2017 Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello Cabernet Blend Santa Cruz Mountains (1.5 L) Magnum

The world started raving about Ridge Monte Bello the year before I was born, so I can hardly claim to be the first one on the bandwagon. But there’s no bigger believer in this magnificent wine’s ability to deliver much more than you normally dare expect from a bottle of wine.  

I grew up down the hill from Monte Bello, the property high on the ridge between my Santa Clara Valley home and the California coast, but it took me 30 years to appreciate the wine made there. When I was a teenager, the only reason to drive past Stevens Creek Reservoir and ascend the mountain was for the view: It’s twenty minutes of steep and scrubby hillside, until a hairpin turn reveals a stunning panorama that stretches from south of San Jose all the way to San Francisco. 

Four Stanford Research Institute scientists took that same trip back in 1959. They made a quarter-barrel of Cabernet from the property located 2,000 feet above the valley floor, and immediately recognized its extraordinary quality. In 1969, the group hired Stanford philosophy graduate Paul Draper as winemaker. 

The Cabernet that Draper made at Monte Bello just two years later placed fifth at the 1976 Judgement of Paris tasting, and since then, Ridge has become an icon. It’s been named North America’s #1 Most Admired wine brand by Drinks International, and a Wine & Spirits magazine Top 100 winery 20 times.

Much of this acclaim is on the strength of their flagship mountain-grown Bordeaux blend, which is not just one of the most consistently excellent wines in the world, but one of the most age-worthy: The wine that placed fifth at the 1976 Judgement of Paris bested every one of its competitors—all the California classics and Bordeaux First Growths—when they were tasted again three decades later.

The 2017, according to Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, is “destined to rank as one of the all-time greats.” Jeb Dunnuck says it’s “going to be one for the ages.” Consisting of 73% Cabernet Sauvignon, it’s opaque purple-ruby, with heady aromas of ripe blackberry fruit, barrel spice, anise, violets, and crushed limestone. With opulent and juicy dark berry fruit on the palate, it’s tremendously long with structured tannins that will allow it to age for decades.

Both critics put their barrel tasting in the 100-point range, and I’m thrilled to bring you the chance to claim this true heirloom wine today. Click here to purchase Ridge’s magnificent 2017 Monte Bello in magnum, and take home three bottles in their original wood case. This special pre-arrival wine will ship in September. 

I started collecting Monte Bello more than a decade ago, after I’d come to grasp the awesome significance of this homegrown wine. Soon, it became the go-to bottle my fiancée Caitlyn and I would give for wedding gifts. We’d show up at the reception empty-handed, but when the wine was released two years later, send the (somewhat) newlyweds the wedding-vintage bottle with a note: Age at least ten or twenty years, we’d write. And may you stay together long enough to drink your Monte Bello.

On our own first anniversary, as Caitlyn and I sipped a beautiful and youthful 1998 Monte Bello, we mused about the three-liter 2013 we’d bought to commemorate our wedding. I calculated out loud—it was a large-format bottle that the Advocate had deemed “practically immortal.” I pegged it as a fifty-year wine. 

Fifty. Years. Caitlyn and I clinked glasses as we laughed, trying to fathom that span of time. May we stay together…  Even through a health scare—one that has thankfully long passed—the same bottle became a beacon of hope for me. I couldn’t even drink wine at the time, but it was always on my mind. Fifty years, I thought. May I live long enough to drink that Monte Bello. 

This is one of the benchmark bottles of California, and if you’ve had the pleasure of partaking in Monte Bello’s regal bearing and nearly endless ageability, you likely know what I’m talking about. If you’re a wine lover but haven’t yet tasted this landmark wine, there’s no better place to start than with today’s flawless magnum, which promises to deliver pleasure as far into the future as you care to consider. Whether you want it to mark a milestone in your life, pass on as a gift, or just to revel in a decade (or three, or five) from now, there’s no more perfect bottle for your cellar.

Cheers. And no matter when we choose to pull the cork, may we all enjoy our Monte Bello, a wine for long life.

Pete Holland

Certified Sommelier

Wine Access Head Writer