Ridge Vineyards: “Never been more relevant”

San Francisco Chronicle

Esther Mobley, San Francisco Chronicle’s Senior Wine Critic, sat down with John Olney, RIDGE 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

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.