Ridge Vineyards' Sonoma Winery - Tour and Tasting Excellence

During my recent trip to Napa and Sonoma with my daughter, we stopped for a tour and tasting at Ridge Vineyard's Sonoma outpost. Ridge's home base is on the central coast near Santa Cruz of course but the Sonoma site is where they make most of their Zins. This $30 per person tour and tasting is a great value and a ton of fun to boot. It's 90 minutes long and includes a tour of the vineyards as well as the facility, and a sit down tasting of five wines - including the flagship $145 a bottle Monte Bello Cabernet. Our tour guide Dinora was wonderful and incredibly knowledgeable. She spent a lot of time with us as she drove us around the various vineyard blocks of mostly old vines - some of which go back as far as 1901. Some of these blocks are field blends, meaning they have different varietals planted together. Peter Wellington of Wellington Vineyards once explained to me that this was done in the old days of Cali wine making so that if one varietal for the blend didn't do well in a particular vintage, the others would pick up the slack. It's not a planting practice that is employed any more. We stopped at a certain point so that Dinora could show us the difference between Carignan and Zinfandel foliage and berries.

 Dinora talking about Carignan

Ridge's Sonoma winery is notable for it's very sustainable practices. The vineyards are organic and irrigated when necessary via a drip system with water recycled from the winery. The winery itself is made of rice straw bales covered with a stucco-like base that keeps moisture off the bales. These three-foot thick walls provide excellent insulation and help keep the facility cool. Electricity is generated by solar panels on the roof. 

 Some of the very old, bush trained vines

Ridge's Sonoma Winery

I loved Zinfandels when I first started on my wine journey and Ridge's bottlings were and still are amongst the very best. Lots of folks love Zin for it's up front, brash fruit and peppery side notes. They are easy drinking wines that are fun and easy to like. Ridge's bottlings, like most of the good Cali wines have gotten kind of expensive so I hadn't tried one in many years. The lineup for the tasting included the Carignan, the Lytton Estate Grenache-Mourvedre blend, the Lytton Springs Zin, the Hooker Creek Zin and the Monte Bello. The Grenache-Mourvedre blend was a project of a winery intern that Ridge liked enough to make 24 barrels of. That wine, the Carignan and the Lytton Springs Zin were all delicious and notable for their up front fruit, spice notes and beautiful balance. The only one I didn't love was the Hooker Creek Zin, which smelled and tasted a bit over ripe to me.

The Lineup

 
The Monte Bello on the other hand is incredible. It's not often that a regular working stiff gets to try one of California's most important and historic wines so I was pumped. It did not disappoint. Now the current bottling is a 2011 - a cooler year and the predecessor to California's very hot and very dry years that would follow. Many of the winery folks we talked to on this trip told us that 2015 would be their earliest harvest ever. The Monte Bello had very expressive aromatics of bright fruit, cedar, minerals and earth. In the mouth it's big but not overdone with plenty of fruit and subtle oak spice notes. The minerality comes through on the long finish and there's plenty of tannic grip. This wine should age really well.

I highly recommend a visit to Ridge's Sonoma outpost if you make a wine country trip. It's literally three miles from Healdsburg, the beautiful northern Sonoma town with great restaurants. And as is the case with most Napa and Sonoma restaurants, you can bring in a bottle you've purchased at a winery and drink it with your meal - usually for a very nominal corkage fee. Cheers!

Zintastic - Rancho Zabaco Sonoma Heritage Vines Zinfandel 2012

When the wife and I were first bitten by the wine bug, Zinfandel was a big part of our wine life. It's that way for a lot of neophytes even now, and back then there weren't a lot of wines that delivered the bold fruit and lush palate that zins did. Robert Parker often spoke of the three R's of Zinfandel - Ridge, Ravenswood and Rosenblum. I bought and cellared bottlings from all three, especially Ridge's Geyserville and Lytton Springs bottlings and Ravenswood's single vineyard bottlings. I also was high on Storybook Mountain, although their wines were leaner and less flattering in their youth.

