Allan Bree aka califusa shared the following two from Mr. Ridge with us during his August sojourn in Day-twah; the wines were sourced from the south block of the Lytton Estate Vineyard, just west of Norton Ranch. They are the only two vintages of Maple Vineyard Zinfandel that Ridge has made to date. They are rather different in character from each other, but both are still relatively youthful in their own way.
1992 Ridge Dry Creek Zinfandel Maple Vineyard, 15.2% alc.: Showing clean, dark color, with flavors and aromas of soft cedar, black raspberry and even a little earthy beetroot, this is still well structured for further development, but in a beautiful place right now. Old school Zin the way we like it!
1993 Ridge Dry Creek Zinfandel Maple Vineyard, 14.9% alc.: Clean dark color here, and still showing some Draper perfume, with sweet oak, raspberry and black raspberry shaded with some lavender, a little earth, some nice spicy overtones and a hint of dill. The oak isn’t quite fully integrated yet, and the wine is well structured for some years of development, but it’s very pretty and almost primary when compared to the '92.
Thanks for the notes on the Maple Vineyard Zins from Ridge. I was struck in your notes on the alcohol levels of the wines (15.2% and 14.9% respectively on the '92 and '93), as I have never had either of these bottlings from the winery. I had been wondering what was going on here these days with the zin program, as this used to be my favorite producer of Zin back in the days when I could drink the varietal. The winemaker “group think” around zin eventually went off in a direction alien from what I like in wine and I have not been drinking too many in the last decade (except for Mike Dashe’s lovely wines), but there was a time when I had more zin than cabernet in my cellar and drank the varietal frequently with great pleasure.
I was fortunate coming up in the wine business to become friends with several collectors who were huge Ridge fans and older than I was at the time, so I had plenty of opportunity to drink Ridge zins and cabernet-based wines out of their cellars with serious bottle age on them. We used to taste double blind, and in our experience whenever a Ridge zin would come in under 13% it aged brilliantly and fifteen to twenty years was no difficulty for the wine in the cellar. Any zin over 13% used to get raisiny with bottle age and not age worth a damn in comparison to the under 13% bottlings and/or vintages. I had hoped that Paul Draper might have noticed the same obvious point at the winery and held the line with this varietal, but it seems that at least with the Maple Vineyard bottlings, these are wines made today to be popped and poured before the overripeness gets the upper hand with bottle age. But glad to hear that they are still seroiusly good out of the blocks in any case.
Thanks for the comments, gents. John, it has honestly almost never been my experience with Ridge that “any zin over 13% used to get raisiny with bottle age,” and I’ve had more than a few myself.
I don’t have any special insight as to the varietal content of these two wines, other than what Paul put on the side label.
Tomorrow (Wed) starts SantaFe Wine&Chile Fiesta. Donn was almost always here for that event. This year, they’ve invited in MarilynReisen
for the event, and to be in attendance at the Zin Seminar that’s in honor of Donn. It’ll be a bittersweet event this year w/o
Donn. But more than a few Ridges will go down over the week. Marilyn’s really looking forward to it.
Tom
How long are your aging your Ridge zins for these days? The longest-lived ones that I had hailed from the early '70s that we were drinking them in the early '90s to around the turn of the century. The wines remained in fine shape for the lower octane versions and were really stellar- at that point it was often hard to distinguish a varietal character- some very old cabernet-like, some right bank Bordeaux-like- there was a chameleon-like beauty to many of these old wines that we eventually came to recognize as classic, mature zin. Riper vintages in most cases were not as complex, balanced or fresh as the lower octane versions, with an overt raisiny/ pruney edge, a much more four-square palate and often a slightly sweet-sour component that made them easy to peg as riper zins with bottle age. And riper vintages back in those days were usually under 13.5% if memory serves me correctly. I may still have the notes somewhere buried, but this predated my writing for a living, so I am not sure if I can lay my hands on the specific wines and vintages without a major excavation. I woiuld love to hear your experiences with the wines and cellaring, as I as I said in the first post, I have not been tasting these wines with any frequency in the last ten vintages or so and have lost track of how Ridge has withstood the strong shift in stylistic paradigm with zinfandel- a shift which to my mind was brought about to a certain degree by the critcal and financial success of Larry Turley’s bottlings.
On the higher alcohol citation on the label brought up by Chris, not sure if you are referring to the relatively “lose with the truth” aspect of the alcohol level printed, or if you are referring to you’re not having found any correlation between alcohol levels and potential for graceful evolution in the bottle over an extended period of cellaring. If the former, I am of course in agreement with you and do not see any real compelling reason for the stated alcohol level to be precise on the label, as the labels often are printed at many small wineries well in advance, and there is no reason to insist on precision in this matter. Additionally these days, one can encounter plenty of wines with lower stated alcohol levels where the wines have been watered down or manipulated to lower the final alcohol level and still possess the potential Achille’s Heel of their previously higher octane character (overripe flavors, low acids, disequilibrium and likelihood not to age over the long-term).
But in terms of high alcohol wines (we can of course differ on the term, but, these days, over 14% seems like a reasonable threshold for generalities) aging gracefully over the long-term (again we need to define long-term- say over fifteen years in bottle), my experience is that it is very difficult to fashion a dry wine over 14% that ages into a wine that is more interesting than when the wine was young. The wines of Henri Bonneau immediatly come to mind as successful examples of high-octane wines that age very well, but beyond that I have a hard time coming up with a whole lot of high alcohol wines that I have experienced that have aged gracefully. Many of these have drunk well from the outset and of coure are finished up long before their fifteenth birthday, so perhaps in their cases, there is no real collateral damage. But when we talk of Ridge zins, those great old ones I drank with supreme pleasure at ages twenty or more are not to be discounted, as they were stunning, stunning wines, and if that ability has been lost with the Maple Vineyard bottlings (and the like) at higher alcohol levels, at least for me, the world is a much poorer place as a result.
John - i had the 1993 Maple last night with Game #6 of The WS and there was a definite “Jagermeister” aspect i think you’d perhaps find off-putting. that being said the wine had real fruit still and lots of youthful/primary aspects like George described above. i did note heat on the finish and while i won’t revere this wine like the 1996 Nervo Zin i do think it has a place this side of Turley on the Zin spectrum.
interesting aspect is there is no varietal breakdown in terms of %'s on the label as per Ridge’s routine. Maple Vineyard was recognized as a field blend both years it was made into wine by Mr Draper and as far as i can tell since 1994 the fruit from Maple has just been part of Lytton Springs.
Was this part of the Zin program or the ATP program? I ask because my brother-in-law joined the Ridge ATP program around 1989 until about the late '90s when he moved to Dallas. I’ve got to mine his collection next time I go to ATL.
had another 1993 last night for The Saints game and this bottle was more balanced and harmonious. tons of fruit and some tannins still. finish sweet and lingering. did not have any Jager notes but i was buzzed after 60% of a bottle. fastest Mel and i have ever killed off any 750!
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