Ridge Vineyards, Zinfandel "East Bench" Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County, California 2021

The Ridge Vineyards "East Bench" Zinfandel is ruby red color and has focused cherry notes on the nose with toasty oak. On the palate, raspberry fruit with elegant tannins and an accent of mint on the finish.

After a plentiful harvest in 2019, the vines set a very small crop in 2020. With fewer grapes on the vine, the zinfandel ripened quickly. All seven parcels of the vineyard were picked in the first week of September. The 2020 East Bench has plentiful fruit typical of the variety and the depth of flavor representative of the Dry Creek Valley. It will be at its best over the next ten years. 

Hand-harvested; Ridge Vineyards estate-grown organic grapes; destemmed and crushed; fermented on the indigenous yeast, followed by a full malolactic on the naturally occurring bacteria; oak from barrel aging; minimum effective sulfur for this wine (50 ppm at crush, 74 ppm during aging); pad filtered at bottling. In keeping with our philosophy of minimal intervention, this is the sum of our actions.