History
The Kistler family's Occidental label bought the 250-acre Bodega Ridge property in 2008 and planted it in stages. The lower ground became Running Fence; this upper block is the separately named and separately bottled site, and its first single-vineyard release came in 2019. The two are regularly written up as one vineyard, but Occidental lists and bottles them apart.
The Site
The higher reaches of the same coastal ridge that carries Running Fence and, further along, Bodega Headlands, on marine-influenced sandstone ground overlooking the Pacific. Elevation and exposure are what separate it from the block below.
Vines and Blocks
Pinot Noir, planted as part of the larger Bodega Ridge development on rootstock chosen to devigorate and to ripen early on a site this marginal.
The Wines
Occidental is the sole producer. Bodega Ridge Vineyard is the younger of the property's two bottlings and the one that speaks for the upper ridge.