2018 Ridge Vineyards Geyserville Zinfandel Blend Alexander Valley Sonoma County 750 ml

As a preeminent producer of both Cabernet and Zinfandel, no winery embodies California wine better than Ridge—and no bottle captures their magic better than their 2018 Geyserville Zinfandel blend. Bottled by Ridge for half a century and grown on their oldest vines, Geyserville is a true icon. The 2018 earned a best-ever, 96-point score from Wine Advocate, and “ranks with the finest vintages to date,” according to Jeb Dunnuck.

That’s saying a lot for a winery of unmatched pedigree. Ridge has been named North America’s #1 Most Admired wine brand (and #3 in the world) by Drinks International. It has been a Wine & Spirits Magazine Top 100 winery 20 times. It placed fifth at the 1976 Judgement of Paris—and took the crown when the wines were re-tasted 30 years later.

Christie’s auction house says Ridge Zins are “equally impressive in terms of structure, length, and age-ability” as their Bordeaux-style wines, and we’ve tasted two- and three-decade aged Ridge Zin blends that back that up. We can also attest that the 2018 Geyserville is Ridge at their vibrant and age-worthy best.

“Geyserville is our longest-running bottling because it’s a site that’s allowed us to make wine every year. It really is the most perfect site for Zinfandel,” Ridge winemaker Eric Baugher told us when we caught up recently. Grown on vines that reach nearly 140 years of age, the 2018 Geyserville is a field blend: The grapes are intermixed in the vineyard and then co-fermented, a process that imbues the wine with a balance that defies purely scientific explanation. 

The blend of 68% Zinfandel, 20% Carignane, with the rest Petite Sirah and Alicante Bouschet shows a saturated ruby color, with profuse black cherry aromas accented by Asian five-spice, cola, mint, and earth. With tons of black currant, blackberry, and black plum on the palate laced with licorice, sweet tobacco, and cedar, it’s got tremendous freshness and vibrancy from beginning to end, finishing with Bordelaise-style, fine-grained tannins that will allow it to age for a decade or more. 

“Having had it now for 53 years, you can actually taste back and see how beautifully it ages,” said Baugher, who has sampled all but the first two vintages of Geyserville. He believes that Ridge’s ageability is largely a product of the winery’s tradition. “It started as a winery working with Bordeaux varieties at Monte Bello, then took that technique and applied it to Zinfandel winemaking.” 

Ridge was founded in 1959, when four scientists from the Stanford Research Institute made a quarter-barrel of Cabernet at the top of Montebello road in the mountains south of San Francisco. In 1969, the group hired Stanford graduate (in philosophy) Paul Draper as winemaker. The Cabernet he made two years later is the one that placed fifth at the 1976 Judgement of Paris tasting, and made Ridge a worldwide icon.

Incredibly, the Geyserville wine pre-dates Draper—Ridge started making it in 1966 from a plot of vines three miles south of the town of Geyserville. When they started, the vineyard was still farmed by Sonoma County legend Leo Trentadue, who will forever be linked to Ridge, as the four founders purchased the famed Monte Bello property from the Trentadue family. Ridge has farmed the Geyserville plot themselves since 1990 and finally purchased it in 2016.

The famed vineyard sits in the heart of Alexander Valley, where the warm days are tempered by evening breezes and occasional morning fog. The property sits on a single strip of soil, a well-draining bed of deep gravelly loam mixed with large rocks deposited by an ancient river, a combination that imparts a beautiful minerality to the Geyserville wine. 

That, the history, and the unrivaled capacity to cellar gracefully make Geyserville one of a kind. 

“It’s known to be elegant, broad-shouldered,” Baugher said. “And people assume because it is so good young, how can it possibly age so well? But when a wine has great balance when young, they tend to hold on to that, and will always be balanced.”  

The 2018 Geyserville shows that singular balance as beautifully as any we’ve tasted. We’re proud to bring it to you and hope you enjoy this legendary bottle for years to come.