtually completely unchanged since the original construction and it certainly feels suitably historic, with the scented smell of old wood and dust, underpinned by rich tones of maturing wine. Here was were the Zinfandel lay and we proceeded to taste barrel samples of the 2007 components of both Lytton Springs and Geyserville, full of feral intensity which is what I love about these wines so much.
Paul told us how in his time in Ridge, he has probably worked with over 100 different vineyards, all containing 19th century plantings of Zinfandel and its preferred blending partners, but that the above two were still the best; producing fruit that was much more long lived and intense. This is thanks partly to their particular soil structures. Gravel and clay in Geyserville and gravely loam in Lytton Springs. He made wine from both for years before they were able to take over the vineyards and now, thankfully, there is no danger of either being whipped away from under their noses. We commented on the fact that both were powerful, muscular wines but that the tannins were fabulously integrated in both. He attributed this integration to handling the wines as little as possible. The minute the bond between tannin and body breaks – which it does through over manipulation – the result is overly skeletal and hollow.
We left the old cellar and stepped back outside, climbing the short incline up to a table which had been set for a tasting, with some bread and cheese, just below the crush pad.
2004 Montebello Chardonnay
Typically, about 25% new barrels are used for this wine, on average. The aim is to try to pick vineyards in parcels as they ripen with the fruit then going straight to barrel to ferment with natural yeasts. They practise whole cluster pressing which minimises the amount of solids (typically only 1%) in the juice. The juice is then aerated, just to very slightly oxide it and after that it is racked into barrel at which point they leave it entirely alone. Fermentation is long and cool, taking two months, with malolactic fermentation starting around December and finishing around April. The do a bit of lees stirring and then mix in a tiny amount of Sulphur Dioxide before leaving it to settle, so that they don’t need to do any filtration prior to bottling, just a very light fining with isinglass.
Delicate lemon and mineral on nose. This carries through on the palate with fresh but balanced acidity, lots of mineral coming through the lemon butter and some underlying toasted nut flavours . Excellent length and beautifully clean, mineral finish.
Only 5% of production here is white and while I like this, I have never felt the same profound attachment to the chardonnay that I have to the reds.
2006 Lytton Springs
Paul told us how he believes that Petite Sirah is by far the most important complement for Zinfandel, giving depth and structure where it would otherwise be lacking. Almost all grapes varieties bought in during the late 19th century were to complement California’s dearly beloved adopted variety - Zinfandel. Syrah was initially tried, but the two never really related terribly well to each other and eventually someone thought to use this progeny of Syrah and a variety called Peloursin.
Red and black berries with a distinctly leafy edge. Still a bit young and edgy with oak showing through but good berry and coffee flavours with a fresh, herbal edge. Great length and good, rich finish.
2006 Geyserville
The Carignan vines in this vineyard are 130 years old and are the magical ingredient here, giving an amazingly gentle complexity for such an earthy wine. Geyserville has been made for over 40 years – since 1966, while Lytton Springs dates from ‘72. During the late 70’s and early 80’s, Ridge did not have access to the vineyard, because the owner wanted to make his own wine (inspired no doubt by the fantastic results Paul had achieved) Ridge managed to take over part of the vineyard in 1985 and by 1990 heard rumours that he was interested in selling, so it was not really until then than they had both the eastern and western half of the vineyard under their control. Definitely a plot of land worth waiting for!
Geyserville is really more feminine than Lytton Spring which is more earthy and masculine. Paul finds it impossible to decided definitively on which is best and neither can we. We’ll just have to love them both equally.
Rich, animal, musky nose with some red and black fruit. This carries through onto the palate with beautifully rich, perfectly balanced red and black fruit and underlying musky, animal scent. Great length again with even more musk on the finish.
I think that today, Geyserville has the edge but I know that this can, and probably will, all change the next time I taste them side by side.
2005 Montabello
And finally to the towering older sibling. 2005 was an exceptional vintage here as it was over the pond and Paul believes that it will easily rival the best of the first growths in years to come.
