2016 Monte Bello

A visit to Ridge is always a highlight to any trip to the Santa Cruz Mountains. Among other things, Ridge keeps a fairly extensive library of older wines, some of which later become re-releases, which provides a great opportunity to see how some of the flagship wines develop over time. Speaking specifically about the wines from the Santa Cruz Mountains, Winemaker Eric Baugher commented "2017 was a really cool vintage until those Labor Day heat spikes. Frankly, we needed that burst of heat to get fully ripe up here." As for the wines, they are truly beautiful across the board. In whites, readers will find a new Grenache Blanc from the Adelaida estate in Paso Robles. The 2017 Chardonnay Estate is an intriguing pre-cursor to the Monte Bello Chardonnay, which is not released yet. The 2017 Zinfandel and Zinfandel-based wines are all incredibly delicious, with Lytton Springs leading the way. Among the Bordeaux reds, the 2016 Monte Bello is epic, while the 2017 is extremely promising and the 2018 young, but all finesse. The wine I want to call readers' attention to most, though, is Ridge's Cabernet Sauvignon Estate, the little brother of Monte Bello, which is also one of the single greatest values in California Cabernet Sauvignon.

This set of new releases from Ridge is full of highlights. For starters, the 2016 Zinfandels are outrageously beautiful and confirm my impressions from tastings earlier in the year. The 2016s are fresh, nuanced and deeply impressive wines. The flagship Monte Bello is equally compelling. Speaking of Monte Bello, Paul Draper and Eric Baugher opened a handful of older vintages going back to 1971 during my most recent visit. I have included notes on those wines here for future reference.

Winemaker Eric Baugher showed me an extensive range of new and upcoming releases during my most recent visit, including a handful of older Monte Bellos that I wrote about in my article Seven Classics from Ridge and forthcoming library releases of the Geyserville and Lytton Springs that are reviewed here. Despite the effects of drought, two thousand fourteen turned out to be an outstanding vintage for Bordeaux varieties, not just in terms of quality but also in production. Ridge bottled all of their small lot Merlots and Cabernets, which means that readers with an interest in exploring the nuances of the various ranches that make up the present-day estate will have many different choices with which to do that. All varieties ripened within a fairly compact time range, which meant most of harvest took place within just three weeks or so.