That a grape undergoes a transformative journey en route to its incarnation as a bottle of wine is reasonably self-evident; wine could of course not be possible without said journey taking place.
But in fact, there is more than meets the eye afoot, and more than one journey underway.
The original magic of the vine-to-wine transubstantiation resides in the overlapping concentrics of history. A vineyard is a journey unto itself; soil to seed, plant to fruit; year in and year out, the ever-deepening Samsaric encirculation of life, the poetry of the perennial:
The vineyards crews
don’t dare mention drought. The rain is going to come this weekend.
Already I have seen
three snowflakes prancing lightly
like young reindeer in the air.
Back from holidays, they start in
on the pruning of the slopes, repeating
mantras to their dogs, laughing in Spanish.
From the gun club by the quarry
comes the shots
that we all hear on a delay.
We amaze ourselves, reminded
that the stars we beg to weep
have died already.
There is nowhere
for the last year to go,
but to the ground.
Already
every day
is growing larger.
Spindling out from this ever-in-rotation inner agrarian hub, like spokes of some great metaphysical wheel, are the revelations of vintage; each season a season of imagination, impossibility, and faith.; new journeys all; from the grape, to the glass.
This is what we taste when we taste honest and authentic wine; the history of the vineyard, the history of the harvest, the histories of the living and the dead, the biology of sweet human endeavor, in forever soulful congress with the earth, with the sky, with the gods.
The Old World. The New World.
The Journey.
(The following film short is a pictorial chronicle of a grape’s journey from vineyard to bottle, featuring Ridge Vineyards Geyserville, set to the music of Antonín Dvořák’s ”From The New World” symphony; a work composed back in the era when Geyserville’s “Old Patch” was just being planted.)
I very recently had the opportunity to prepare, serve, and taste a rather preposterously fine vertical of Monte Bello: the 2011 first assemblage, a 2010 barrel sample, and the 2009, (which is in bottle, but not yet released), plus the 1978, the 1984, the 1985, and the 1992.
For a crazy inside-the-velvet-rope insider’s look at the very exclusive inner workings of preparing a tasting of this caliber, please consider viewing the following video …
And as to tasting notes; how best to describe this singular display of magic mojo juju funktasticness? Haiku, of course …
2011 Monte Bello
In these years, when winds
howl cold, and kindness cowers,
such focus, such pride.
2010 Monte Bello
Delivered, I knew
you already, small child; and
already so wise!
2009 Monte Bello
Tenor saxophone
says listen — king of Kansas —
I am the big Jazz.
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1992 Monte Bello
Hummingbird stops to
simply sit, sees dawn kiss the
dew; such perfection.
1985 Monte Bello
Noir hero, hard-boiled,
this case defines you; now we
know your deep justice.
1984 Monte Bello
Can it be, with all
this soulful knowledge, you should
still dance like a child?
1978 Monte Bello
What we all should strive
to be ; past striving. Not old,
not young, simply true.
It was a beautiful day on the mountain, and a beautiful day to make history.
I left the morning sun behind, and entered the true velvet sur-surface catacomb of The Monte Bello Room.
I emerged on the other side, into the comparatively harsh radiance of an office, a hallway, and then, the room. The room in which it was to all transpire. The sacellum within. It wasn’t exactly with confidence that I walked into the room, though neither was it with the abject terror that had so twisted my guts the first time around. The mantra cycled in my mind, “You’ve done this before, and you can do this. You’ve done this before, and you can do this. You’ve done this before, and you can do this.” It felt good to be a part of it all again, and while I wasn’t nervous to the point of emotional instability, I was still imbued with an awe that can’t be tamed, and will never dissipate.
The room looked as if it hadn’t been touched since this same time last year. The glassware was shimmering in all its crystal purity, the weight of the wooden table immense, reassuring, stable. The bread basket was full, the cheeses were cut and in their places; knives glistening at their sides. Pools of beatific olive oil lying languidly in shallow white dishes, and on the glossy black matte of the counter, the wines.
