Ridge Geyserville Red Blend 2018 750ML
Ridge Sonoma County Geyserville Red Blend 2018 750ML
Other Red Blends from Alexander Valley, Sonoma County, California
Notes from the Winemaker
Dark ruby color. Intense black cherry fruit aroma, exotic oak spice, cola, mint, and complex gravel earth. Intense bramble fruit entry, sensuous textural tannins, lively acid, and showing great minerality in a long finish.
Pairs well with Brazilian spiced turkey or North Carolina pulled pork.
Blend: 68% Zinfandel, 20% Carignane, 10% Petite Sirah, 2% Alicante Bouschet
Reviews and Accolades
96 Points/Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Geyserville is a blend of 68% Zinfandel, 20% Carignane, 10% Petite Sirah and 2% Alicante Bouschet. It's incredibly alluring, offering up layers of warm, tricolored fruits and loads of spicy accents on the nose, with a dusty, mineral-tinged undercurrent that adds to its appeal. In the mouth, it's generously fruited and fantastically juicy, its silt-like tannins providing just enough support, and it finishes very long and layered.
94 Points/Wine & Spirits
The Geyserville vineyard isn’t much to look at, a relatively flat gravel wash with stones deposited by a river that ran through the valley long before vines arrived. The vines themselves have been here a long time, more than 130 years for the oldest. The Trentadue family owns the vineyard and has sold the fruit to Ridge since 1966; David Gates oversees the farming, working to sustain the vines, a field blend of zinfandel with carignane, petite sirah and mataro. The history of the vines and the farming come together in this 2018, an elegant California classic. It’s a silky red, a mineral bath of fine vine-wood tannins over complex fruit notes that only emerge days after the bottle is first opened—bergamot, raspberry and cherry skin in subtle, dark red warmth and equally subtle richness. This is a great vintage of Geyserville to treasure in your cellar for as long as you can wait—though it’s usually best to wait at least ten years from the vintage.
93 Points/Wine Spectator
Robust yet brooding, with multilayered black plum, licorice and Asian five-spice powder flavors that build richness toward big, briary tannins. Zinfandel, Carignane, Petite Sirah and Alicante Bouschet. Best from 2022 through 2030.
91 Points/Connoisseurs' Guide
68% Zinfandel; 20% Carignane; 10% Petite Sirah; 2% Alicante Bouschet. Ridge’s iconic Geyserville bottlings are always rich and complex wines that stray a bit from the Zinfandel norm, and the latest, as usual, is a deep and substantial, near-brooding offering whose ample dark berry fruit is laced with lots of distinct earthy spice and is up to the task of fighting through no small measure of tannins. Sure to be long-lived and, in fact, emphatically asking for age, the 2018 version is years away from coming fully into its own and should be laid away in the hard-to-reach realms of the cellar for a full half-decade or more.