Ridge Vineyards: “Never been more relevant”

San Francisco Chronicle

Esther Mobley, San Francisco Chronicle’s Senior Wine Critic, sat down with John Olney, Ridge Vineyards’ CEO & Head Winemaker, to reflect on our storied past. In this article, titled “This California winery has barely changed in 60 years — and it’s never been more relevant,” Mobley eloquently captures the heart of RIDGE’s success over the past 60 years with anecdotes from our founding philosophies to the present day.

Our Steadfast Approach to Winemaking

From transparency in ingredient labeling to our minimal-intervention winemaking philosophy, Ridge Vineyards has been employing the same approach to crafting single-vineyard wines since our founding in 1962. Back then, the methods our founders and Paul Draper were implementing made us an outlier—sourcing American oak over French oak, for example—and now those foundational beliefs are trending in the wine industry.

“Under longtime winemaker Paul Draper, Ridge was practicing low-intervention (Draper called it “pre-industrial”) winemaking a half-century before it became a buzzword. The winery was preserving historic vineyards long before “heritage wines” came into vogue and listing ingredients on its back labels long before most other wineries were speaking openly about wine additives.”

–Esther Mobley

In Pursuit of Rare California Gems

For decades, RIDGE has been searching California for unique vineyards where climate, soil, and variety are ideally matched. Our ongoing search has led us to many incredible new sites, such as the Frediani Ranch, which spans the Silverado Trail in the northern end of Napa Valley. They grow valdiguié, charbono, petite sirah, cabernet sauvignon, sauvignon blanc, syrah, zinfandel, grenache, cabernet franc, merlot and carignane. The oldest block on the ranch dates to the mid-1930s. Valdiguié was once widely planted in California but now Frediani is home to some of the only vines that remain.

“On a recent visit to the Cupertino tasting room, the 2022 Frediani was the first wine in the tasting flight and, as it turned out, the best. The wine tastes juicy and lithe, devoid of heavy tannins, gushing with cranberry and licorice. That it happens to be dominated by a faddish, chillable-red grape is incidental to the fact that it’s from a family-owned, historic vineyard — a quintessential Ridge wine if there ever was one.”

–Esther Mobley

Our aim since the early days has been to bring these family-farmed, tenderly planted and grown vineyard sites to the hearts and tables of many. Through our vineyard and winemaking practices, we aim to show how little intervention is necessary to produce a fine, terroir-driven wine from distinctive fruit. Read more about Ridge Vineyards’ early years, our exploration of single-vineyard sites across California, and our “refreshingly low-key” wine tasting experiences in this review from San Francisco Chronicle.