Randall Grahm

Thanks to everyone who submitted a question. This has been enormously entertaining and amusing for me and enabled me to duck out of some of my more tedious obligations like fining trials on ultra-tannic (and alcoholic) zinfandels. I invite you all to come and visit the winery and/or tasting room here in Santa Cruz, if you find yourself out this way. Yr. R. Stranger

And you mine. Cheers, RG.

Dear Max, It was just a lame joke about being up to my ears in aligators. Sorry for the false alarm. RG.

Dear Max, You have hit the nail squarely on the head. There is absolutely no reason for a Carneros albarino that sells for $30 or for a so-so CA Sangiovese that sells for $25. I do ask myself regularly if I feel that the Cigare is really making a contribution to enriching the world and if it really is competitive w/ Chateauneufs or indeed with other wines that sell for the same price. As far as offering pleasure, I am pretty satisfied that it holds its own w/ Chateuneufs of comparable price. For me it is worthwhile because it is a work that is not yet done and I feel strongly that there are many things that I can still do to create/find greater depth and complexity in the wine. Glad that you like the freisa. RG.

I am in agreement w/ Carema that it will most likely be the southern Italian grapes that will do very great work in California. RG.

I don't know if there is a photo that accompanies the mention of the Citroen, but for the record, mine is a beautiful burgundy. Very, very elegant. RG

To All: I'm not sure if I would be particularly capable of passing the test. There are certain white wines I know of that certainly smell like red wines. I think that this sort of category confusion is tremendously interesting. V. Nabakov was a well-known synesthete and I'm sure that he would have had difficulty was the Davis test, indeed with anything coming out of Davis. R.

Dear Katie and Tana, Putting myself back in the way-back machine, I think back on the Old Telegram label. It was the original working title for Cigare Volant, but I came upon the funny story of Chateauneuf du Pape and the prohibition of the landing of flying saucers. I didn't want to waste the label so I was compelled to make a wine - in this case an old vine mourvedre, where that label would serve. I'm having difficulty thinking of other historical instances where the label was truly precedent to the wine, however I have recently caused to have plant 10 acres of tannat grapes in the relatively warmish area of Tracy, CA so that I might produce a wine called, "So, What's Tannat Like?" Best, R.

Dear Jason, What I hate about the wine industry in California is its sometime acute self-consciousness. We often are just trying too hard and tend to be too focused on life-style rather than life. I think that we are too lemming-like; one winery puts on a cigar(e) band on their bottles, everybody's got to have a cigar(e) band. What I love about the industry is its relative youth and insouciance. We don't know that certain things are impossibly difficult and we pursue them with dogged ambition. As far as reliance on new oak, it is a pernicious thing. Those who think of new oak as a primary flavor in wine are the same people who think of ketchup as a vegetable. Cheers, RG.

Dear Dave, A good question but more information is needed. If this is barbecue we are talking about, how sweet is the sauce? How much vinegar. If it is just plain old pig, a great dry riesling might work very well, as would a fruity red. I think that it is sometimes useful to imagine the sort of condiments that you would like to serve with a particular dish and observe if there any of the taste elements that you might find in the proposed wine. If the sauce is at all spicy, I would tend to shy away from any wine that is too high in alcohol, as the alcohol, just tends to amplify the burn. In an altogether different matter, I am told that countries that consume a substantial amount of pork in their diet, tend to also enjoy a population of women who are exceptionally beautiful. Buon appetito!

Dear Rachel, I love all of my customers best. Having said that, it is undeniably useful to be selling a fair bit of one's wine in restaurants. It is a great venue to introduce customers to a new experience in an optimal context. But if the customer cannot find the wine anywhere within a 500 mile radius of the restaurant, one is definitely missing out on some sales opportunities. Cheers, RG.