A seeming acre stretching into infinity; beakers, bottles, glasses. And hovering over it all, the butterfly-fleet fingers of winemaker Eric Baugher. An odd thought, but watching the intense choreography of his concentration, the near effortless rhythm to his subtle movements, the curious dance of his hands, with not a sprig of energy wasted, I was reminded, of all people, of Jamey Turner playing the glass harp on the old Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. The way he too hovered over a sea of glassware, making a beautiful and eerie music all his own.
This was the second day of the Monte Bello First Assemblage Tasting, and the news from Day One was very good. Thirteen lots had been selected from the core twenty-four, the highest in recent memory, possibly ever. And this from the 2011 vintage, a growing season near universally decried across California. This is one of so many singularities about The Ridge Way, that in the most challenging of seasons, we should find ourselves blessed with the most intensely concentrated of flavors, at a quality level almost impossibly high.
The Monte Bello is a “built” wine; built literally from the ground up, relying on little more than the natural complexities, nuances, and variations present within the boundaries of the vineyard. All three “tiers” of our mountain — the lower, the middle, the upper — are sub-divided into much smaller blocks, identified and isolated to capture each micro-climatic miracle of distinction. Think of a painter’s pallet, each hue and tone the ingredients of a waiting masterpiece. Swirled together, a formless, charmless mud, but kept separate and distinct, the origins of genius. Think of the vineyard in the same fashion; harvested all at once, all together, and with total disregard for the unique personalities of each and every sub-parcel, the result is formless, shapeless, undefined, a wine unremarkable. But keep them apart, carrying them safely and distinctly through harvest, through fermentation, through tasting, and you have the origins of greatness, the pure building blocks of magic.
This is how Monte Bello is built. From a baseline group of twenty-four vineyard parcels, so defined for their consistent and historical offerings of Monte Bello-caliber fruit, a “control” is “assembled,” a compendium of juice indisputably consistent with history, with quality, with beauty. This assembled control becomes the beginning of the First Assemblage process. Alongside the control, a second glass; in it, the control PLUS ONE. Juice from one additional parcel, added to the mix. We taste “blind,” no one knowing which is which. And we taste, and we taste, and we taste. And we write. And we sip, swish, spit. Again and again. We ponder, we debate inside our minds, we debate with one another, we debate with the gods. We stare at the colors, bury our noses in the aromas, let the liquids lay widely on our palates. We aerate aggressively, we savor delicately. On the page, metaphor upon metaphor, analysis upon analysis. Are the tannins coated or exposed? Are the acids firm or lively? Is the fruit robust and powerful, or delicate and elegant? Eventually, a decision must be made. One wine gets the dreaded minus, one the plus of affirmation. In secret, each taster shares their votes with Eric. Then the talking begins anew, a break from the near funereal and holy silence preceding. Each taster explains their vote, offers their perspectives. The “speeches” have the passion of conversion to them, but of course the votes are already in, there is nothing that can be changed now. But the insights are fascinating, and we each take notes on one another’s thoughts; new jottings joining the stained mosaics already decorating our yellow-lined pages. Will the addition make it? And what WAS the addition? Young Cabernet Franc from Rousten? Merlot from the middle? The curtain comes up, the votes are tallied, the verdict is clear.
After the first flight, it was clear the day would be unusual; nine tasters, seven in favor of the control (i.e. no “addition”). But the two “plus” votes? Paul Draper and Eric Baugher! A conundrum right out of the gate! Would they wield their “winemakers veto?”
They did not. The control moved on. Flight two commenced. Another seven-to-two vote! Again, the control took the majority of votes. Two flights in, and still no addition! But at least we had unity amongst the trio of winemakers this time; Paul, Eric, and John Olney all voted the control.
Flight three? Yet another seven-to-two vote! This was unprecedented! And this time, John and Eric united in favor of the addition, while Paul came out for the control. Which put Paul in the minority camp, as the addition had taken the seven plus votes. Now what??? Would Paul veto?
