2005 Geyserville

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.

This 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 Paul 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, Draper 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.