The blend for Montabello does vary slightly from year to year but in this instance, it has 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot, 6% Petite Verdot and 2% Cabernet Franc. Paul is particularly interested in Petite Verdot which ripens here 7 or 8 years out of 10. In some, there is none at all, or a mere 1 %. He is adamant though that it is essentially not a stand alone variety, needing the others to give it depth, particularly in California. In Bordeaux, the belief is that it is one of the greatest compliments to the other varietals, but it does struggle to ripen fully in all but the best vintages.
This wine is a baby – albeit one of epic proportions. Amazingly intense red and black fruit, still full of youthful vigour and no hint of any secondary aromas on the nose. This intensity is on the palate too, with taut, rich fruit complexity still not yielding much and buttered oak which is still a bit edgy. The underlying minerality is as pure and clean as always and the edge is fresh and crisp. Despite the obvious youth, the mid-palate has no holes in it and the length is superb.
1995 Montebello 69% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% merlot, 10% Petite Verdot and 3% Cabernet Franc
The highlight of the show, but first a bit of Ridge history. The vines replanted here post prohibition were all Cabernet Sauvignon as everything had died during the years of neglect. If vines remain unpruned, they put on more and more and yet more grapes until they finally die of exhaustion which is what had happened to these vineyards. Cabernet reappeared in the late 1940’s and then more abandoned blocks were replanted in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s with Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petite Verdot.
Paul did this primarily because he felt that the best examples of Cabernet from France were blends and while he was not trying to do an exact imitation, he was trying to make the best wine he possibly could. He was never tempted by Malbec though, finding it infinitely more ordinary than the other 4; lacking in finesse.
While Pinot Noir is a stand alone variety, it really comes into its own in Burgundy where each tiny plot of land gives the wine unique character, distinctly different to that of its neighbour. Here, the Montabello terroir is the common thread, binding all the different components together cohesively with any differences between parcels being very minor. Paul believes that many wines which are blends from far flung vineyards or even regions show primarily the influence of the wine maker rather than the grower and at Ridge, they prefer to think of themselves as growers. He pointed out that the old word was ‘vinter’ , not wine maker. There was no conferring of a creative role on the person responsible for keeping an eye on fermentation.
The Merlot planted in 1960’s was mature enough to be included from 1974. They did a 50/50 blend at first and found that it was really good.
Montebello is now completely organically grown although they are still waiting for certification. Like so many of the great organic and biodynamic wine makers of the world though, they won’t advertise this. Organic says nothing about how the wine is made - it could be run through every single mechanical processor in the world and it would still be organic. For them, making wine as simply as possible, with minimal sulpjur dioxide, is a lot more ‘organic’.
Paul thinks that the biodynamic approach is a little better but it still doesn’t tell you that you can’t blend vineyards, so it is more about the growing of the grapes. He does rightly point out that the situation remains amazingly complex. With organic viticulture, it may take many more passes through the vineyard with a tractor than with intelligent sustainable viticulture. Sometimes the option which is better in some ways is really not as good in others.
1995 was an excellent year as well and is only now beginning to reach a point that others would get to in 10 easily, with the tannins evolving at a glacial pace.
This is absolutely incredibly . Velvety fruit – still bright and vibrant, with a silky, sinewy structure and pure limestone mineral coming through underneath. This is still completely youthful – further down the line than the 2005 in that it is much less taut and the oak has integrated completely, but still the secondary aromas have not even begun to show themselves. The length is extraordinary and the finish is clean, pure mineral with a hint of ripe berry. The chalky minerality on this wine is absolutely delicious and after time in the glass, cedar wood and spice starts to come through more.
This is undoubtedly one of the great wines of the world.
We sat in the dappled shade with 1995 Montabello glowing ruby in our glasses, the perfume of it hanging heavy and thick in the air while we talked and nibbled away at cheese and bread. I think we all wondered how we had been extraordinarily lucky enough to be there, visiting the wise man on the mountain and tasting his phenomenal wines. I think it is one of those sun drenched moments that will be in my memory probably for the rest of my life.
Paul, not surprisingly had to go and so did we. Wade, Australian and not backward in coming forward, asked if we could take any of the open bottles with us and Chris from the tasting room very kindly agreed to release the 2005 Montabello and 2005 Chardonnay into our eager clutches.