He did not. What he did instead was take a moment to acknowledge the extraordinary caliber of the wines we were tasting. The voting profile kept changing because it was simply so HARD to make distinctions. Everything was, in fact, delicious. Personally, flight three had been the hardest yet for me to decide on. But in the end, I’d settled on the addition, which put me with the majority. We had a new control! Fourteen lots.
Things got upended all over again with flight four. This time the vote was tight as tight could be, five-to-four! And this time, John and Paul voted in unison, while Eric was odd man out! The 5s were on the control; Eric and the 4s were for the addition. After much discussion, all at the table opted to move the addition on, even though it had taken only the four plusses. Truth be told, we were getting excited, and the prospect of another parcel in was just too much to resist.
And now came yet another wrinkle; John Olney had to return to Lytton Springs to attend to developments on the bottling line.
That left eight tasters, with no tie-breaking vote! Fortunately, flight five saw a six-to-two clear majority, again in favor of the addition. A 4.4% introduction of Cabernet Franc! I was thrilled.
The inevitable happened with flight six; a tie! Four for the sixteen-lot control, four for the addition. And what an interesting split! The extended winemaking team was all in on the addition (Paul Draper, Eric Baugher, Shun Ishikubo, and Shinji Kurokawa), whereas the vineyard team (David Gates, Will Thomas, and Kyle Theriot) were all united behind the control (which is where I voted as well). The vineyard team and I lost out; the addition prevailed, we were at seventeen lots!
Flight eight, the final round. Another tie! Four-to-four. What to do now, oh, what to do? This time, restraint prevailed, we held at seventeen lots. This was now “officially” the First Assemblage of the 2011 Monte Bello!
In describing the wine, Paul used the word “satisfying” (then immediately noted that he didn’t think he’d ever used that term to describe a wine before!), and he was right. This was a very satisfying wine.
But the final challenge still remained; a four-wine “blind” tasting of the new 2011 First Assemblage, alongside the previous three vintages of Monte Bello: 2010 (barrel sample), 2009 (unreleased, in bottle), and 2008 (current release). This was to make sure we hadn’t all collectively tunnel-visioned our way into a fatally narrow paradigm, into a restricted palate calibration, into a world of 2011; too self-reflective, too self-justifying, too far away from history.
As the tasting was blind, the challenge was of course to guess which vintage was which, while also ideally affirming the 2011’s proper place in the lineage. To add a wrinkle, I gave myself a little test. First, I voted entirely on smell; ending up with (from left to right) the 2008, the 2011, the 2010, and the 2009. Then I voted on taste, ending up with a chronological order; 2008-2011. When the metaphorical curtain came up, I’d been right on taste, and two-out-of-four on aromatics. What this told me was two things: 1) I wasn’t quite over my cold yet, and my nose was still compromised! And 2) That the 2011 sat in there just fine. Strong, concentrated, deep, full, complex.
Me? I was tired, wiped out, exhausted, spent, flattened.
But also exhilarated, excited, rapturous.
This was a day for the ages, and this was a wine for the ages!
This wine will see release in 2014. It may sit in your cellar for, what, ten years? Twenty years? Thirty years? It might be the year 2044 before you taste the full flower of this wine’s potential. 2044! If I am fortunate, I will be an old man then, but hopefully still a vibrant one; full of passion, still enacting a reconciliation between the wildness of my youth and the wisdom of my age. I wish the same for all of us, we assemblers. May we all live to 2044 and beyond! And may we still be bridges between the unbridled passions of our younger selves, and the wise and peaceful souls of our winters.
When you taste this wine, this is what you will be tasting. The bookends of our souls, and all that breathes between.
Hard to believe ZAP’s #ZinFest has already come and gone. We anticipate it for so long, then suddenly, it slips right past us, and the anticipatory cycle starts anew.
Fortunately, via the miracles and mechanisms of modern guerilla theater, we are able to preserve small traces of the memories in digital form, there to enrich us when we seek and need renewal.
