History
Greg Melchor showed the Varners his family's ranch in the late 1970s, and in 1980 the Melchors asked them to plant Chardonnay and Gewurztraminer below the historic house. Home went in first, Amphitheater in 1981, and Bee was grafted in 1982 to a selection out of Home. Kirk Neely and Holly Myers, in Portola Valley since 1983, took over stewardship in 1995 and bought the ranch before the decade was out. Pinot Noir arrived from 1997, and a small bi-level winery followed in 2000. The Varners farmed the upper vineyard and made the wine under both the Varner and Neely labels through 2013, then moved to Santa Barbara County fruit. Shalini Sekhar took the cellar in 2015, and Sarah Green was appointed winemaker in August 2024, with Sekhar consulting. Closed to visitors for its whole first career, the estate opened a tasting barn in spring 2023.
The Site
The property climbs from about 500 feet on the valley floor to 1,700 below Windy Hill, at the north edge of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA and ten to twelve miles from the Pacific. Most of it is forest and public open space, and the name is literal: springs run on the land, one at the top of the site. The historic blocks occupy the east-facing slope between roughly 600 and 840 feet, on shallow clay loam over fractured sedimentary rock, ancient seabed in the subsoil at varying depth, a profile that holds water in the root zone and drains the surplus. That is what allows dry farming, and no fertilizer or insecticide goes on either, only sulfur against mildew. Spring Ridge counts 12.1 acres and around 6,100 vines today, against the fourteen acres older accounts give.
Vines and Blocks
Six blocks divide close to evenly between the two varieties. Home is the highest and smallest of the Chardonnay, about 1.4 acres by the estate's current count rather than the two acres older accounts gave, clone 4 and own-rooted. Amphitheater is two acres of Wente below it, turning south, and Bee the lowest, three acres of the Home selection on 5C planted a short way off and swung back east. The Pinot Noir sits lower and came later. Hidden is two acres of Dijon 115 from 1997 and the one north-facing block on the ranch. Picnic is 1.4 acres of Dijon 777 on 5C from 2000, on the shallowest soil. Upper Picnic is two acres of 777 grafted over the original Gewurztraminer in 2006, so its roots are older than its fruit. Sausal Creek, 3.8 acres planted from 2017 in the lower meadow, lies in the San Francisco Bay AVA rather than the mountain one, and carries Chardonnay, Gruner Veltliner and two Cabernets grafted in 2022.
The Wines
Neely bottles each block separately and small: the 2023 Amphitheater Chardonnay ran to 139 cases at 11.4 percent alcohol, the register the estate works in. Critics separate the Chardonnays the same way, finding Home the broadest and most textural, Amphitheater the tightest and most citrus and mineral driven, Bee the most floral and creamiest. The lower vineyard adds an unoaked Chardonnay, a Gruner Veltliner rare on this side of the range, and a rose of Pinot Noir. The Varner block Chardonnays through 2013 remain the site's reference bottlings.