(or, “how to avoid finishing the newsletter you’ve been working on”). Thanks to Lenn Thompson for founding the WBW tradition, and for picking a great theme for this fourth-anniversary round.
I honestly can’t remember what wine it was that I drank regularly when I was first discovering wine. I was so unsure of my own knowledge, and so eager to try different things, that I bought something different almost every time. I’d been casually drinking wine for about ten years, with little rhyme, reason, or repeat in my drinking patterns, before I can recall buying anything in any kind of quantity for frequent drinking. I ransacked my addled brain for some memory of those earliest wines and… …nothing. I do remember one of my first winery visits, to Ridge, in Cupertino, in the early ’90s. I lived just a few miles away in the heart of the Silicon Valley, and Ridge was just a bicycle ride down Foothill Expressway, and a tortuous, sweaty ride up Montebello Road. I loved the visit, and many that ensued, and I’ve had a soft spot for their wines ever since, though my preferred wines have changed (in the early days it was Zinfandel, and now it’s Monte Bello, Monte Bello, Monte Bello). I suppose, in an indirect way, I even owe one of my great loves to Ridge: I met a visiting French winemaker at a ZAP tasting when I mentioned that I liked her Dusi Ranch Zinfandel better than Ridge’s. Thanks, Paul! Continue reading ‘WBW #48: Back to my Roots with Ridge Zin’