Back By Popular Demand, The Original Ah So Cork Puller Video!
One of the most popular videos this blog has ever produced is one in which we offer a quick tutorial on how to use an Ah So Cork Puller.
And it was never even actually on this blog!
In the early days of ”4488: A Ridge Blog,”, we couldn’t house our own video, so the footage went up on YouTube.
But now, some multi-thousands of views later, I am very happy to re-present the footage on its home turf. (You can read the original post here.)
And remember, if you’re opening an older bottle of wine, the Ah So Cork Puller is the ONLY extraction mechanism you should be deploying. Anything else is at your own risk!
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
(poetry excerpt above from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by T.S. Eliot
Anyone who’s read about this tasting series, or perhaps even attended an episode, will know that there is always a theme to each tasting event. This was again the case for what was the final Wine Bloggers Tasting of 2011, held recently here at Monte Bello.
I must say, that as we’ve progressed the series, it has gotten potentially more and more challenging to develop engaging and creative themes. Fortunately, Ridge itself is a unique and surprising enough institution that quite often, the themes essentially present themselves. The theme for 2011: Episode IV, was suggested by the release of a new series of wines from Ridge Vineyards, our Historic Vineyard Series.
Thus, the theme was History, a viticultural going back in time. Each of the Historic Vineyard Series wines is crafted from fruit coming specifically from blocks that conform to the original historic plantings of our mountain’s “Founding Farmer Families,” and as such, each harkens back to a time when the mountain was comparatively raw and uncharted, a time before much of what we now take for granted in the modern world had been invented, a time long before electricity had even come to the mountain.
To set the stage for our oenophilic time travel, I set a price of admission for our guest Wine Bloggers. To participate in the tasting, each would have to commit to typing at least one tasting note on a vintage manual typewriter, four of which I provided from my personal collection, with the oldest dating to 1924. All agreed, and the game was afoot!
Upon arrival, each of our guests was greeted with a glass of the 2008 Monte Bello Chardonnay, for my money, one of the greatest Monte Bello Chardonnays Ridge Vineyards has ever produced. This was just a treat to get things off on the right foot, a little treat to whet the collective viticultural whistles.
(As an aside, I should note that the event was not in any way shape or form some sort of No Tech Zone. These ARE wine bloggers after all. So the public access Wi Fi was live, and we had a Twitterfall feed up to chronicle the chatter as it happened in real-time.)
Anyhow, after everyone had settled in, I distributed some information about our Historic Vineyard Series wines, and poured the first offering, the 2009 Klein Cabernet Sauvignon. In keeping with its cool-climate origins, this 100% solo-varietal Cabernet stuns with its subtlety, elegance, balance, approachability, minerality, and herbaceousness. It shows as proof once again that cool-climate cabs have a unique potential to reflect a truly singular sophistication. I’ve nothing against muscle wines per se, provided they’re built well, but give me a cool-climate cab any day! It’s sort of like the difference between Steven Wright and Sam Kinison. Or Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” Or the quiet part of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the loud bit. Or Mary Oliver and Charles Bukowski. Or “Casablanca” and “The Bourne Identity.” Or Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes and Robert Downey’s.
Anyhow, from here we moved to the Torre Ranch Merlot, a perfect showcase for the upended paradigm that is a cool-climate mountain property; here, the Cab provides the subtlety, whereas it’s actually the Merlot that brings the structure. In our archetypal Monte Bello assemblage construct, the Merlot provides the beams and girders, the Cab paints the walls in. That said, on its own in solo-varietal fashion, the Merlot is most certainly not without grace; it still manages to be balletic in its power, not unlike a star athlete; a compressed and perfectly calibrated reconciliation of grace and force.
