Bonny Doon Vin Gris de Cigare Rose 2010

As you can tell from his bio to the right Randall Grahm doesn't take wine too seriously. He's serious enough to make well made, well grown and well cared for wine, but not snobby or overly concerned with it in a Robert Parker kind of way. In fact, he's the anti-Parker. 

Perhaps best known for Cardinal Zin and then for Big House Red, Randall Grahm has since sold off these brands and parcels of Bonny Doon and concentrates now on Cigare Volant - his Rhone varietals in the Santa Cruz Mountains. His website shows you these vineyards as a cartoon of outer space. He has taken to biodynamic viticulture and wild yeasts. He's redefined Rhone Ranger to say the least.  

The Vin Gris de Rose is made up of grenache, roussanne, grenache blanc and mourvedre. It is the most perfect aperitif wine in our opinion. It is light in color like a rose from Provence and full of minerality and zest. It smells like little wild strawberries, a touch of cherrys and some apple. It's refreshing to drink and clean with apple-like acidity. If you feel the need to replace water with wine, this could very well be the choice. Or at least your summertime go-to wine to keep in the fridge. 

Bonny Doon Vin Gris de Cigare Rose  $14/btl

 

meet the winemaker

Randall Grahm
We could tell you about Mr. Grahm, but he does it best in his bio below.

Randall was born in Los Angeles in 1953 and attended Uncle Charlie's Summer Camp, excuse me, the prestigious University of California at Santa Cruz where he was a permanent Liberal Arts major. Some time later he found himself working at the Wine Merchant in Beverly Hills sweeping floors. By dint of exceptionally good karma he was given the opportunity to taste an ungodly number of great French wines and this singular experience turned him into a complete and insufferable wine fanatic. He returned to the University of California at Davis to complete a degree in Plant Sciences in 1979, where owing to his single-minded obsession with pinot noir he was regarded as a bit of a holy terroir in the hallowed halls of the sober and sedate Department of Viticulture.

With his family's assistance, Randall purchased property in the Santa Cruz Mountains in a hypnogogically quaint area known as Bonny Doon intent on producing the Great American Pinot Noir. The GAPN proved to be systematically elusive but he was greatly encouraged by experimental batches of Rhône varieties. The late great Bonny Doon Estate Vineyard (1981 - 1994) was eventually planted to syrah, roussanne, marsanne and viognier and produced achingly beautiful wines confirming both that 1) California's temperate climate is well suited to the sun-loving grapes of the Mediterranean; and 2) the blue green sharpshooter doesn't know from Côte Rôtie. In 1986 Bonny Doon Vineyard released the inaugural vintage (1984) of Le Cigare Volant, an homage to Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The wine appears to have fallen squarely in the node of a great wave of interest in Mediterranean varieties in California.

The rest as we say, is well, history...