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| Drinking Windows and Values |
| Community Tasting History |
| Community Tasting Notes (average 89.4 pts. and median of 90 pts. in 16 notes) - hiding notes with no text | | | Tasted by mark.gularte@gmail.com on 12/1/2023 & rated 88 points: Quite restrained, fairly fruit forward, no typical Syrah boldness, I did get some of the smoke that others mentioned.
Update - remainder of bottle two nights later - much smoother and fuller. Fruit still forward, but no smoke noticed. Guess that means this needs a good decant. (831 views) | | | Tasted by cos65 on 10/23/2023 & rated 88 points: Brilliant clear ruby purple
Light nose
The opening feels quite soft with moderate acid and alcohol on the back end. Moderate plump fruit towards the finish, but this feels a bit off kilter. I wouldn’t recognize this as a ridge.
Hopefully will come together better with time?88+? (912 views) | | | Tasted by D_Gizzi on 10/11/2023 & rated 91 points: A bit rough around the edges right out of the bottle. Earthy but flat on the palate and somewhat hot. Pencil shavings, ripe black fruit and alcohol on the nose.
After letting it breathe for 15-20 minutes, most of the alcohol fumes have blown off and the wine begins to wake up. Fruit comes more to the fore.
Out of the bottle I was ready to give it 87-89. After breathing, I landed on 91. (868 views) | | | Tasted by AndrewWill on 10/7/2023 & rated 90 points: No clue what the smoke taint comments are about. This wine is extremely young. Give it 12-18 hours of air and you’ll be in for a gulpable treat. (891 views) | | | Tasted by mrbaby on 9/22/2023 flawed bottle: I agree with other reviewers that this has some smoke taint. It's minor, but there. Very muted nose. The palate was ok, but the lack of aroma ruined this one for me. (1010 views) | | | Tasted by Shavedaddy on 7/24/2023 & rated 91 points: Day 1: a bit tight even after letting 1/2 the bottle breathe a bit in my 1L erlenmeyer while dinner cooked. leather, a bit of woody underbrush. not green underbrush though. ripeness of the fruit is good, if a touch on the ripe side. distinct red cherry, and i could imagine other dark berries in there but not as distinct.
Day 2: red cherry is maybe a bit more black cherry now. the barrel spice is integrated much nicer than day 1. a bit of licorice and coffee? the residual sugar is more apparent.
NB: I like syrah, and I like Ridge. (unconscious) bias stated. also, don't remember exactly what I paid for the btl, but it was about that price (probably). i just remember thinking "that's reasonable." (734 views) | | | Tasted by ChateauShiny on 7/19/2023 flawed bottle: I normally drink though these early since they don't excite me to much. This was near the top of my stack and I was looking for something mindless. I grabbed it tonight and Coravined a glass.
I recognize that everyone has a different level of smoke taint tolerance and I understand that mine might sensitive. This is showing signs of mild smoke taint to me - and does not shock me when I look up the harvest dates.
It's not so bad that I can't finish this glass, but the burnt cigar ash on the finish that refuses to let go is building up sip-by-sip. I would have preferred this to drink like the middling bottle I had back in May. (866 views) | | | Tasted by ethanwade on 6/9/2023: Right now this is dominated by cherries, blueberries and vanilla that opens up over a few hours with some spice. This vintage is definitely more structured but also feels much riper and is going to need longer than other vintages for this to resolve. (790 views) | | | Tasted by ChateauShiny on 5/5/2023 & rated 87 points: Nose of sweet blueberries, spices, and a bit of leather. Heavy bodied with a bit of sweetness, and flabby. The palate fails to make contact for me - lightly extracted spiced blue and black fruits with a little bit of leather. Assertive but moderate tannins kick in and bring a bit of light black tea. Long mineral dominated finish with a bit of dill and tarragon.
