History
Roy Fellom I, a California state senator, bought roughly 250 acres on Monte Bello Ridge from Paul Cena in 1929. Cena had planted a few acres of Zinfandel; through the fallow decades that followed the Felloms traded those grapes to a neighbor, Andrew Mikulaco, who paid them back in wine. The ground stayed undeveloped until the late 1970s, when Roy "Bud" Fellom III fired up a 1946 International TD tractor and cut terraces into the hillside, planting Cabernet Sauvignon alongside Zinfandel, Merlot and Chardonnay. Between 1980 and 1983 he replanted and expanded the site with Cabernet cuttings from Charles Krug in Napa, and bonded the winery in 1987. Bud and Karen Fellom run it now. The winery describes its output as rarely exceeding 1,500 cases; a 2014 visitor account put it nearer 400 to 500.
The Site
The vineyard sits at 17075 Montebello Road at about 2,200 feet, on the range's eastern slope, some sixteen miles from the Pacific, in Santa Clara County within the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA. Ridge places it just south of Monte Bello, on a spur of the mountain between the Torre Vineyard and Rousten Ranch. The rock is uplifted seafloor: sandy loam over Franciscan chert, hard silica ribbons built from the shells of radiolaria, with clay and serpentine in the mix and a Katykat-Sanikara complex of mixed volcanic and sedimentary material beneath. The winery prefers to call the same ground a deconstructed uplifted limestone profile. Under either description the soils are shallow and poor, the ridgetop exposed, and the Felloms dry-farm without irrigation.
Vines and Blocks
Published accounts put the terraced planting at about ten to twelve acres; the mapped vine footprint is closer to five. Cabernet Sauvignon carries the site, with smaller blocks of Merlot and Petit Verdot, cane-pruned and spaced roughly six feet by nine. No internal blocks are named. The plant material's provenance is told two ways: the estate and Arnot-Roberts credit the Charles Krug budwood, while Ian Brand describes the east and northeast-facing rows he takes, planted in 1980 and 1982, as a heritage Beringer selection, and chooses those aspects for their lower sun exposure. Zinfandel still appears under the Fellom name, though from other ground since the family gave up a leased Saratoga vineyard.
The Wines
The estate bottles its own Cabernet, with Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc and Zinfandel drawn from several appellations outside the estate. Arnot-Roberts makes about seven barrels a year, destemmed and native-fermented, basket pressed, twenty-two months in French oak, roughly fifteen percent new. I. Brand & Family ferments lightly crushed on native yeast with a three-week maceration, ages in a Stockinger puncheon and a neutral barrel, and bottles unfined and unfiltered. Martin Ray has bought here for close to two decades, blending it into a Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet. Ridge contracted Cabernet, Merlot and Petit Verdot from Bud for its 2023 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet, the first wine under that label since the designation moved to Estate Cabernet in 2008. Vidovich, Naumann and Betchart farm the same ridge.