Dear Craig, Talk about a hanging curveball.... I have a lot of problems with the 100 pt. score system, chiefly in how it tends to fetishize wine. Wine now has become that is valuable because it is valuable not because it necessarily delivers pleasure. I think that Platonic perfection is something that one might contemplate while visiting the Parthenon or Mt. Fuji but I think that notions of perfection tend to take us away from wine rather than bring us closer to it. RG

Dear Seana, I know that restaurants will often gouge mercilessly on their mark-ups but you are travelling in a very etherial crowd. I agree with you that there has definitely been alcohol inflation in recent years. This has come largely due to a particular mental virus that has infected the winemaking population at large, that seems to compel the harvest of riper and riper grapes. The popular press, in particular, Robert Parker, seems to be beating the drum very loudly for this sort of wine style - one that has more in common with say port than with table wine. Myself, I am somewhat of a lightweight as far as alcohol consumption; a little seems to go a long way. If I could drink wines that were lower in alcohol that still offered great complexity and flavor interest, I would be very pleased as I could enjoy another glass. Cheers, RG.

Dear Felonioius, For the moment it is only our Estate vineyard in Soledad that is being farmed biodynamically and we are really in the earliest stages. It will take at least two or three years for the differences to really show up dramatically, I am told. We are farming a very eclectic range of grapes in our vineyard so a little bit ends up in a lot of our products, but for example, the Ca' del Solo Barbera and Freisa in a few years will be made from these grapes. I am trying a lot of other pretty radical practices in this vineyard, viz. dry-land farming (in ultra arid conditions) that will either be spectacularly successful (or not). I have also noticed a great difference in wines made from grapes that are farmed biodynamically. They are richer in minerals and just seem to be a lot more expressive. I am very, very enthusiastic about this project moving forward. Cheers, RG

Dear Lesley, Yes, that is correct. I have not been happy with the synthetic closures for some time now. They perform reasonably well mechanically but they seem to suffer from the tragic flaw of causing the wine to age much more rapidly that it would with a conventional cork. It is my intention to move our entire line over to Stelvin screwcaps within the next year and we are well on our way to meeting that goal. We have been tremendously happy with both the performance of the screwcap as well as with the reception from our customers. I am asking my colleague, John Locke, to contact you to set up a meeting in Montreal, if time permits. Cheers, R.

Dear Lesley, Thanks for your note. Quebec is a great, great market for us and ironically enough, I just hosted some folks from the SAQ at the winery just yesterday. Malvasia Bianca seems to be a great seller for us as well as Cigare Volant. I do think that Quebeckers have a far more sophisticated, European palate than your basic anglophonic North Americans. They do value subtlety and finesse. And I did pitch the SAQ long and hard on the Pacific Riesling, esp. the 2002 vintage en screwcap, which I think is by far the very best one that we have produced. I'll be up in Quebec in a few weeks for some sort of fete; the details escape me at the moment. Cheers, RG.

Steve, You know how farmers can be - very conservative and protective of their interests. Yes, the Canadians did manage to wangle some sort of deal in the EU - maybe it was their sheep and I'm mixed up about the Aussies or Kiwis. We could produce more Vin de Glaciere if we could find some more grapes, but that is definitely a limiting step these days in our quest for total world doonimation. RG.

Dear Felonious, I'm not sure I totally grok your question. RG.

Dear Vengroff, If you ask a meta-question, you may get a meta-answer. I think that you have alluded to the core issue in an off-hand remark that you made. I think that the chief misconception that people have about wine is that there is somehow a universal standard of goodness and that good wine needs to taste a certain way, i.e. dry or tannic or sweet or whatever. I think that many, if not most wine drinkers really don't fully grasp the fact that a particular wine may be great or less great within a given context, not just the food that it is paired with but the particular seasonality. A rosé is not likely to be a great, great wine but eating lunch al fresco on the Mediterranean, there is no better choice that one could make. There is the misconception that if you pay a lot of money you are perforce going to get a wine that pleases you. I think that it is crucial that people somehow find a way to study themselves and learn to really know what pleases them, rather than trying to adapt their taste to the authority of a second party. Cheers, RG.

