Lytton Springs 2018 | Ridge | California

In 1885 Osea Perrone, a doctor and a prominent member of San Francisco's Italian community, bought 180 acres (73 ha) near the top of Monte Bello Ridge, at 2,600 feet —792 metres— above the bay. He terraced the slope, planted vines and used limestone quarried on the mountain to build the winery that gave the wine its name: the first vintage under the Monte Bello label is from 1892.

The estate was reborn seventy years later, and in a distinctly un-winemaking way. Four Stanford Research Institute engineers —Dave Bennion, Hew Crane, Charlie Rosen and Howard Ziedler— made a quarter-barrel of Cabernet from the old vines still standing. It convinced them enough to re-bond the winery in time for the 1962 harvest. In 1966 they bottled the first Geyserville Zinfandel, and in 1969 Paul Draper joined, raised on a farm outside Chicago and drawn to wine after living in Italy and France. He was the estate's winemaker for forty-seven years, retiring in 2016 at eighty.

He described his own method as pre-industrial: native yeasts from the vineyard itself, minimal sulfur, and not a single commercial enzyme or nutrient. The house rule fits in one line —find intense fruit, intrude only when necessary— and it explains the quirk Ridge is best known for outside the trade: since 2011 it prints the full ingredient list on the back label, something no regulation required and almost nobody did.

The proof came twice. At the 1976 Judgment of Paris, the 1971 Monte Bello placed fifth. Thirty years later, on 24 May 2006, those same bottles were re-tasted: the 1971 won both the United States and United Kingdom panels and, in the combined result, finished eighteen points clear of the runner-up.

In Sonoma the story runs longer than ownership suggests: Ridge has made Geyserville since 1966 —from vines over 130 years old— and has worked Lytton Springs since 1972, though the property only became theirs in 1991. Since 2022 every estate vineyard is certified organic.