Ridgeline Vineyards
The History of Ridgeline Vineyards
Ridgeline Wine Grapes
THE FIRST RESIDENTS of what is today known as Ridgeline Vineyards (Oak Mountain) were a tribe of Native Americans referred to by white settlers as 'Pomo Indians' but who referred to themselves as Mahokama. The Russian River which the Mahokama people depended on for much of their subsistence runs right past the base of Oak Mountain and Ridgeline Vineyards. The Mahokama called the river, "Shabaikai" or "long snake". The numerous natural springs that feed our vineyards were also used by the Mahokama for medicinal purposes.
OAK MOUNTAIN sits on what was once part of the "Rancho Ricon de Musalacon", a Spanish land grant. In 1875 the Oak Mountain property was acquired by Colonel Hartwell Preston and the village of Preston was established at the base of the mountain just north of Cloverdale, which had been established in 1867, on the property now known as Ridgeline Vineyards.
FOUNDED BY EMILY PRESTON, it was the center of a faith-based community of several hundred followers that Madame Preston oversaw and for whom she was the spiritual leader until her death in 1909. Madame Preston was a colorful personality who supposedly could see through people with her "X-ray eyes." Her place of worship was called the Church of Heaven on Probation. Madame Preston also dispensed numerous patent medicines for which she established a very successful mail order business. The key and most functional ingredient in her patent medicines, which contained a variety of herbs and spices, was wine, produced from grapes grown in the communitys vineyards. What finally did her in was passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, which stopped her--and thousands of other purveyors of patent medicines--from commercially selling homemade drugs. The village of Preston broke up after her death in 1909.
FOR NINETY YEARS the property lay undeveloped as it passed from owner to owner. In 1999 the property site was purchased by our parent company Codorníu who developed the property with the specific goal of growing California’s best grapes and making California’s best Cabernet Sauvignon.
Source: http://www.ridgelinevineyards.com/history.html'> on Archive.org
Ridgeline Vineyards Property acquired by Duckhorn Wine Company 2012 (Source: Wine Business Monthly). Now used in Decoy Wines (Source: Winery web site).