This just drinks like a generic quality GSM blend. Unlike previous years, I would not have picked this vintage out as a Ridge. Decent gulpable cafe/bistro style of wine, but the ATP price of 37.80 is just _way_ to high for that style of wine. (1049 views) |
| Ridge Producer website | Wikipedia
Ridge Vineyards is a California winery specializing in premium Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, and Chardonnay wines. Ridge produces wine at two winery locations in northern California. The original winery facilities are located at an elevation of 2,300 feet (700 m) on Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA near Cupertino, California. The other Ridge winery facilities are at Lytton Springs in the Dry Creek Valley AVA of Sonoma County.2020 Ridge Syrah/Grenache/Mataro Lytton EstateWine Information
79% Syrah, 14% Grenache, 7% Mataro
94 Points – Owen Bargreen, OwenBargreen.com
*Members-only release. Learn more about our ATP membership program.
Vintage
2020
Vineyard
Lytton Springs
Appellation
Dry Creek Valley
Alcohol By Volume
14.1%
Winemaker Tasting Notes
Generous aromas of blackberry, pepper, bacon fat, rose petal, and licorice followed by black raspberry, black tea, orange zest, Madagascar vanilla and sage on the palate. Excellent mid-palate weight with a lingering finish. SR (1/23)
Vintage Notes
Ridge first made Syrah from Lytton Estate in 1996. Recognizing that the site is well suited to the variety, we planted more syrah as well as smaller amounts of grenache and mataro. In 2014 we combined these three varieties to make our first Syrah Grenache Mataro, appealing for its spicy aroma and sensuous fruit. Lower yields in 2020 resulted in a wine with greater structure that will evolve over the next eight years. JO (4/22)
History
This wine comes from two hillside parcels at Lytton West. One is planted entirely to syrah while the other is planted to half grenache and half mataro. Mataro, a late ripening variety synonymous with mourvedre, does not always mature before the onset of fall rains.
Growing Season
Rainfall: 21 inches (below normal)
Bloom: Late May
Weather: Rains in March and April helped the vines get through the summer.
Winemaking
Harvest Dates: 22 August – 24 September
Grapes: Average Brix 25.7˚
TA: 5.03 g/L
pH: 3.85
Fermentation: Natural primary and secondary; daily pump-overs.
Barrels: 100% air-dried American oak barrels (15% new, 15% one year old, 25% two years old, and 45% four and five years old).
Aging: Sixteen months in barrel
Hand-harvested, sustainably grown, estate grapes; de-stemmed and crushed; fermented on the native yeasts, followed by a full malolactic on the naturally occurring malolactic bacteria; oak from barrel aging; minimum effective sulfur for this wine (35 ppm at crush and 90 ppm over the course of aging); pad filtered at bottling. In keeping with our philosophy of minimal intervention, this is the sum of our actions.Red Rhone Blend Read about the different grapes used to produce red and white Rhone wines
On CellarTracker, Red Rhone Blend is the term for a wine consisting of two or more of the traditional 13 Southern Rhone grape varieties. Typically it's the Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre or Cinsault grapes, but can also contain the Muscardin, Counoise, Clairette, Bourboulenc, Picpoul, Roussanne, Terret Noir, Picardan or Vaccarese grapes.
A 'food' wine. Lacking pretension and intended for local consumption with local cuisine. Lacks the 'high' notes on a Bordeaux, more earthy and sharper so often a better partner to meat dishes with a sauce. USAAmerican wine has been produced since the 1500s, with the first widespread production beginning in New Mexico in 1628. Today, wine production is undertaken in all fifty states, with California producing 84% of all U.S. wine. The continent of North America is home to several native species of grape, including Vitis labrusca, Vitis riparia, Vitis rotundifolia, and Vitis vulpina, but the wine-making industry is based almost entirely on the cultivation of the European Vitis vinifera, which was introduced by European settlers. With more than 1,100,000 acres (4,500 km2) under vine, the United States is the fourth-largest wine producing country in the world, after Italy, Spain, and France.California2021 vintage: "Unlike almost all other areas of the state, the Russian River Valley had higher than normal crops in 2021, which has made for a wine of greater generosity and fruit forwardness than some of its stablemates." - Morgan Twain-Peterson Sonoma CountyMendocino CountyDry Creek Valley Winegrowers of Dry Creek Valley | Dry Creek Valley Association | Appellation America | San Francisco Chronicle Article |
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