Assemblage Update on the 2024 Monte Bello

Blog Post

February & May 2025

If you’re not familiar with the assemblage process here at Ridge, you can learn more about how we harvest, ferment, and taste lots separately to create two “First” wines from the Monte Bello mountain in our blog post: An Elegant Version of Monte Bello from Select Parcels.

First Assemblage

After 2023 brought one of the latest and most prolonged harvests in RIDGE history, 2024 painted a very different picture. Despite a cool and at times wet spring, summer temperatures were consistently warm, including many evenings in which the inversion layer–which brings warmth to higher elevations during the day–remained in place overnight. This expedited ripening. We began harvesting cabernet on September 6th, one of the earliest starts to picking at Monte Bello.

By the end of January, the majority of the fifty-four 2024 Monte Bello lots were finished with primary and malolactic fermentations and ready to assess at the Monte Bello First Assemblage. For this tasting, the vineyard and production teams meet to taste each individual lot blind. While we know that all wines being considered come from Monte Bello, they are randomly arranged so that we do not know which varietal or block is in front of us to taste.

After the first round of tasting, seven blocks stood out as clear favorites. We put these together as our base Monte Bello blend. Tasting then continued in which we narrowed the choices to 21 remaining lots, 16 of which were selected to include in the 2024 Monte Bello. All of the wines chosen during the assemblage have now been blended. The resulting wine is 73% cabernet sauvignon, 18% merlot, 6% petite verdot and 3% cabernet franc. Deep opaque color, dark blackberry fruit, well coated tannins and taut acidity characterize the 2024 Monte Bello. The overall balance of the wine suggests that it will age and evolve in the cellar over many decades to come. A number of excellent cabernet blocks, not ready to assess at the First Assemblage, will be looked at in late April during the Second Assemblage tasting, potentially elevating quality even more.

–John Olney, Head Winemaker (February 2025)

Second Assemblage

In the last week of April, the Production and Vineyard teams met again, this time for the 2024 Monte Bello second assemblage. Conducted in the same manner as the first assemblage, we blind taste individual Monte Bello lots in trial blends to see if they improve the overall wine. Here, we are looking at the few remaining lots that, because they were not finished with primary or malolactic fermentation, were not ready to be assessed at the first assemblage in February.

For 2024, there were five remaining component wines to consider: three cabernets from the Torre Ranch, one cabernet from Klein, and one merlot from Klein. There was a clear consensus that two of the Torre wines—the Old Vines and Cliff blocks—as well as the cabernet lot from the Klein Upper block added depth and structure. These wines were therefore blended into the ’24 Monte Bello during recent racking, thus finalizing the final wine that will now spend twelve more months in barrel prior to bottling next year.

The additional cabernet sauvignon brings the varietal breakdown to 77% cabernet sauvignon, 17% merlot, 3% petit verdot, and 2% cabernet franc. After drought conditions, that we experienced from 2020 to 2022 and which reduced yields at Monte Bello significantly, when conditions improve, the vines typically rebound to more normal production levels. The heavy winter rain fall from 2023 to 2024 provided these conditions and indeed, while not as large as the 2019 crop, the 2024 Monte Bello is a return to an above average quantity with the classic structure, acidity, and balance of Monte Bello built to age well into the future.

–John Olney, Head Winemaker (May 2025)