Life is a recursive circle. We are given our genetic or karmic marching orders, it would seem, as some sort of holographic imprint, a model we follow, and we follow it over and over again, like the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, until the end of our days. Maybe, with luck, in each successive iteration, we are able to interpret and act on this internal siren song with ever-greater skill and insight. Read more and join the conversation...

It was just about a month ago (March 13th to be precise) that I was inducted into the Vintner’s Hall of Fame at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena, CA. (Dramatic pause here, to let the irony sink in.) I confess that as much as I seek approbation from my peers – perhaps even to a neurotic degree – I often do have some problems in graciously accepting it when it is actually proffered. So, this particular honor has been a real tough one for me. Read more and join the conversation...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...