Randall Grahm

Dale, Thanks for your comments on the Vinquirer. You have penetrated right to the heart of a great mystery - why are there so many good cheap European wines and so few comparable New World counterparts? I think that a lot has to do with the structure of the businesses in Europe. I think that in fact that are some governmental price supports for the many co-op wineries that dot the southern countryside. The small farmers are generally debt-free and do the work themselves; their equipment is often state of the art 1953. I don't wish to give you a Schwarzeneggerian litany of why doing business is so expensive in CA, but it is - labor is high, as is land costs, utilities, insurance, workman's comp, yadda, yadda. I truly believe that the Central Valley will be the savior of the California wine industry, when someone figures out how to grow killer Nero d'Avola, Negro Amaro and Malvasia Nera down there. Cheers, RG.

Bill, That is an absolutely brilliant analogy and completely on the mark. Moi, I have never understood the appeal of the super-Tuscans. (It seems that the Tuscans have decided that they don't want to be Tuscans anymore and want to be Bordelaise. But on the other side of the equation, there is also Castello di Rampollo Sammarco, which is pretty impressive stuff. I'm just not that convinced that overripe Cabernet grown anywhere is really the answer, nor 100% sangiovese tarted up in new wood is really all that attractive, especially for the long haul. RG.

Dear Baphie, Thanks very much for your note and your very kind wishes. Frankly, making the DEWN wines is like shooting TV episodes. Sometimes they are aired immediately; some spend some time in the can and it's hard to remember which ones are getting shipped exactly when. There is a great "Cigare Alternative B", which is a blend of grenache, syrah and carignane and very southern French. There is the Cigare Trifecta ( a blend of 3 vintages of Cigare w/ some lees replacement therapy) and then there is a sweet syrah that was fermented cold like a riesling, that is just plain weird. D'accordo on the pigato - that is currently rocking my world. There is also a very good off-dry riesling that we made from our own vineyard from the Neustadt clone - very Pfalz-like. I'm still waiting to make the Protocol of the Elderberries of Scion (a blueberry/elderberry wine made like a big red). There are many, many more but my brain has somehow gone on strike. I'll pass your good wishes on to Rachel. Cheers, R.

Dear Bloviatrix, I think that Americans are fearful of wine because it is something that is generally extraneous to our culture. Wine marketers have for a long time promoted the exclusivity, the fashionability, the prestige of being a wine connoisseur, which I think has been counter-productive. I think that the real barrier has been one of price. If I have to spend $20+ for initiation into this secret society, thanks very much but I'd rather not belong to that club. If there were good cheap wine readily available, we'd have more people drinking wine. (For the record, there is a lot of good cheap wine out there but it comes from Europe and it is almost impossible for a lay person to really figure out how to find it.) Hope that this answers your question. Cheers, RG.

Dear Doc, Thanks for your very gracious note. I am particularly intrigued by southern Italian grapes and I think that I will be working pretty intensively with them for a while. I do think that they may well represent the future of California viticulture, as in being able to provide a lot of flavor at a relatively good value. I am also quite interested in all sorts of new viticultural innovations (some of them quite retro) such as growing grapes under pergola and perhaps the use of interstock. There are still a lot of things yet to try. Cheers, RG.

Dear Seth, Damn good question. I think that as wine lovers we really do need to put our own selfish needs aside and really work for what is best for the planet, rather than for what is best for our cellars, but yeah, global warming has (I believe) been responsible for some really great vintages in Europe in the last few years. I think, however, that ultimately, global warming will be disasterous for pinot and syrah, which really do need a mild climate. With hot years you end up with wines that taste more New World - big bruisers, lots of fruit, but not necessarily a lot of finesse and refinement. Personally I am a lot happier with the cooler years in California; they do tend to produce more elegant wines. RG.

Dear Magnolia, Alas, never is the answer. I really loved that wine as well, but I think that it was far too ahead of its time. I was recently in New Mexico and talked to a retailer who told me that she has about 10 bottles still on her shelf. (They may well be slightly degraded in the NM sun by now.) If you are serious about this, you might contact my assistant, Angela, at (831) 425-3625, x 112 and she might be able to track these down for you. Cheers. RG.

