Bonny Doon and Randall Graham

I attended a Bonny Doon wine tasting last weekend and got a chance to talk briefly with Randall Graham. Randall Graham is California’s original Rhone Ranger, an innovative wine maker who is always trying new things, and the producer of the most original packaging of any winery in California.

Bonny Doon has switched almost entirely to screw caps. Randall Graham said that he tried plastic corks, but found that they seal more poorly than real corks and that wine ages faster with plastic corks. Randall also said that there are two different kinds of screw caps. One kind seals very tightly, which slows down wine aging. The other lets a little air in, similar to a real cork. Bonny Doon apparently uses both kinds of screw caps, depending on the type of wine.

Randall Graham complained about the quality of the grapes he has been getting lately in California. He said he felt that the growers that Bonny Doon has contracts with are not working very hard any more to produce the best quality fruit and that the quality of grapes he is getting has declined over recent vintages. I thought this was a rather surprising thing for a wine maker to say. Perhaps Randall is not a marketing person. In the latest copy of the Wine Advocate that just arrived, Parker says that the quality at Bonny Doon has declined from the mid 80s, but Parker suggests it is because of the production, now almost 400,000 cases a year.

Bonny Doon is now making a number of wines in Italy. The wine is made and bottled in Italy and then imported to the US to be sold by Bonny Doon. Randall Graham goes over to Italy to supervise much of the wine making. He had just gotten back from Italy.

Randall talked about his latest crazy idea. He is thinking about planting a vineyard from seed. All grape vineyards are planted by grafting from existing vineyards onto root stock. This gives vines that are genetically identical to the vines the grafts came from. He said, if you plant from seed, then you would get random genetic variations. Many of the seeds may be sterile. Some of the vines might not produce any grapes, but he would like to try it and see what happens. He was thinking of taking a vineyard planted to a mix of Rhone varieties, so that the different varieties would cross pollinate, and then take the seeds from the grapes and plant vines from those seeds. This would produce some totally new type of grapes. He would like to try it, even though it might well produce mediocre or terrible wine. He just wanted to try it once and see what happens.

Interesting Randall Graham fact: he drives an old Citroen because it is cigar shaped.

These wines were available for tasting. I didn’t really have time to rate them:

2003 Big House White, $8
Blend of all kinds of whites, but tasted like a Sauvignon Blanc. Good value.

2004 Ca del Solo Malavashia Bianca, $10
Some Italian grapes I had never heard of, but good, and a good value.

2004 Cigare Volant Blanc, $16
Made from white Rhone grapes. Very interesting and different. I liked it.

2004 Vin Gris De Cigare, $10
Basically made from the free run juices of the Cigare Volant. Nice summer sipping wine.

2003 Cardinal Zinfandel, $15
Ok Zin. Not overripe like many California Zins nowdays.

2001 Old Telegram, $25
Made from Mourvèdre. My favorite of the tasting.

2002 Cigare Volant, $25
Rhone mix. I was disappointed. Some other tasters said they thought the 2001 was better.

2003 Montepulciano, $9
Some Italian grape. Interesting. Needs some time.

2003 Ruche, $14
Another Italian grape. More ready to drink.

2001 Uva di Troia, $10
Yet another Italian wine. Interesting, ready to drink.

2004 Muscat Vin de Glacier, $14
Muscat desert wine. Ok.

Framboise, $9
This is raspberry wine, and tastes like you are drinking raspberry jam. Not my cup of tea.

Boutielle Call, $17
This is a port made from the Framboise, sort of a raspberry port. I thought it tasted better than the Framboise, but still not something I would buy.