Ridge Vineyards - Lytton Springs
The seated tasting runs $35: five single-vineyard wines, about seventy-five minutes, six people at most. The vines outside are 115 years old and the winery is built out of straw bales and vineyard clay.1
Why go
Ridge pours at two addresses and this is the Dry Creek Valley one.1 The flight is not a Lytton Springs flight: it pulls five single-vineyard wines from the estates in Sonoma County and in the Santa Cruz Mountains, so you taste across the whole operation from one table.1 The building is the thing to look at while you do it. Straw bales and clay off the vineyard, mostly solar, put up around vines that were planted a century and change ago.1 The Historic Vineyard Tour runs seasonally and walks you into those blocks and pours wines the flight never carries.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Estate Tasting, $35, free if you are in the club. Book it on Tock, because there is no walk-in.1
- Avoid: arriving as a party of seven. Six is the cap and it is not negotiable.1
Good to know
- Bringing a designated driver? Book them into the party and use the code DDD, which takes their fee to zero.1
- 21 and over, and the outside seating depends on the weather.1
- Nothing I read passes judgment on the wine here, so the flight is the reason to come and the bottles are yours to call.
Verdict
should-visit — The vines are 115 years old and the winery around them is built out of straw bales and vineyard clay, running mostly on solar, which is a real answer to a real problem in a valley that gets hot. The seated flight is $35 for five single-vineyard wines pulled from both the Sonoma County and Santa Cruz Mountains estates, daily by reservation, six people maximum, about seventy-five minutes. That is a specific and unusually generous pour at that price. The rung stops here because nothing read for this entry passes any judgment on what is in the glass, and the only witness is Ridge itself.