We concluded this portion of the tasting with the Perrone Cabernet Franc. In my estimation, the Cabernet Franc grown on our mountain is of a superior caliber on a shockingly regular basic; but the intensity of its acid profile in particular means its potential role in the assemblages is often constrained. On its own, however, it is what I oft refer to as “an excitement wine.” Excitement wines are those that somehow rise above their impressive component profiles (acid, tannin, fruit, herbs, alcohol, minerality, etc.) and functionally well-executed structures to achieve a mysterious captivatory quality that transcends simple flavor. They leap out of the glass, capture your attention, deploy an indecipherable layer of attraction that, for lack of a better term, is truly exciting. Pure and unadulterated excitement in the glass.
Continuing with our looking back into the past theme, I then introduced the second portion of our tasting, a three-vintage vertical of Library Estate Cabernet; the 2003, 2004, and 2005 vintages. As I have recently reviewed these wines on this blog, I’ll opt to let you read from some of our guest’s works; some of which can be found by clicking the following links:
Our tasting closed with another fascinating contribution from the magical vaults of one Allan Bree, who goes back far enough with Ridge to remember calling Paul Draper with a tin can and string.
Kidding! I’m kidding, I’m a kidder, I kid …
In all seriousness, Allan does go back a ways with Ridge Vineyards, which means that any time he brings something special, you can be sure it’s going to be special. Should you wish to do so, you can click the following to read of some past examples of Allan’s generosity:
For today’s tasting, he brought something we later determined constituted a full 5% of the world’s available supply. Meaning, Ridge itself only has about a case of this wine left, and Allan had two bottles, one of which he shared with the Wine Bloggers Tastings. It’s about as rare a Ridge wine as can be found, partly due to its bottle age, and primarily because Ridge only ever made it once. One vintage. Only 33 barrels produced. Most of which, as far as we can tell, no longer exists. Unless you have some?
Oh, the wine, of course! A 1994 Monte Rosso Zinfandel! And may I say, it was delicious! Which was particularly impressive, given Paul Draper’s original estimates of its longevity. From the original label text:
These very ripe grapes—like those in the Ridge ’79 and ’80 Glen Ellens from the adjacent Moon Mountain vineyard—were the very first zinfandels of the vintage to be harvested. This old-vine fruit from Monte Rosso’s warm, red-earth slopes received special attention. To maximize intensity, we used three small tanks rather than a single large fermentor. Despite keeping new cooperage to twenty-five percent, spicy oak is a major component, complementing the wine’s rich, black fruit. This big—yet elegant —zinfandel will benefit from a year of bottle age, and be at its best over the next five to eight years. PD (12/95)
Suffice it to say, it was quite a tasting, and in fact it was quite a year of tasting. This is the second year of our Wine Bloggers Tasting series, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with its development and progress.
I’ve gotten to know a fantastic and fascinating cadre of writers and wine lovers, and I’ve tasted an extraordinary roster of wines in truly great company.
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I thank all of our guests over this past year for their participation, and I thank Ridge Vineyards for continuing to produce exquisitely crafted and magical wines, for providing support for this series, and for blessing me with the job of writing the Ridge Vineyards blog!
Cheers to all, and thank you for a great 2011’s worth of Wine Bloggers Tastings!
And as a final note of appreciation for our Wine Bloggers, and to that oft-misunderstood subset of the population at large that is the Wine Blogger Community, might I just point out that Wine Bloggers too appreciate the importance of wearing groovy footwear whilst drinking fine wine …
(This, my friends, if the 600th post on this blog. Quite a lil’ milestone, I’d say, and I couldn’t be happier that the subject matter is what it is … )
Kuumbwa Jazz is, simply put, one of the best music venues in the country. And it’s so much more than that, on top of that. It’s a community center, a community resource, an educational center, a cultural epicenter. It’s a great, great place. And at heart, it is, simply put, one of the best music venues in the country. And I know of what I speak. In my fifteen years as a professional musician, I played there many times, and it is one of the most musician-friendly venues I’ve ever encountered. And I’ve seen some great shows there as well, and it is one of the most audience-friendly venues I’ve ever encountered. And now that I’m with Ridge Vineyards, I am very, very happy to note that I have a new and special way of supporting Kuumbwa.