The drive down was a cinch as was finding our motel on Ocean street in Santa Cruz. The last time I had stayed here, I had had breakfast at a distinctly unfashionable but fabulous diner on the pier as the morning sun lit up the water and illuminated the surfers bobbing on their boards, just behind the waves. It was full of elderly people who clearly had known both each other and the sweet but decidedly geriatric waitress for decades. The food was not good but it had been a memorable meal in spite of this.
I had to go straight to our room to do some work but Emily, Rebecca, Wade and Amit decided to go on a mission to find somewhere to celebrate his birthday that would let us bring our own wines - the left overs from Ridge and a bottle of Petite Syrah from Frogs Leap. I mentioned the Pier and the diner and off they went. None of them sounded particularly enthusiastic about it when we reconvened at 7.30pm, but we had all dressed for dinner in honour of the birthday and we had fabulous wine to drink, so how bad could it be?
The answer to that, sadly, was very. The extreme badness undoubtedly heightened by the fact that we had, not so terribly long ago, descended from the pristine, glorious heights of Ridge, several worlds removed from where we now were. We walked along busy streets, clogged with cars, fumes and people who were not really pristine at all, arriving eventually at the fun fair on the boardwalk, all neon and clanking, grinding machinery, before turning off onto the pier proper. Our arrival there was heralded by two groups of homeless people, one on either side, who traded drunken insults and comments on our group. I can’t say I blamed them. We didn’t exactly fit in, all spruced up and clutching bottles of wine.
Just like in Fort Bragg, the contrast between our day and our night was so incongruous as to be surreal but it felt even dirtier and somehow more desperate here. We do often move in a strange world of amazing privilege doing what we do, and we may talk all we like about how part of the philosophy of Green & Blue is to make small bits of true luxury (as opposed to empty, ostentatious rubbish) available to as many people as possible but at times like this it seems to ring particularly hollow. I don’t know what the answer to that is, apart from continuing to try to bridge the gaps however and where ever possible, but sometimes it feels hard to deal with – and being a South Africa, it is not as though I have not had years of practise.
We walked to the end of the Pier, past the faded, dingy looking diner where I had breakfasted, to a place which was somewhat newer, but by no means more salubrious. It was Amit’s birthday though, we had fabulous wines to drink and here, there were lurid, plaster mermaids on the walls. Many small details to be thankful for.
And then the reasons to feel utter dismay started arriving. My shrimp salad, a gargantuan mound of barely defrosted shrimp atop a heap of tasteless iceberg lettuce was a new low in bad eating experiences and the others did not seem to fare much better. The waiter decanted the Petit Syrah for us (into a rather grubby looking water holder) and when we invited him to have a taste himself, proceeded to pour an extortionately large glass, slowly and very deliberately. We watched first in silent, fascinated horror and then Rebecca and I caught each other’s eye and fell about giggling helplessly when the robust flow remained unabated. He finally stopped, looked up and raised his overflowing glass to us in a gesture of thanks before gingerly carrying it off.
To be fair to him, he did go and share it with his fellow staff members at the bar which went some way to mitigating the waves of resentment periodically crashing over us. We had been thoughtless enough to arrive for dinner at 8pm, at a time when most tables were paying up and getting ready to go. Do Americans all go home and have completely unhinged parties for a few hours before bed? Or is the relentless cheer so many display the result of far too many hours of sleep every night? It is really very mysterious and something I never get used to.
Despite this, it was fun. The waiter, rendered cheerful by a great quantity of very fine wine no doubt, agreed to sing a lusty rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ to Amit, who was suitably mortified. We left and walked back through the chilly night. The lights along the Pier and at the funfair were off and the only noise was the loud, mournful barking of the sea lions, huddled in herds on what looked like concrete breeze blocks jutting out of the black water. Again, it felt like millions of tired, dirty, industrial miles away from the very top of the mountain.
We attempted a room party once we got back but as Amit had to hold his ipod in two places to get it to play anything and the bed and a chair had to serve as the dance floor, it was relatively short lived, despite encouraging sips of Petite Sirah. After an energetic wobble up and down (beds may be good for jumping on but they really are not a suitable dance floor) to some Prince, Jude and I retired to bed, as did the young ‘uns not too much later. At least our attempts at a civilized, neighbour friendly party seemed to have been successful as we barely heard them through our adjacent wall.