Then came the 90's. My tastes evolved and my interests went elsewhere at the same time that many Zinfandel's were being bottled with ridiculously high alcohol levels in the 16 -17% range. Those examples drank more like port than a good table wine to be enjoyed with your dinner. It seemed the critics were more enamored of "concentration" than they were of balance, and those thicker zins were born of ever higher scores for highly concentrated wines from the experts.

Zinfandel has always been considered our one uniquely American grape, although in truth it is related to a Croatian varietal called Crijenak Kastelanski and to Italy's Primitivo. Clippings of one or the other were probably brought here in the 19th century.

Luckily, the wine pendulum has begun to swing back toward the production of more balanced wines, Zinfandel included. That excites me, for I still have a soft spot for the grape that was my first love. So, I went looking for one to try in the everyday price point that I inhabit. One thing I hate about everyday wine from California these days is the ever vague "California" designation of origin. California's Wine Institute lists 8 full pages of legal AVA's - or American Viticultural Areas. "California" is not on the list. A wine with the origin "California" tells me practically nothing about its pedigree. In fact, those wines may have been produced partially with grapes from the vast central valley, where the melons and tomatoes come from. No thanks.

So when I spied Rancho Zabaco's Sonoma "Heritage Vines" bottling at my local store for $15, I pounced. Most of the grapes for this bottling come from three well known Sonoma vineyards: Frei Ranch, Stefani Ranch and Chiotti Ranch. In truth, this wine is pretty high in alcohol. The winery's website says 14.8% and the bottle says 15.3% so it must be somewhere in that range. But, despite the fairly high alcohol, this wine doesn't smell or taste hot, in fact it's nicely balanced. It's got typical Zinfandel blackberry and blueberry aromas with notes of peppery spice, a lush, velvety mouth feel and bold berryish flavors. There's nothing baked about this wine at all and it finishes long and smooth. This lovely everyday zin is produced from 93% Zinfandel and 7% Petite Sirah. It paired wonderfully with some pasta and a good Bolognese. Cheers.

Wellington Vineyards - Sonoma County Value

On our recent trip to California, we spent a day in Sonoma and visited a small family winery that makes wonderful wines that sell for reasonable prices. Some are a little more expensive than my stated price range for everyday wine, but some others fit right in. They are well made, delicious and true to type. In addition, we got to spend some time with owner Peter Wellington and Manager Toby Germano. 8 acres of Wellington's 21 total go back as far as 117 years. The picture below shows some of the vines from a block that goes back to 1912. These old vine parcels are planted mostly with Grenache, Zinfandel, Alicante Bouschet, Syrah and Carignan. These varietals are mixed together in "field blends", the thinking back then being that if one or two didn't fair well in a particular vintage, then the others would pick up the slack.

Now however, Wellington is bottling the Syrah, Zinfandel and Grenache separately, as well as Marsanne, Rousanne, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and several bottlings of Cabernet Sauvignon. In the above photo, Janet gets a pruning lesson from owner Peter Wellington. The really old vines produce less fruit and thus more concentrated, more complex juice. These vineyards are cultivated in a sustainable manner, just a step shy of certified organic. Sulfur dust is occasionally used to control powdery mildew but insecticides and herbicides are never used.

3 of Wellington's everyday reds are readily available here on the east coast, the Cabernet Sauvignon from the Mohrhardt Ridge Vineyard, a Sonoma Merlot and a Sonoma Zinfandel. The Cab has all the good primary fruit you expect from a from a California wine with a good bit of that herbal Cabernet character. It's balanced and finishes long and smooth with soft tannins. It sells for $16.99 at my local store. The Zinfandel is also wonderful, giving forth all the peppery dark fruit flavors you expect from this uniquely American varietal in a nicely balanced format. Though coming in at 15.5% alcohol, there is enough acidity to keep this brawny wine fresh tasting. It sells here for $12.99. Last but not least, the Sonoma Merlot hits all the right notes. And despite the movie "Sideways" and it's famous Merlot line, this grape still outsells Pinot Noir. Wellington's Merlot has all the bright cherry fruit you expect from this varietal with notes of chocolate and brown spices. It's soft and smooth and has none of the "weedy" characteristics you sometimes get from a hot climate Merlot. It also sells for $12.99. Cheers.