Winemaker Notes
Blend: 84% Zinfandel, 9% Alicante Bouschet, 7% Petite Sirah
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Drenched with ultra rich fruit flavors, this generous, full-bodied and mouth filling wine is an unabashed, fully ripened red that exults in Zinfandel's jammy blackberry and blueberry extravagance. High octane but also supple in texture, this will be a great wine to linger over at the end of a special meal. Best through 2030.
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Jeb Dunnuck
A rocking Zinfandel from Sonoma County, the 2018 Zinfandel Pagani Ranch offers a more ruby/plum color to go with a great nose of spice red and black fruits, sandalwood, chocolate, and new leather. This spicy, medium to full-bodied, incredibly seamless 2018 has fabulous tannins, plenty of mid-palate depth, and a great finish. It's every bit as profound as the 2017, if not better. It's going to keep for 10-12 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Zinfandel Pagani Ranch, blended with 9% Alicante Bouschet and 7% Petite Sirah, is deeply scented with earth-laced blue and black berries and notes of licorice and dried herbs. The palate offers concentred fruits knit by grainy tannins and surprising uplift, and it finishes long and layered. This is youthfully wound and will have even more to offer with time in bottle.
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Connoisseurs' Guide
9% Alicante Bouschet; 7% Petite Sirah. Zinfandel drinkers of all stripes are going to love this ripe, sturdy, surprisingly balanced offering whose rich aromas of ripe blackberries, roasted vanilla and quiet layers of spice and bark come wrapped in a sturdy yet slightly supple texture. Its light-medium tannins and underlying acidity assure that this is a wine with a long life, and we would not hesitate to hold it for four to six years in order to let it fully open up. And, it could well age even further, if you, like us, are of a mind to wait on balanced, cellar-worthy Zins until they have achieved full maturity.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The Ridge Pagani Ranch Zinfandel as often overpowered my palate, and because the Lytton Springs and Geyserville stole my heart earlier, I found it hard to have the same feeling for Pagani. Yet, I always enjoyed the wine. The 2018 vintage is the best Pagani Ranch to date. TASTING NOTES. This wine is generous and elevated on the palate. Enjoy its rush of woodsy notes, powerful berries, and jam with an organic or grass-fed hamburger topped with white cheddar and mild chiles. (Tasted: September 17, 2020, San Francisco, CA)
RIDGE's history begins in 1885, when Osea Perrone, a doctor and prominent member of San Francisco's Italian community, bought 180 acres near the top of Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He planted vineyards and constructed a winery of redwood and native limestone in time to produce the first vintage of Monte Bello in 1892. The historic building now serves as the RIDGE production facility.
In 1962, Ridge Vineyards made its first Monte Bello, and two years later its first zinfandel. The RIDGE approach is straightforward: find the most intense and flavorful grapes, guide the natural process, draw all the fruit's richness into the wine. Decisions on when to pick, when to press, when to rack, what varietals and what parcels to include and when to bottle, are based on taste. To retain the nuances that increase complexity, Ridge winemakers handle the grapes and wine as gently as possible. There are no recipes, only attention and sensitivity.
In August 2021, Ridge Vineyards joined International Wineries for Climate Action (IWCA), a group of like-minded wineries that are dedicated to decarbonizing the global wine industry. RIDGE is committed to achieving Net Zero by 2050 and completes a biannual greenhouse gas audit utilizing the World Resources Institute Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol methodology and be verified by an internationally accredited, third-party auditor.
Unapologetically bold, spice-driven and jammy, Zinfandel has secured its title as the darling of California vintners by adapting well to the state's diverse microclimates and landscapes. Born in Croatia, it later made its way to southern Italy where it was named Primitivo. Fortunately, the imperial nursery of Vienna catalogued specimens of the vine, and it later made its way to New England in 1829. Parading the true American spirit, Zinfandel found a new home in California during the Gold Rush of 1849. Somm Secret—California's ancient vines of Zinfandel are those that survived the neglect of Prohibition; today these vines produce the most concentrated, ethereal and complex examples.
Perhaps the most historically significant appellation in Sonoma County, the Sonoma Valley is home to both Buena Vista winery, California's oldest commercial winery, and Gundlach Bundschu winery, California's oldest family-run winery.
It is also one of the more geologically and climactically diverse districts. The valley includes and overlaps four distinct Sonoma County sub-appellations, including Carneros, Moon Mountain District, Sonoma Mountain and Bennett Valley. With mountains, benchlands, plains, abundant sunshine and the cooling effects of the nearby Pacific, this appellation can successfully produce a wide range of grape varieties. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Gewürztraminer, and most notably, Zinfandel all thrive here. Ancient Zinfandel vines over 100 years old produce small crops of concentrated, spicy fruit, which in turn make some of the Valley's most unique wines. These can also be made as “field blends” (wines made from a mix of grape varieties grown in the same vineyard) along with Petite Sirah, Carignan and Alicante Bouschet.