Ripken Vineyards & Winery

The Ripken family considers themselves an artisan “barnista” winery that is uniquely different, electric, eclectic, quirky, esoteric, even wacky, but never boring or weird.
Ripken Vineyards & Winery appeals to adventuresome wine drinkers with mostly non-traditional varieties producing extraordinary flavored wines.

Their motto is, “No Boring Wines!” They make wines of conviction!

They go down the road less traveled. Their wines appeal to wine drinkers that wish to explore the joys of Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier, Malbec, Petite Sirah, Carmine, Petit Verdot, Alicante Bouschet, Tempranillo, Graciano, Souzao, Touriga National, Grenace, Mourvedre, Montepulciano, Barbera, Dolcetto, or Corvina as blends or varietal wines.

They produce very small lots of different wines mostly under 100 cases, using classic techniques such as gentle crushing, barrel fermenting white wines, selecting yeasts, hand punchdown, less stirring, long barrel aging, gently crushing, and bottle aging.

Their chant is, “These wines were made one bucket, one barrel, one bottle at a time.”
Their grape growing focuses on maximizing flavors, reduced but adequate irrigation or non-irrigation, sunlight to the cluster, full ripeness for flavor, moderate size crops, adequate soil fertility and organic matter in soils. All this attention to detail leads to full flavored wines of good mineral content which are balance and enjoyable when released.

They are Lodi’s 60th winery. They crushed their first vintage in 2003 but they are not new to wine grape growing, being third generation growers since 1950. In addition, they row their own rootstock and have collected different wine varietal clones and selections for forty years. The whole family is involved