"Let me guess. Randall sent you, didn't he?"

Le Pousseur (100% Syrah), Bonny Doon Vineyard, 2008, Central Coast
(13.5% abv)

There is something transporting about this wine, like being wrapped up in a harlot’s velvet shawl.

You enter the room somewhat willingly, thinking you know what you’re in store for, wanting to keep it light and fun, only to find your mind and emotions wrapped up in a deeper draw and the feeling of hot attraction coursing through your veins. This courtesan is much bigger than you can handle. You run from the room, only to get outside, take in a breath of fresh air and decide you MUST return.

This is not the type of wine I was expecting to feel this way about. Call it “single vineyard snobbery,” if you will, but I lowered my expectations when I read “Central Coast Syrah.” It could be from anywhere there–the Central Coast is a huge place. But then again, these grapes are in the able hands of Randall Grahm…and he knows his Syrah.  It’s going to be something authentic.

The color of the Bonny Doon Le Pousseur 2008 is near opaque, pouring a dark, purplish red. On the nose, a haunting, deep aroma of black berries, spicy brambles and a note of black cherry cream. I was drawn so deeply in, I found my nostrils a bit stung by the heat of the alcohol. But it only proved to spur me on…

This hare will be perfect with Le Pousseur. You just wait.

On the palate, I was caressed by a velvety mouthfeel and I soon found myself feeling like Tom Sawyer, seduced by the fresh, tart huckleberry pie cooling in the window.  Mmmm….so delicious.  Must have.  Must steal and run off into the woods with. It tantalized me with this tartness. Mouth-watering fruit with a backbone of strength holding it firm and supported.  The tannins are rich and chewy, the flavors layered.

This is a wine that would make Mark Twain proud.  In his words: “Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.”

(*Editor’s note: this wine was a press sample)

Contra, Bonny Doon Vineyard, 2009, Contra Costa County
(13.5% abv)

At the mouth of Big Thompson Canyon in Northern Colorado, lies a small store that sells Black Bing Cherries.  Juices, ciders, jams, you name it.

The store itself was unmissable; a large red roof over a white building from which hung hundreds of red juice bottles like some sort of bizarre Christmas tree ornaments.

The entrance to Big Thompson Canyon

I’ve always associated the canyon with this strange store—I actually found it today through a Google search—that goes by the name of Colorado Cherry Company.

When I tasted Contra, the latest release from Randall Grahm and company over at Bonny Doon Vineyard, I couldn’t get the image of this store out of my mind.  Something about it’s flavor profile brought me back to my childhood.

In more ways than one, Randall Grahm is to Santa Cruz, as the Colorado Cherry Company is to the Big Thompson Canyon.  They channel the dirt, the air, the rivers and the soul of their environment through their fruit.  A taste of his wines are meant to be evocative of the place from which they came.

After a rather round-about journey of experimentation, irreverence and soul-searching (check out my earlier piece, Randall Grahm: Prankster and Philosopher, written after an infamous pedicure session together), Randall is on a mission to become a true soothsayer of the soil.

Randall Grahm (pic by Alex Krause)

Perhaps its because he swung so far off this path in the middle of his career, that he is now such a fervant torch-bearer of the terroir cause.  With the onset of critical and commercial success, he saw his enterprise shift into a mega-operation that churned out juice with little connection to terroir.  He has since sold off a large amount of his holdings to refocus on what inspired him in the early days of his winemaking career.

His winemaking notes and personal letter that accompanied the wine (full disclosure: I was sent a press sample) read like a cross between a personal journal entry and a playful blueprint of its journey from grape to bottle.  He states his mission clearly:  ”We’ve been gradually paring down the Bonny Doon product line with the aim of producing only those products that have a real raison (or raisin) d’être, i.e. are utterly distinctive and in some ways tangibly enrich the world.”

The grapes are hand-harvested from vineyard sites (79% Gonsalves, 16% Ca’ del Solo, 3% Bella Grace and 2% Bien Nacido) in the Central Coast Appellation and fermented in individual lots with indigenous yeast.  It is a blend of 55% Carignane, 15% Grenache, 15% Mourvedre, 7% Petite Syrah, 5% Zinfandel and 3% Syrah.

