Ridge Vineyards: A Vision Fulfilled!

There are those who create and produce a vision of what can be. Yet, without the complimentary efforts of those who can take a concept, see its real potential and forge it into reality, the best of ideas simply fade and fall into the scrap heap of visions unfulfilled.

In the case of Ridge Vineyards, the idea of creating one of the world's premier wineries was not in any way part of the idea of Ridge Vineyard's founders when they formed their original partnership. The concept was simple and pragmatic. They would pool resources to buy a piece of property in the Santa Cruz Mountains to serve as a weekend and summer place for their families and as a retreat from the pressures they were under from their projects at Stanford Research. An old winery site on top of a mountain above Los Gatos seemed perfect. The property was beautiful with a spectacular view of the Santa Clara Valley yet it was close to their places of work and residence.

The kink in the plan was that Dr. David Bennion was part of the partnership. Dave had grown up Mormon and, while he had fallen away from Mormon practices, he had never shaken the belief that it is sinful to waste the earth's bountiful resources. So, he believed that if you happen to come into the possession of a vineyard and winery, it was your caretaking responsibility to effectively use those resources. Thus, since the partnership now owned a winery and vineyard, Dave insisted that they had to use the grapes to make wine. As scientists, this also became an intellectual challenge. This was how matters stood from 1959 until 1968, when the amateurs-making-wine had gotten so out-of-hand and into the realm of business that Dr. Bennion resigned from his outside work and became the partner devoting full time to directing the multi-tiered business of grape growing, finding promising vineyards from which to buy grapes, winemaking and marketing.

Dave was still in charge of daily operations when Ridge managed to produce such an impressive Monte Bello Ridge Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon the winery could no longer be written off as a dilettante effort. This was serious winemaking ranking with the best being produced in Napa and Sonoma. But, this also meant that it was time to find someone to spend full time doing the winemaking. Upon this scene stepped Paul Draper, who undoubtedly gained the approval of the partners less because of his practical winemaking experience in Chile but because he had graduated from college with a major in Philosophy. Here was someone the partnership could talk with and respect. They thought that Paul could understand that they were not simply aiming at producing palatal commercial wines. If they were going to devote time to this project, the wines produced had to be noteworthy for their excellence. Luckily, hiring Draper proved a brilliant choice by the Ridge partnership.

By 1970, Draper had made the practical refinements required to take Monte Bello Ridge grapes and turn them into an outstanding wine that excelled the impressive Cabernet Sauvignon Bennion was able to produce in 1968. This pair of wines caught world attention and when an English wine merchant and writer, Steven Spurrier, organized an audacious blind tasting in 1976 bringing together six well regarded California Cabernets with four of Bordeaux most renown wines in a blind tasting, the 1971 Ridge was included in the grouping.

Now known as the "Judgement of Paris" tasting, the event thrust California Cabernets into world wide prominence. Still, even Paul Draper was surprised by results of the 30th anniversary replication of the Paris red wine tasting, when the combined scores of judges in London and Napa declared Ridge's '71 Monte Bello as the best wine in the tasting. They ranked it over (in order of finish) the Stag's Leap Wine Cellars '73; Heitz Martha's Vineyard '70; Mayacamas '71; Clos Du Val '72; Ch. Mouton-Rothschild '70; Ch Montrose '70; Ch. Haut-Brion '70; Ch. Leoville-Las-Cases '71; and, Freemark Abbey 69. The importance of this tasting was that it finally put to rest the complaint of the French judges, who argued that what they had tasted were simply appealing young wines that didn't have a prayer of aging gracefully.

There were two ironies about the results. First, Paul Draper's Ridge Cabernet was the only California wine produced outside of the Napa Valley appellation, and second, the '71 came from a vintage that was generally not highly regarded. When we reviewed the wine for Connoisseurs' Guide to California Wine we thought that the '71 was an impressive wine but that it had not come up to the exceptional level of quality Draper achieved with the '70.

When the judges assembled for a second tasting composed of younger Cabernets and Bordeaux, Paul Draper's wine again rose up to the top rank. The Ridge 2000 Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon became their top choice when the scores of the two panels were combined.

All of this merely confirms what wine critics have known for the past thirty years. Ridge is one of the small number of wineries that have reached the pinnacle of wine making excellence. Furthermore, while there are a lot of people to share the credit for Ridge's success, the heart, soul and quiet force that lifted a weekend retreat into the heights of worldwide ranking is Paul Draper. It is Draper who grasped the potential of Ridge Vineyards and brilliantly pursued it into fulfillment. And, he was able to maintain this level of excellence in spite of a change of ownership in 1986, when wine enthusiast Akahiko Otsuka became the sole owner of Ridge. Amusingly enough, Draper and the Ridge staff had a wish list for improvements they wanted when the ownership change took place. These hopes were soon dashed when Otsuka replied simply that he had purchased Ridge as a first growth winery of world renown -- and, he didn't want Draper to change a thing regarding the winemaking. However, the one thing that Mr. Otsuka was perfectly happy to do was to provide the resources to allow Ridge to buy the vineyards it uses in Sonoma County and to build a first class winery in the Dry Creek Valley, a facility that Draper is justly proud of.

The 30th anniversary tasting did drive me into our wine cellar to retaste both the 1968 (pre-Draper vintage) and the 1971. The results were fascinating and convincing. The '68 has now lost its massive tannins and most of the fruit that gave it promise of great longevity. By contrast, the tasting panels correctly gave kudos to the '71. It is a wine of exceptional balance and a refinement we had not seen in the raw and rustic qualities of previous Ridge wines. The two wines make the Ridge partnership's historic move to place winemaking responsibility in the capable hands of Paul Draper, an absolutely brilliant move.