Wine Advisor
Ridge, Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon 2009
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Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Antonio Galloni
The 2009 Monte Bello bursts from the glass with an exciting array of radiant fruit. It is a striking wine endowed with superb purity, dazzling finesse and breathtaking textural elegance. Despite the expressiveness of the fruit, there appears to be more than enough underlying structure for the wine to develop beautifully for decades. In 2009 the blend is 72% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot and 6% Petit Verdot, harvested between September 23 and October 12. Draper says the 2009 is the greatest wine he’s ever made, but I won’t be surprised if he has to amend that statement for the 2010?. In 2009 the season got off to a slow start, but recovered over a summer characterized by warm days and nights. The harvest was on schedule. Anticipated maturity: 2019-2029. (Not yet released) I tasted a breathtaking array of wines during my recent visit with Paul Draper at Ridge. Draper is a true American icon, so it’s great to see him doing well after a bout with illness. I also tasted a number of older wines, including several Monte Bellos going back to the 1970s. Heretical as it may sound, I think the wines Draper is making today will prove to be far superior to the wines of decades past, many of which are rightly considered legendary. For ease of reference I have also included notes on all of the Ridge wines made outside the Santa Cruz Mountains. The Chardonnays are fermented with native yeasts and go into barrel with their gross lees, which are stirred once a week. The malos usually start the following spring. The wines are assembled just before the following harvest and go back into neutral oak. Aging is about 15 months for the Estate and 17 months for the Chardonnay Monte Bello, with a maximum of 25% new barrels. The reds are fermented with ambient yeasts, undergo malolactic fermentation in tank (except for the Monte Bello which is mostly done in barrel) and stay on their gross lees until the following spring. Tel. (408) 867-3233; Fax (408) 868-1350. www.ridgewine.com
Reviewed by: Antonio Galloni
The 2009 Monte Bello ,72% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot and 6% Petit Verdot is simply magnificent. Layers of dark red fruit, flowers, spices and graphite are all woven together in this utterly impeccable wine. The 2009 is an especially huge, intense Monte Bello, yet a sexy, silky core of fruit lies within its imposing frame. Everything comes together in this glorious, radiant wine. Last year the 2009 had some pretty stiff competition from the 2010, but today it is simply firing on all cylinders. Eric Baugher describes 2009 as a year with cold weather early on, followed by heat in early June and July. The fruit was brought in on October 12, just before an intense downpour swept through the region. There is a purity and silkiness supported by structure in the 2009 that is impossible not to admire. Simply put, this is another utterly magnificent, towering masterpiece from Ridge. Anticipated maturity: 2019-2049. Indiana Jones and I have one thing in common – a fear of snakes. That is why every time I see the sign in the Ridge parking lot that reads “Beware of rattlesnakes,” I get a little uneasy. So it’s quickly into the tasting room for me. Winemaker Eric Baugher and his team have prepared a great tasting covering all of the Ridge classics, plus a few smaller-production bottlings I am tasting for the first time. This is a sublime set of new releases from one of this country’s greatest heritage wineries. It’s hard to know where to start, but the highlights are the 2009 Monte Bello, followed by the 2010, which will be released this year, plus some of the Zinfandels and Zinfandel-based wines. The 2010 harvest was not an easy one. The summer was very cold, as it was throughout California. Ridge was severely affected by August heat spikes that were crippling for Zinfandel. The wines that were bottled are the result of a severe selection of the best fruit that survived the heat. Tel. (408) 867-3233
Reviewed by: Antonio Galloni
The 2009 Monte Bello feels very ripe and lush in its first impression, but the tannins have not softened all that much yet. Game, smoke, licorice and leather gradually open up with a bit of aeration. The 2009 is endowed with tremendous depth of fruit, but the equally imposing tannins need time to soften. All of this fruit was picked before the mid-October rains.
Reviewed by: Antonio Galloni
The 2009 Monte Bello (72% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot and 6% Petit Verdot is simply magnificent. Layers of dark red fruit, flowers, spices and licorice are all woven together in this utterly impeccable wine. The 2009 is an especially huge, intense Monte Bello, yet a sexy, silky core of fruit lies within the imposing frame. Everything comes together in this glorious, radiant wine. Baugher describes 2009 as a year with cold weather early on, followed by heat in early June and July. The fruit was brought in on October 12th, just before an intense downpour swept through the region. There is a purity and silkiness supported by structure in the 2009 that is impossible not to admire. Simply put, this is another utterly magnificent, towering masterpiece from Ridge.
