Further Ruminations on Cigare: The Doon and Dirty

We are just about to bottle the 2008 vintage of Le Cigare Volant and celebrate, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of its continuous production. I’ve written elsewhere about a number of the winemaking details and the stylistic evolution of this wine, as well as about changes in my own thinking in regard to what we have achieved and might hope to achieve with Cigare… Read more and join the conversation...

Why Should Terroir Matter…

What I’m really thinking about these days – above and beyond how to survive in this extremely challenging economic climate – is how one might find real meaning in the wine business, in the Maslovian sense, after one’s basic needs for survival have been met. Read more and join the conversation...

Chick Vit or What Do Women Want (in their Wine)

My friend Amy recently told me, “Randall, you’re really missing the boat.” “Of course I am,” I told her. “The nautical conveyance and I haven’t been, shall we say, intimate for quite some time.” “No, you’re missing a great business opportunity.” “And, what pray tell, Amy, might that be?” “You make chick wine,” she said. “You should be marketing your wine to women.” Read more and join the conversation...

Apologia for Le Cigare Blanc

Years ago, when I had decided that Pinot Noir and that other Burgundian variety were just not going to work so well at our Estate Vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I began to focus instead on Rhône varieties. We produced then an extraordinary haunting wine from our Estate called “Le Sophiste,” a putative blend [...] Read more and join the conversation...

Footnotes to Sub-terroir Rhônesick Blues

The reader may know or be able to infer that I live a somewhat convoluted, self-referential life; that is to say, many of my personal points of reference seem to exist in the realm of vinous and the arcane (generally both). Eliot footnoted The Wasteland; why not to footnote a Bob Dylan song parody about [...] Read more and join the conversation...

Sub-terroir Rhônesick Blues

J. Locke’s in the cold cave | Drinking down the old Chave
I’m on the crushpad | Thinking about the Advocate
The man in the lab coat | Reporting on a horsy note
Final review’s just now set | Says we’ve got some bad brett,
Sees filtration as a safety net. | Look out grahm
You’re gonna get slammed Read more and join the conversation...

An Apologia for Le Cigare Volant: An Introduction to the ’05 Vintage, Part 2 of 2

Imagine wine as possessing two disparate aspects or poles – the lower and the upper, that which goes down to the ground and that which ascends to the sky. The “bottom” of the wine is its skeletal structure, its power, its centeredness, its ability to tolerate oxidative challenge, which in some sense can be thought of as its “life-force,” and is certainly linked with its ageworthiness. Read more and join the conversation...

An Apologia for Le Cigare Volant: An Introduction to the ’05 Vintage, Part 1 of 2

We’ve been making Le Cigare Volant since 1984, back when I thought it would be an interesting and fun thing to make a blend of the principal grape varieties of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, grown under California conditions. I didn’t quite realize at the time that Cigare would become so synonymous with Bonny Doon and vice-versa, nor that I would ultimately come to identify so strongly with the wine itself. Read more and join the conversation...

The Story of “Doon to Earth,” Part 3 of 3

This is a speech that Randall Grahm delivered in Washington, D.C., at the Inc. Magazine Conference, September 2009 (part 3 of a 3-part series): While I have been hoping to elevate the level of discussion about our wines, what seems to be happening is that many of our most loyal customers just miss our old wild and crazy labels and are somewhat disappointed with the relative placidity and mysteriousness of the new ones. The problem of course is that it is not so easy to redefine yourself once there is a reasonably well-embedded image people have of you. In my case, it is perhaps that of the ADD-afflicted joker, someone who just can’t get serious, flitting from one wine style and grape variety to the next, and of course there is certainly an element of truth in this characterization. It’s been difficult to shed the negative association with Big House the perhaps a few slightly iffy vintages of Cigare. It brings to mind the old joke about having carnal relations with “just one goat” and what do people call you? Read more and join the conversation...

The Story of “Doon to Earth,” Part 2 of 3

This is a speech that Randall Grahm delivered in Washington, D.C., at the Inc. Magazine Conference, September 2009 (part 2 of a 3-part series): Some back story. I started the company in 1981 with the naïve aspiration of producing the Great American Pinot Noir in the little hamlet of Bonny Doon. My efforts were systematically thwarted, but I discovered Rhône grape varieties and my efforts were intermittently positively reinforced, so I’ve continued to do what I do. Bonny Doon grew and grew organically, which is to say in a random, unplanned fashion and ultimately became quite complex and convoluted, beautiful in its way, but mostly untenable, kind of like a Citroën automobile. Read more and join the conversation...

BATAAN DEATH MARCH

BATAAN DEATH MARCH - Book Tour

Join Randall Grahm for a

Winemaker Dinner & Signing

Tuesday, March 9 | 6pm
Laurus | European Bistro
Danville, California
t: 925.984.2250
laurussf.com

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