Like seemingly all great cultural institutions in this country, Kuumbwa Jazz relies in no small part on the benevolence of its patrons, and every year, they host a fundraising concert and auction. This year, we donated wines to the pre-dinner tasting, to the dinner itself, and to the auction. It was my great pleasure to host, and it was a truly awesome evening. I met so many great folks, swapped so many great wine and music stories, and all in all, enjoyed myself thoroughly.
Plus, I am happy to report that the mixed case of limited-production, winery-only wines that we donated sold for $600 at the auction!
If you’d like to watch a great, old-school auctioneer work the room; if you’d like to see just how that case sold for that much, enjoy the video below!
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Congratulations to Kuumbwa Jazz for an outstanding and successful event, and here’s to the next 36 years of being the best of the best of the best!
EXTRA! EXTRA! Historic Vineyard Series Wines Available To Taste On Black Friday!
It’s becoming quite the tradition for us to do a little something special on Black Friday, that semi-infamous post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy that so regularly pocks the countenances of our collective social marketplaces.
Last year, we put on quite a delightful series of tastings (you can see a run-down on the 2010 Black Friday here: http://blog.ridgewine.com/2010/11/22/turn-black-friday-red/), and I think for all concerned it was a very welcome alternative to being trampled underfoot by a maddened gate-crashing mob storming the doors of their local Wal-Mart at 4am, in search of one last remaining copy of “Halo” or one last “Let’s Rock Elmo.”
This year will be no different!
You will have two choices, this:
Or this:
The choice seems clear to me.
In all seriousness, while avoiding the lunacy of Black Friday is certainly incentive enough, we actually have a much better reason for you to visit. As part of the private tastings on offer on Black Friday, we’ll be showcasing … wait for it, wait for it … two of our new, never-before released, Historic Vineyard Series wines! Ah, the volta …
Have you heard about these very special wines? If you’re a Ridge Vineyards Wine Club Member, you certainly have. And if you’re not a member, well, this might just be a really good chance to experience just why membership is so decidedly the grooviest of badges to affix to the cub scout or brownie outfit of your aesthetic life. Meaning, these very rare wines are only available to members, but for just one day, and one day only, we’re going to make them available for tasting to all who secure a reservation! And, if you’re a member, you’ll be able to purchase as well. And if not yet a member? Well …
Anyhow, just to back track a bit and give you the rundown on these wines, the gist of the story is this; courtesy of a long and educational engagement with our own unique history here on the Monte Bello Estate, we have been able to delve deeply into the pre-Ridge story, and part of what we’ve been able to do is not only identify the key families who first planted on our mountain, but also ascertain their stories, and the boundaries surrounding their original plantings. And with those families, lines, and properties properly identified, we’ve been able, in a sort of feat of viticultural gerrymandering, to conceptually redraw the lot lines on our property so as to make wines that hew to the original plantings, and bottle them under the names of the original families! It’s quite a unique addition to our primary bottlings from this property (the Monte Bello and Estate Cabernets), and we’re very excited about this extraordinary new series.
2009 is the very first vintage of our Historic Vineyard Series wines on offer, and this Black Friday will be the first “public” opportunity to taste two of them, the 2009 Klein Cabernet Sauvignon, and the 2009 Torre Ranch Merlot. This is truly a tasting opportunity not to be missed, as these wines couldn’t possibly be more rare, more significant, more cachet-laden, or more delicious! Did I mention these are also single-varietal wines! That’s right, 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, 100% Merlot. How’s that for rare and special?
Here is a bit of history of the two families:
Torre
In 1890, John Torre, a successful Nevada cattle rancher purchased one hundred acres on Monte Bello Ridge, planted vines, and built a barn atop a cellar dug into the hillside. In 1908, John’s nephew Vincent and wife, Dominica, left Nevada to run the vineyards and winery at Monte Bello, acquiring the property upon John’s death in 1913. The Torre winery produced mostly zinfandel, selling it for shipment by rail to New York.
