17100 Montebello Rd, Cupertino, CA 95014
Summit Tour
This is a bit of a different post, and I debated whether to include it in this blog at all. In the end, it was such a fun and unique experience, and I do think wine is a big part of food and cuisine, so I decided to write about it.
Our favorite winery is Ridge Vineyards, for all sorts of reasons, but the biggest one is we think of it as being in our “back yard”. That’s not quite true, but Ridge is in Cupertino, and it’s just up the mountain from where we live. It’s so close that I’ve actually biked the long trail up to the top of the mountain (and past Ridge) a few times. There’s a pride in knowing that some of the best wine in the entire world is made up of grapes that is local to us.
It’s also one of our favorites because it was one of the wines that competed in the “Judgement of Paris“, the seminal blind tasting that pitted California wines against French ones. Ridge didn’t win in the original tasting, but its Cabernet Sauvignon did very well, and the famous “Monte Bello” Cab has only grown in esteem ever since.
Finally, we like Ridge because it consistently produces great wines. They are famous for their Monte Bello cab, grown with grapes along the Santa Cruz mountains. We also really enjoy their crisp white wines, including a Chenin Blanc and Grenache Blanc. We are members of the wine club that gets us access to the Monte Bello, and it also includes an Estate Cab and Estate Chardonnay that are both excellent.
Our friend (who is also a member) got called about a new type of tour that they are piloting, which they’re tentatively calling the Summit Tour. Once we started the tour, we found out that we were the first members of the public to actually go on the tour! It was a nice, inside look at the actual bottling and aging of the wines.
We started on a golf cart and went further up the mountain. There was a quick tasting of their estate Chardonnay while standing amongst the grape vines, which was pretty cool. From our vantage point, we could actually see the Pacific Ocean, which really just goes to show what a unique geographical position these grapes are grown in.
From there, we went to their main operations warehouse. The highlight was stepping into the cellar and seeing this huge cavern, all made with limestone walls, where the wines are aged. We also got to see the room where all the Monte Bello wines are aged.
The tour concluded with a more traditional wine tasting, along with some light snacks. This part of the tour wasn’t that different from their standard tastings, but it was still executed really well. I don’t know if Ridge will start selling this tour to the broader public, but I hope they do. It’s a really unique look into one of the finest wineries in the world.
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