Dear Malcolm, Thanks very much for your note. In fact, I have only the most subjective view of who our customer might be. In my fevered imagination, he/she is an assistant (untenured) professor somewhere, who has an intellectual curiosity about wine, is well educated and well travelled but has a limited wine budget. In fact, I do think that our customers tend to be a lot more open-minded than many, adventurous, have a good sense of fun. We are really seeing a pretty generalized growth in all of our markets, but the real factor seems to be the effectiveness of our distributors in a particular market; they are the gatekeepers. In fact, I am certain that we are gradually reaching a new market segment; I have it on the best authority that there are now Republicans who are drinking our wine. RG.

Dear Gordon, Good question and one that my CFO and National Sales Mgr. ask me on a virtually daily basis. Yeah, we're probably making too many wines and yeah, with so many wines I don't really have the chance to personally oversee all of them to my own satisfaction. (I try to personally focus on the wines of the highest value - Cigare Volant, Old Telegram, etc.) I work with some really great people who keep me from making really big mistakes. As far as the cult wines that come from California: My limited experience is that they tend to be somewhere between slightly and colossally over-rated. There may be some really great ones out there, but no one has ever tasted them. RG.

Dear David, Yes the DEWN program is not only still around but it is alive and well and better than ever. Alas, I cannot keep track of which states we are currently allowed to ship to and which ones not, but obviously if we can ship it UPS it's going to be a lot cheaper than shipping it via secret mail. Best bet is to call the TR at (831) 425-4518 and get the low-down. Cheers, RG.

Dear David, There is no 01 Pot Still Brandy, per se. (We bottled a potstill brandy years and years ago), but there is something called Marc de Cigare, which we have not done a very good job in promoting, but it is really great and available through our TR, albeit fiendishly expensive. (We bottled something like 100 cs. total.) RG.

Dear David, Yes, we still publish the newsletter, but it is continuing to morph into new forms. Did you not receive The National Vinquirer? (I think that it should still be viewable on line at bonnydoonvineyard.com. If not, drop us a note and we'll send you a copy.) As far as the inspiration for the writing style, that would be entirely attributable to drugs. (Just kidding) It was my somewhat warped upbringing. RG.

Dear Trillium, I'm not familiar w/ the Davis Test. Is this the ability to withstand 2-4 years of UC Davis? Please furnish some more info, if you would. Thanks, RG.

Dear Mike, Thanks very much for the question. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure where it begins but it is something like, "Y,know somebody really should make an X kind of wine. I bet an X wine would do really well in California." From that point on it is an iterative process, as one discovers that either X is a dead-end or perhaps it leads one to a completely new destination. In some cases, the name of the wine will enter my head and I am bound and determined to make that very same wine, viz. I am currently working on growing some tannat because I strongly feel that there should be a wine called, "So, what's Tannat like?". When all is said and done, the grapes are the muse. If I feel that I am privileged enough to be given some grapes that are absolutely unique and distinctive, then I feel a moral obligation to make that wine. If the grapes are really nothing to write home about, I feel a moral duty to not go there again. RG

Dear Trish, Thanks very much for your question. You can go a number of different routes w/ Thanksgiving. Firstly, if you have in-laws over for dinner, I would almost always recommend having a bottle of Moscato del Solo on hand. (This is our low alcohol fizzy wine.) Granted, it is perhaps a bit too sweet for a vin de table, it is generally an extremely useful tool to have in your toolbox vis-a-vis inlaws. A great combo with turkey is Clos de Gilroy, which is so fruity that it is almost like a cranberry condiment. I think that any of our syrahs (CA or Domaine des Blagueuers) would go well with turkey, as of course, Le Cigare Volant. The Ca' del Solo Sangiovese is also very much a fruit bomb, which is essentially what is required with the generally Gray Davis-like personality of turkey. For a dessert wine, go w/ the moscato as you will be quite stuffed at that point. Cheers, RG

P.S. Oops. I forgot to mention what pairs well with Vin de Glaciere. It does not generally go well with chocolate desserts but performs brilliantly with any sort of pome fruit desserts - tarte tatin is particularly great. I've it it with pear tarts (great), peach and berry cobblers. Years ago, maybe the most dramatic pairing I've ever enjoyed was VdG with an absolutely dead-ripe mango. Everyone was speechless. Cheers, R.