Dear Matt, Never say never. Offhand I would have believed that it would be unlikely for CA to produce a great riesling but I now believe that there are more things possible than we ever could imagine. On the face of it, the big problem in California is the very bright sun, the very low humidity and the general absence of slate soils. But perhaps there are some trellising systems that can mitigate the macroclimatic challenges. I think that Washington state and BC have incredible potential for riesling, especially in virtue of the extremely cool nights which tend to preserve acidity, the fundament of white wine. Canadian wines are still rarely seen in these parts. I've had a great Pinot Gris from the Okanagen; I'm sure riesling could do equally well. Cheers, RG.

Felonious, No worries about the geek-hood; I've been known to fall into the abyss from time to time. I think that indigenous yeast represents some great posssibilities for wines in California. There is certainly more complexity, owing to the multiple populations and the slower ferments, but there is of course, the other side, with the possibility of some tragic defects. I think that a winery needs to slowly, gradually fine a level of comfort with this approach. We are nibbling on the edges but are ourselves not quite there. R.

Dear Echezeaux, Thanks very much for your questions. 1. Obviously the Wine Spectator and the Wine Advocate have a tremendous influence on wine buying patterns, cf. the most recent BDV parody, The National Vinquirer, in which a 100 pt. rating in the W.A. will result in a wine turning into a black hole. We want our leaders, whoever they are, to be more intelligent, more creative, more thoughtful than they actually are; this is human nature. But withal, I think that both of these publications could do a lot more toward spreading the message of the virtue of vinous diversity rather than the insistence that a wine conform to a certain Platonic paradigm. 2. Blending wine is the only rational option in a warm, Mediterranean climate to produce wines that have any real personality and complexity. Yes, of course, I have followed traditional models, i.e. I have studiously worked at excluding say cabernet sauvignon from Le Cigare Volant, but this has not really been with the intent of slavishly trying to mimic the Old World examplars, rather than to just set some parameters; else, nothing but pure chaos would ensue. (Perhaps in a few years I will be ready to deconstruct these blends, in the fashion of El Boulli and bottle things like grenache foam.) 3. My parents were heartbroken that I did not become a doctor. 4. We have made some rudimentary efforts at enhancing the feng shui at the winery but I think that we are still pretty screwed up. 5. I did work (or play) a few years ago as a sommelier at Elka's restaurant but did not spill a single drop of Chardonnay on any patron, for the simple reason that no chardonnay was offered on the wine list. 6. Pricing. One puts on one's prayer shawl and faces East and hopes that one gets it right. The only real way to do it is to rigorously taste what is out there in the same (or near) category and try to be brutally honest about how you stack up. It is of course problematic if one year your wine tastes like a $12 bottle and the next like a $20. Again, this is where prayer comes in. Cheers, RG.

Michael, The guy's name is Claude Courtois and he makes wines somewhere in E. Jesus, Loire - I don't even believe that his area is within a named appellation, and I'm certain that he does not export to the U.S. His wine labels are thoroughly risqué; he is personally a character out of Rabelais. But he has really inspired me to take a much closer look at biodynamie and we have begun the practice in our own vineyard. Biodynamie is a transformative process that changes the grape grower as much as it changes the vineyard. If you do it properly you become a much more observant and attentive grower. Your vines are growing in much greater harmony with their environment and as such (as it is believed) will be able to better articulate their terroir. A more mechanistic explanation is that a soil that is alive with healthy micro-flora, esp. those that live in symbiotic association on the roots of vines, will help the plant to better transport minerals. I hope that this is useful. Cheers, R.

Dear Monica, I have not had a lot of experience pairing wine w/ Indian food but offhand, I know that a slightly off-dry riesling would work brilliantly (Kabinett or Spaetlese). As far as reds, I would go with wines that are not tannic and not oaky. A good fruity grenache or perhaps even syrah might work well. We produce a wine called Clos de Gilroy that I think might actually be just perfecto. Good luck. RG.

Very seriously indeed. Let us now pause for a moment of silence. RG.