Alder goes out on a limb with some of our highest scores ever!
The Santa Cruz Mountains American Viticultural Area stands apart from all other California wine regions both literally and figuratively. As Paul Draper, the founder and long-time CEO at Ridge Vineyards likes to point out, it is the only coastal California AVA that is not enclosed by another region. Both Sonoma and Mendocino, for instance, lie within the greater North Coast AVA, but the legal definition of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA specifically states that it has no overlaps with either the local San Francisco Bay AVA, nor...