Dear Michael, Thank you very much for your very comprehensive question and it is very nice to hear from you. I have always been interested in dessert wines and began playing around with muscat back in '84, when I made a faux vin de paille. ( Faux because I didn't actually use straw mats but rather dried the grapes in a prune drier in San Martin, CA.) The wine came out really nicely despite my utter inexperience (I remember calling Walter Schug after the grapes arrived and asking him, "Walter, how do you make sweet wine?") but it was extremely time-consuming and expensive. In '85 I hit upon the idea of using a vacuum must concentrator to concentrate the juice and frankly, this technique was somewhat less successful. In '86 I thought, what the heck, let's try freezing the grapes. In fact, I had only dimly heard of the process of cryo-extraction and I don't think anyone was really doing that commercially even in Europe. It just seemed logical that a grape wouldn't really know if it was frozen on the vine or in a freezer. I did a small experiment with some Thompson seedless grapes that I got at the local Safeway - results inconclusive, but decided to go for it with some muscat grapes from the Arroyo Seco Vyd. in Greenfield. Again, miraculously, things just sort of worked out. We really had no idea precisely what we were doing. In those days we froze the grapes down in Castroville and schlepped them up to the winery in Bonny Doon. It took a bit of trial and error to ultimately conclude that the grapes really needed to thaw about 30% to really hit it on the money. If you put totally frozen grapes in your press, they will resemble marbles and tend to agglomorate - sort of like having big chunks of cement rolling around in your press. In those days, every 40 lb. lug box was dumped by hand into our small 1 1/2 ton press and we literally pressed frozen grapes for about a month solid. Over the years, we have graduated to a larger press and have refined and automated the technique somewhat so it is just such a complete hassle. For those of you just joining us at home, what happens when you freeze grapes is that you get the formation of ice crystals inside the grape. After the water freezes, the the sugar syrup freezes and then when you thaw the grape, the process works in reverse, so the sugar syrup thaws first and the ice stays frozen. When you first start pressing the frozen grapes, the Brix of the juice will be maybe 40-42 degrees (this is almost like pure sugar). As the grapes continue to thaw, the Brix of the juice gradually drops, and we will conclude the pressing when the Brix hits about 33, thus giving us an average Brix of about 37 (still very sweet.) We ferment the juice very slowly, using aromatic enhancing yeast (VL1) and in fact, we generally don't have to stop the fermentation as it tends to crap out by itself at 12% alcohol and maybe 17% residual sugar. There is no mysterious reason why I started with muscat; I just did and since the wine came out so well, I've stuck with it. We began using only muscat canelli but over the years have added orange muscat and moscato giallo (aka malvasia bianca). There was a very crazy year - I think it may have been '87 when I went completely nuts and made ice wines from semillion, riesling, gewurztraminer (people still call us about that) and grenache! The riesling should have been outstanding, but I remember it as being not so interesting. In retrospect, I think that I did not give it a real chance. It might be fun to revisit making Riesling Vin de Glaciere someday but right now we are really up to our ears in various projects. I'm still utterly intrigued by dessert wines - we made a late harvest viognier last year, which is just now on the market and is quite interesting, and we're doing it again this year through air-drying the grapes al fresco, which should be very interesting. As far as the acacia, I got that idea from Patrick Ducourneau, who besides being a winemaker in Madiran and inventor of microbullage, is a keen student of wood. Acacia is a very gentle, slightly aromatic wood that seems to contribute a savory character to sweet wines. I can't afford new barrels (made out of anything) for the wine, but we use a very judicious amt. of acacia chips in the fermenter and it seems to offer a nice counter-balance of tannin to the otherwise perhaps excruciating sweetness. I look forward to seeing you the next time I am out your way; please don't be a stranger if you come to Santa Cruz. Cheers, RG