Prohibition closed the Torre winery in 1920 and the vines died out over time. After several changes of ownership, William Short acquired the property and replanted to cabernet sauvignon and a small amount of chardonnay. By 1959, Short, weary of the work, sold the land to four scientists from Stanford Research Institute.
Initially, the partners intended to sell the grapes, but one of them, Dave Bennion, made a half-barrel of wine from the 1959 harvest—his first foray into winemaking. Its quality convinced the partners to re-bond the old winery, and to undertake the venture that would become Ridge Vineyards.
Dave, with his partners, went on to make seven commercial vintages (1962-1968). Paul Draper—impressed by the exceptional 1962 and 1964—joined the group as winemaker in 1969. Paul assisted with that vintage and made the 1970 and 1971 on his own, the last to be made in the old Torre Winery.
Today the oldest vines are those planted by William Short in 1949. The old Torre winery building now houses the Monte Bello tasting room and group facilities.
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Klein
Pierre Klein (1855-1922) was an Alsatian who came to California in 1875. For years, as manager of the restaurant in San Francisco’s Occidental Hotel, he championed the best of California wines. In 1888 he purchased 160 acres on Monte Bello Ridge (currently known as the Jimsomare Ranch.)
Determined to produce a fine claret in the style of the Médoc, he planted Bordeaux varieties on their own roots. In the early 1890s, he began selling his Mira Valle wines to several San Francisco restaurants; in 1895, he entered his wine in the Bordeaux Exposition, where he took an honorable mention At the Paris Exposition of 1900, he won two gold medals—one for his Claret, the other for his “Grand Vin”—known as the “Château Lafitte of America,”
When phylloxera attacked his vines after the turn of the century, he did not replant. Retiring in 1910, he sold the property in 1913. In 1936, it was purchased by the Schwabacher family of San Francisco who renamed the property “Jimsomare” from their names Jim, Sophie, and Marie.
Although Klein’s Bordeaux varietals had died out, a small nineteenth-century zinfandel vineyard survived. Ridge bought those grapes, and made its first Jimsomare Zinfandel in 1968. Ridge convinced the family to replant the Bordeaux varietals, and a small amount of chardonnay. In exchange, Ridge provided rootstock, and a promise to purchase the grapes. The first cabernet bottling was in 1978.
By the late 1990s, the Schwabachers no longer wished to manage day-to-day farming, and signed a long-term lease with Ridge. Today, Ridge farms the original Klein property as part of its Monte Bello Estate.
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And if all that isn’t enough to pique your curiosity, I’m now going to get going on some tasting notes, to hopefully & proverbially whet your viticultural whistle as regards these extremely rare and historic, limited-production, member-only, single-varietal offerings:
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2009 Ridge Vineyards Torre Ranch Merlot
Tremendous post-decanting development on aromatic display; at first whiff, the nose is dominated by strong baker’s chocolate notes, with only minor hints of peppercorn and tarragon, but as the wine airs out, fascinatingly strong strains of fig and amber liqueur emerge. The bowl-view bespeaks a fair amount of girth to come; big, slow-moving legs languidly taking their time down the bowl-sides (raise up mama, get yer big leg offa mine!), and first taste does nothing to dispel this foreshadowing; the wine is mouth-filling to the nth, with strongly granular tannins on full display, and a good wallop of low-tone fruit spreading out all across the front-palate. Layered under this hearty spread of harvest berry and plum lays a layer of beurre noir and toasty caramel, and across the top, a slightly minty, cool-climate herbaceousness. The wine is still quite young, no doubt about it, and structure is still the dominate component, but again, with air, there is a good array of fruit notes beginning to show their colors as well. Mirroring the color, which is decidedly concentrated and rich, the fruit notes are dense as well; not at all extracted, mind you, but expressing their collective essences with a vengeance. This is a lot of wine in the glass, and a fascinating inversion of the Merlot-Cab relationship; here, the Merlot is structure, depth, tannin, and concentration, bringing muscularity and girth to the table, albeit in a broodingly romantic package. A most baroque wine, this is viticultural poetry of the most saturated kind … Purple prose-ish, if you’ll forgive the pun …