Reviewed by: Antonio Galloni
The 2009 Monte Bello bursts from the glass with an exciting mélange of radiant fruit. It is a striking wine endowed with superb purity, dazzling finesse and breathtaking textural elegance. Despite the expressiveness of the fruit, there appear to be more than enough underlying structure for the wine to develop beautifully for decades. In 2009 the blend is 72% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot and 6% Petit Verdot, harvested between September 23 and October 12. Draper says the 2009 is the greatest wine he's ever made, but I won't be surprised if he has to amend that statement for the 2010.... In 2009 the season got off to a slow start, but recovered over a summer characterized by warm days and nights. The harvest was on schedule.
Reviewed by: Stephen Tanzer
Full medium ruby. Deep aromas of cassis, blackberry, graphite and sweet oak, plus hints of leather, chocolate and tobacco leaf. Plush and fine-grained but with a strong spine of acidity and saline minerality giving shape and energy to the highly concentrated dark berry, bitter chocolate and mint flavors. In fact, this wine is still rather tightly coiled. With just 13.5% alcohol, it stood out in my horizontal tastings of wines from Napa Valley, and yet I found myself wanting a bit more sweetness and flesh. This very firm midweight finishes with excellent vinosity and length, with its tannins saturating the teeth. Very hard to assess today, this wine will almost certainly merit a higher score with more cellaring. (13.5% alcohol; the last grapes reportedly came in just before heavy rain on October 12)
About the Producer
Ridge Vineyards is a California winery specializing in Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, and Chardonnay wines. Ridge produces wine at two winery locations in northern California. The original winery facilities are located at an elevation of 2,300 feet (700 metres) on Monte Bello Ridge in unincorporated Santa Clara County in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, south of Los Altos, California and west of Cupertino, California. The other Ridge winery facilities are at Lytton Springs in the Dry Creek Valley AVA of Sonoma County. Ridge Vineyard's 1971 Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon gained prominence for its fifth-place finish in the 1976 "Judgment of Paris" wine tasting. History Although Ridge Vineyards was founded in the early 1960s, wine production at the winery's Monte Bello location has a much longer history. Grapevines were first planted on Monte Bello Ridge by Osea Perrone, a doctor and prominent member of the northern California Italian immigrant community, in 1885. The first Monte Bello wine was produced in 1892. Following Prohibition, the vineyard at Monte Bello passed through the hands of several amateur winemakers until it was purchased in 1959 by David Bennion, Charles Rosen, Hewitt Crane, and Howard Zeidler, all engineers at nearby Stanford Research Institute. Ridge Vineyards was bonded and produced its first commercial wine, a Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon, in 1962. According to a 1987 New York Times article, Ridge Vineyards was acquired by a Japanese company. "The new owner is Otsuka U.S., a subsidiary of the Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, a producer of nutritional drinks and other pharmaceutical products. Otsuka operates an experimental wine-making center near Fuji, in Japan." The international reputation of the Monte Bello wine produced by Ridge Vineyards was established when it achieved fifth place in the "Judgment of Paris", against nine other French and California wines. Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon was acclaimed in subsequent competitions, including The Judgment of Paris 30th Anniversary, the 30th anniversary retesting of the same red wines evaluated in the 1976 Paris wine competition. In this blind tasting, held both in the United States and in the United Kingdom, judges in both countries ranked Ridge Monte Bello number one among all the wines judged. Ridge Vineyards produced its first Zinfandel in 1964. Beginning in 1966, the winery began sourcing some grapes for its Geyserville Zinfandel and other wines from vineyards in Sonoma County. In 1991, Ridge Vineyards purchased the Lytton Springs vineyard in the Dry Creek Valley AVA. The winery produces wine at both the Monte Bello and Lytton Springs locations, and operates tasting rooms open to the public at both. Wines Ridge also focuses on single-estate wines where the grapes for a particular label are all grown at the same vineyard. The signature wine of Ridge is its Monte Bello, a field blend of Cabernet Sauvignon mixed with varying percentages of other grapes grown in the same location, usually including Merlot, Petit Verdot, and occasionally Cabernet Franc. Ridge's Zinfandels (or mostly-Zinfandel field blends) constitute the bulk of the winery's production. Using grapes from selected sites from all over the state and bottling them each under their own label, Ridge Zinfandels emphasize the particular characteristics of each growing site and may show different aging characteristics than do other Zinfandels. Among the best known of the Ridge Zinfandels or Zinfandel-blends are those from Geyserville, York Creek, and Lytton Springs.
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