Ridge Vineyards

Ridge Vineyards is a California icon, built on the Monte Bello site above Cupertino in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The vineyard's origin goes back to Dr. Osea Perrone, a San Francisco physician who bought 180 acres at the top of Monte Bello Ridge in 1885 and made his first vintage in 1892. The property fell idle and was replanted to Cabernet Sauvignon by William Short in the 1940s, then re-founded as Ridge in 1959/1962 when four Stanford Research Institute engineers - Dave Bennion, Hew Crane, Charlie Rosen, and Howard Zeidler - bought in, made a quarter-barrel of estate Cabernet, and officially rebonded the winery for the 1962 vintage.

Paul Draper joined in 1969 - a Stanford philosophy graduate who came to Ridge after time at a winery in Chile. He coined the house philosophy of pre-industrial winemaking (native-yeast fermentation, air-dried American oak, minimal intervention), drawing on nineteenth-century practice, and ran the cellar for forty-seven years. In 2016 he stepped down as CEO and head winemaker (remaining Chairman), passing day-to-day winemaking to Eric Baugher (Monte Bello) and John Olney (Lytton Springs); Olney became Head Winemaker and COO over all Ridge operations in 2021 when Baugher left after twenty-six years.

Monte Bello sits between 1,300 and 2,700 feet, fifteen miles from the Pacific - the coolest Cabernet-producing area in California. The bedrock is unusual for the state: greenstone (an altered basaltic seamount rock) and clay over decomposing limestone, part of the Franciscan terrane lifted into the ridge by San Andreas Fault upheaval.

The lineup: Monte Bello (the top Bordeaux blend), the Estate Cabernet, Monte Bello Chardonnay, and the Sonoma Zinfandel field blends Geyserville (Alexander Valley) and Lytton Springs (Dry Creek Valley), plus single-vineyard Zinfandels (Pagani, East Bench, and others).