Medium-red in color with hints of purple, Contra exhibits dirty raspberries and grappa-soaked cherries on the nose backed by the slightest hint of vanilla.  Medium-bodied with a Black Bing Cherry pie-filling note that’s grounded in an earthy backbone.  The structure is solid with an acidity and spice that left my mouth salivating and my lips smacking in search of the next flavor.  It is both rustic and refined.

It’s strange how memories get stuck in the recesses of our mind, only to be unlocked and revisited years later.  Perhaps this is the universe calling to me…maybe it’s time I took a trip up the Big Thompson Canyon again.  But this time, maybe I’ll borrow the Bonny Doon dirigible; I’m sure the view of the river from up there is fantastic.

The Doon Dirigible: fueled by Black Bing Cherry cider.

“Terroir speaks in a very still, small voice.  It is easy not to hear it above the stentorian tones of 100% new oak, 15% alcohol and the extreme tannic extraction that we find in modern wines.  We winemakers need to look long and hard in the mirror”

It pays to be curious, to take risks, to boldly plant what no man has planted there before.  And sometimes, when that mission has proven so successful that you’ve moved into a world controlled by accountants and corporate structures, you cut down that tree and plant anew…

Randall Grahm started his path sweeping up in a wine shop, and soon found himself enchanted by the French wines that surrounded him.  His mission became clear: to go forth and lose himself in the vineyards of California.  He enrolled at UC Davis, and relentlessly hounded his professors about Pinot Noir, the grape that had come to rule his attentions.  He was intent on making the Great American Pinot Noir, and with the help of his family, bought his first vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains just south of San Francisco.  Bonny Doon was born.  After years of minimal success, he abandoned the Pinot Noir quest, and began planting Rhone varietals like Syrah, Roussanne, Marsanne and Viognier much to the chagrin of the supposed experts that told him “no, not possible in California”.

With the release of Le Cigar Volant in 1984, Randall sent a cannon shot across the bow of the skeptics and showed the world it was not only possible to make good Rhone wines, but entirely possible to make great Rhone wines in California.   He was now taken seriously as an innovator and was named a “national treasure” by critic Robert Parker.  The ensuing decades found him spinning off ever-bolder marketing initiatives that drew mass attention and cemented his image as the merry prankster from Santa Cruz.  An early promoter of screw cap closures, he declared “cork is dead” in 2002, even going so far as to hold a mock funeral in NYC.  Creating quirky labels like Cardinal Zin and Big House Red (with grapes sourced from a vineyard near a prison complex), Bonny Doon became huge, eventually producing nearly a half-million cases each year.

But with this success came questioning and an ever-growing sense of hypocrisy in what he was espousing as a philosopher, but not doing as a businessman.  He was no longer able to align his interests in biodynamic farming with the production demands of sourcing grapes from growers whose practices did not match his.  And so in 2006, he sold off the Cardinal Zin and Big House labels, moved his Pacific Rim Riesling project to Washington, and slashed his production down to some 30,000 cases.  He now found himself free again to focus on the terroir of his wines and the vineyard practices that most purely elicited them.  A devout practitioner of the biodynamic movement begun by Rudolf Steiner in the 1920′s, Randall treats each vineyard site as a living organism, each one requiring a delicate balance between its soils, nutrients, indigenous animals and even its moon cycles.  (And yes, sometimes manure-filled cow horns which are buried in strategic places to then be dug up months later as cosmic-ready mixes that are added back to the soil).  He has gotten back to what fuels him most, and his wines of late are stunning.

And for those of you who came to see him in NYC while he visited us at Terroir wine bar, yes, the rumors are true.  There was a late night wine tasting/spa pedicure adventure, ending in many grown men leaving with painted toes and Cote Rotie-stained teeth.  And for any one that wants to question my manhood, step on up.  Cause when you got Randall Grahm on your side, shit is on.  Just look at these beauties: