Of Flying Cigars and Terroirs

Without a doubt one of my favorite weird events in the history of wine has to be the 1954 passage by the village council of Chateauneuf-du-Pape of a law prohibiting the landing of flying saucers or as the french called them, cigare volant (flying cigar), on vineyard land.  This unusual law was evidently a reaction to the perfectly reasonable worry that flying saucers would damage the precious fruit of the vine, were they to touch down in the vineyards.  The prudence and foresight of this dictate is obvious when one considers that to date not one flying cigar landing has been reported anywhere in or near Chateauneuf-du-Pape, no doubt due to the stringent pentalty that any offending spacecraft will be immediately impounded!

Amusing as this story is, I find it quite fitting that the flagship wine made by one of the most idiosyncratic men in all of Winedom is named Cigare Volant in homage to this possibly strangest of all wine stories.  The ironically traditional label depicts a hovering spacecraft deploying it's death-ray, an eventuality I don't believe the Village council ever considered.  This label and the highly regarded Rhone blend behind it are two of the many, many brainchildren of übercreative and überdriven Randall Graham, self-proclaimed president for life of Bonny Doon Vineyards.

Graham's compelling story meanders through over three eventful decades only to end exactly where it began in 1979, with a quest to create something of "original beauty," and not just a copy of an idealized form.  In the beginning the mission was to create the perfect Pinot Noir, one that would be an expression of it's unique terroir rather than another poor attempt to re-create Burgundy in California.  To this end Graham, with the help of his parents, purchased property in an area known as Bonny Doon in the Santa Cruz mountains and an epic wine journey began.  Only, it wasn't Pinot Noir, but until then untried Rhone varietals that proved successful in the newly established vineyards.  The ever adaptable Graham saw an opportunity and ran with it, cementing his place in California wine history as one of the original Rhone rangers.

In the late 1980's, not satisfied with having lit a fire under California's ampelographical evolution with Rhone grapes, the ever restless Rhone Derranger, as Graham is wont to call himeself, began planting a bevy of Italian varieties inluding nebbiolo, barbera, dolcetto, freisa, and pinot grigi  in his Ca' del Solo vineyards in Monterrey County.  All this still driven by a quest to match grape to it's ideal terroir.

Over the next decade the Bonny Doon kingdom grew into what many, most significantly some influential wine critics saw as an increasingly unwieldy empire, including such value mega-brands as Big House, Pacific Rim, and Cardinal Zin.  It wasn't only Graham's innovative and experimental nature that led to Bonny Doon's incredible success, but an uncanny bent for unconventional, sometimes irreverent marketing, featuring often witty, sometimes sarcastic, always unique label art.

Not far into the current millennium the ever ready to evolve Randall Graham decided once again that it was time to move on towards better things.  In this case, however, better was not bigger, but smaller...much smaller.  The self-styled Taoist winemaker was ready to take a radical new turn in his "spiritual Journey," and so divested himself of his successful mega-brands including Big House and Cardinal Zin, spun off the Pacific Rim brand.  This change meant a significant drop in production from over 400,000 to 35,000 cases.  For Graham this latest incantation of Bonny Doon meant a re-focusing on his spiritual winemaking roots: a quest for wines that expressed a unique sense of place.  It is evident that Graham sees these exhaustive changes less as a radical shift away from, but a distilling down of knowledge and experience gained along an indispensable journey, evidenced by his continued employment of technical innovations such as microoxygenation, cryoextraction, and his almost fanatical faith in screw-caps, to accompany his passionate shift towards back to nature vineyard practices such as biodynamics and dry farming.

What the future holds for Bonny Doon is anyone's guess, but it will no doubt be compelling.  For the time being Graham continues his quest to create true wines of place by producing terroir-driven estate wines, a variety of traditional Rhone style wines, including the flagship Cigare Volant, and Italian varietal wines produced from his Ca' del Solo vineyards.  The good news is that Graham's journey is not hard to follow as this most open and engaging of vignerons is anything but secretive about his activites.  He candidly journals his experimentations on his website www.beendoonsolong.com, putting his characteristic cerebral humor and wisdom on display for all wine lovers to enjoy. The title of this informative website is also the title of his newly published autobiographical book Been Doon So Long, which you can find linked in the Literary Elucidations section of this blog.  Graham has also created one of the most entertaining web-sites for Bonny Doon Vineyards that has much more the interactive feel of an artsy board game than the informational site that it is.  I have found it quite entertaining, and have included the link for all you wine lovers out there, so you too can play: www.bonnydoonvineyard.com.