2009 Ridge Vineyards Klein Cabernet Sauvignon
Unbelievable aromatics; the quintessentiallity of cool-climate cab in action; minerality, spice, herbality, spice, percolation, spice, and spice! And a singular relationship between color and body; if anything, denser and more vibrant than the merlot, yet swifter of leg and less-viscous of body; rivulets a-runnin’ (brooks run into the ocean, ocean run into the sea!). Extremely elegant mouthfeel, with acidity on display for days upon days upon days; such vibrancy and bounce for a California solo-varietal cab! The fruit here is definitely high in tone, lots of both sweet and sour cherries, strong pluot notes, and a bit of young raspberry as well. The tannins here are of the extremely refined sort; soft, supple, resolved, and covered, and the mid-palate structure retains its bounce while spreading its fruit in a comparatively wider arc. The finish is a deceptive one; at first swallow, the youth of the wine seems almost restrictive as regards retaining some flavor in the aftermath, but lo and behold, with 5 or 10 seconds of wait-time, a delicious lingering decadence starts to emerge, perhaps hinting at the richening to come. This is a wine with a lot of growing still to do, no question, but it’s expressive and buoyant now, and exciting beyond compare. It’s easy to see how the ying and yang of cab and merlot from this mountain work together, but there is something sweetly, intimately refreshing about seeing these varietals in their solo and separate fleshes; they have a home-ness to them that, for all their grace and power, the assemblages of Monte Bello and Estate don’t necessarily evidence; this is the farmgirl or boy that you fall in love with for their innocence, their purity, their honor and their integrity. They don’t flash, but they’re honest, and there is no more reassuring lap to rest your weary head in.
To secure a reservation for these very special tastings, at either our Lytton Springs or Monte Bello Estates, please follow the following links:
As of yesterday, Wednesday, November 9th, Harvest 2011 ended for Ridge Vineyards. With the last grape in off Monte Bello, we can now close the book on one of the more unusual and challenging growing seasons in recent history. That said, at least certainly in our experience, unusual and challenging often translates to extraordinary, concentrated, and delicious. That very much looks to be the case for the 2011 vintage. Here is winemaker Eric Baugher, with some recent perspective on #Harvest2011, penned just prior to the final round of picking on Monte Bello:
The vintage is coming along nicely, just about finished and only have the few parcels at the upper vineyard remaining to harvest this week. We rushed to pick ahead of last Thursday’s storm, and fortunately pulled in a large amount of fruit ahead of the small amount of rainfall that hit. Wind and plenty of sunshine will dry the remaining grapes for harvest to finish this Wednesday. Typically, the harvest at Monte Bello takes five or more weeks from start to finish, but this year we will have completed it in less than two weeks. Sampling grapes early on, we saw less separation of ripeness between lower, middle, and upper vineyards and within the Bordeaux varietals. We knew that the moment the grapes achieved full ripeness, they’d all be ready to harvest at the same time. Our Monte Bello vineyard team was supplemented with additional crew from our Sonoma vineyards in order to pick double the amount of fruit each day. In the winery, the lots have been fermenting quite well, extracting very deep color and full bodies. Tannin extraction is, as usual, something we watch closely and taste carefully to decide when to press. So far, we are fermenting out to about eight days, and giving the tanks slightly more aerated pump-over time so that a rich tannin structure can develop. A vintage wrought with challenging weather, has actually yielded some amazing quality, especially once the warm weather returned mid-October and intensified flavors. The stress on the vines was unlike any other year, but they made it through and this stress has translated into wines with extraordinary color, flavor, and aging potential.
And with that, we say fare thee well Harvest 2011, it’s been a fascinating season!
To see a quick video of our seemingly ever-multiplying sorting tables in action as the final berries enter the winery, please click below …
