Ridge Vineyards Estate Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon Blend 2023

Ridge's Estate Cabernet Sauvignon is what we call "baby Monte Bello" and an amazing buy in Cabernet. Get Monte Bello without the Monte Bello price tag - this "Estate" bottling comes from the same vineyard as its more famous big brother but contains a higher percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon and is meant to be approachable much earlier. 95 Points Jeb Dunnuck: "From Monte Bello, with 19% Merlot and small additions of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, harvested in late October and November due to the coolness of the vintage, the Ridge 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon Estate saw extended fermentations and is light-bodied and elegant, made from the most approachable lots of this famous site. Red fruit-dominant, it offers firm, expansive tannins, oak spice, and sharp acidity, dazzling in cranberry, clove, and cedar. This will benefit from further aging and sing for another 15-plus years. Enjoy best 2030-2038." 94 Points Decanter: "Ridge made a Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet from 1978 through the late 1980s, before changing the naming to ‘Estate.’ With the 2023 vintage, Ridge had the opportunity to purchase fruit from along Montebello Road, as well as other sites throughout the Santa Cruz AVA. Made just like all the Ridge wines. The well-known Monte Bello structure leaps out at you, taut and lean, salty, but backed by ample cherry fruit and a touch of oak spice. This wine has concentrated and dark fruit, Bright and spicy, a mountain Cabernet through and through. There’s an approachability here, and that is the role of this Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet in the library of ageable Ridge wines. Elegance married to approachability." The Monte Bello vineyard was first planted when the winery was built, in 1886. In the early 1940s, the last of the old vineyard was abandoned; in the late forties a few blocks were replanted. Those cabernet vines - now sixty years old - produced the first Ridge Monte Bello in 1962, and subsequent vintages until the mid-seventies. By then, blocks replanted during the sixties were maturing, and their fruit considered for use in the Monte Bello. A number of those consistently produced a softer, more accessible wine and were combined as the stylistically distinct Santa Cruz Mountains Estate.

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