Double Vertical of Ridge Vineyards’ Geyserville and Lytton Springs

 BY STEPHEN TANZER | AUGUST 22, 2018

Ridge Vineyards was one of the earliest champions of single-vineyard Zinfandels from ancient vines. Their top two estate bottlings have admirably withstood the test of time.

In the late 1970s, when I discovered wine through the portal of California, Ridge Vineyards had already established a reputation for its remarkably classy, taut, low-octane Monte Bello bottling, whose first official vintage was 1962, the year the winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains was re-bonded (the original Monte Bello winery was built in 1892). But fans of California wines at the time were just as likely to be regular buyers of two exceptional Zinfandel-based wines from Ridge, both of them inaugurated during an era when Zinfandel – much of it from very old vines – mostly went into jug wines. In fact, back then white Zinfandel was actually a thing. Even in the early ‘80s I recall my mother-in-law saying, “You mean Zinfandel also comes in red?” But among California insiders, Ridge’s remarkably consistent Geyserville and Lytton Springs bottlings, both from Sonoma County, were already identified and pursued as collectibles. 

The Lytton Springs winery, with its voltaic collectors

I published the results of a spectacular vertical tasting of Ridge’s world-class Monte Bello bottling in the International Wine Cellar about 15 years ago. More recently Antonio Galloni published his notes on Vinous on a tasting of a number of Ridge Monte Bello vintages spanning six decades (I recommend that you refer to his July, 2015 article for its in-depth look at Ridge’s origins in the late 19th century). In March of this year, Ridge’s Chairman Paul Draper, who technically retired at the end of 2016 at the age of 80 after serving as head winemaker for nearly a half century, but still goes to his office at Ridge’s Monte Bello winery in Cupertino two days out of three, staged a fascinating double vertical of Ridge’s two most celebrated Zinfandel-based wines, presenting vintages from five different decades. I had asked to see a vertical of either Geyserville or Lytton Springs, but Draper had a better idea.

The Point of the Tasting

The double vertical had two objectives: first, to make the point that these are seriously nuanced, balanced wines that age slowly and gracefully, and second, and perhaps more important, to demonstrate that they are distinctly different wines that accurately reflect their terroirs (“they’re from two totally different climates,” noted Draper) despite the fact that the two sites are only a few miles apart as the crow flies.

To highlight the differences between these two bottlings, he presented each pair blind, beginning with the 1973s, now 45 years old, and asked the tasting participants to guess which was which. But he provided us with a few helpful clues before we began, first calling on John Olney, Chief Operating Officer and longtime winemaker at Lytton Springs (where Olney oversaw the construction of a mostly solar-powered straw bale and vineyard clay winery beginning in 1999), to fill us in on the Lytton Springs bottling. Then Eric Baugher, a microbiologist and Ridge veteran who is now winemaker and Chief Operating Officer at the company’s Monte Bello winery, followed with a capsule description of the Geyserville wine, which has been made at Monte Bello since the outset. 

As Olney noted before we began tasting, the Lytton Springs is the more masculine of the two bottlings, more Bordeaux-like in style, showing a darker fruit character owing to its sizable percentage of Petite Sirah (typically 15% to 20% since the 1980s). The Geyserville wine, according to Baugher, is initially fruitier and fresher – sometimes even a bit Pinot-like. Its secondary variety is 100+-year-old Carignane (also typically comprising 15% to 20% of the blend), which brings ripeness and acidity but reduces tannins. In sum, Lytton Springs is darker and earthier, with more serious tannins, while Geyserville is more penetrating, elegant and perfumed, even if some vintages are a bit more dark and serious owing to the particularly small Zin berries in those growing seasons. The Lytton Springs normally has softer acidity while Geyserville has actually required de-acidification in some vintages. While the Geyserville wine has never been acidified, Olney said he has occasionally added tartaric acidity to “a few parcels out of 35” at Lytton Springs.

19th century Zinfandel vines at Geyserville

Two Historic Vineyards