A bright and beautiful Monte Bello with dark and black fruit, such as blackcurrants, as well as walnuts and hints of vanilla. Full-bodied with creamy tannins that are there from start to finish. Turns lightly dusty. Beautiful length. Really pure and focused. Needs time to come together completely, but already a beauty. Drink after 2025.
97 points, James Suckling (Apr 2021)
The 2018 Monte Bello is a wine of extraordinary finesse. Although it doesn’t have the body or overt richness of some recent vintages, it more than makes up for that with its total sense of harmony. Lavender, mocha, spice, licorice and dried flowers all develop in a sublime, refined Monte Bello that will thrill Ridge lovers. This is an especially elegant, lithe vintage for Monte Bello that is marked by a dry year with no heat spikes and a very long harvest that wrapped up in late October.
96+ points, Antonio Galloni, Vinous (Sep 2020)
Ridge’s winemaking team in Cupertino—led in 2018 by Eric Baugher, whose tenure at Ridge ran from 1994 through 2021—selects the top estate chardonnay parcels in certain vintages to bottle separately as Monte Bello. Fermented in American oak barrels (in a range of ages selected for the vintage) this formidable wine develops slowly once the bottle is opened. At first, it’s tight, juicy and cool, hinting at lemon and walnuts but mostly about the brisk earthiness of limestone-driven acidity—already graceful and expressive. As it develops over the course of several days, the reductive mineral notes turn savory, accentuating the wine’s brightness, the structure feeling healthy, outrageously good. On solid ground for a long life ahead.
96 points, Joshua Greene, Wine & Spirits (Oct 2021)
Top Quality Store
