“If oak is a flavour then ketchup is a vegetable”.
To irrigate is to ‘infantilise’ your vines.
“Most barrels make wine worse”.
If you were unlucky enough not to be there then these one-liners should give you a flavour of Randalll Grahm’s tasting of his Bonny Doon wines on 25th June.
Tall and rangy with long hair in a ponytail and round black-rimmed glasses, Grahm was a laid-back provocateur with a range of targets in his sights.
“I don’t think Robert Parker set out to destroy the wine business but …”
For Grahm all wine should be ‘vin de terroir’ – not ‘vin d’effort’. He is a man on a mission – “to make distinctive wine that reflects a spirit of place in one lifetime”. He has now sold some of the brands with which he made his name such as ‘Big House’ or the wonderfully named ‘Cardinal Zin’ to focus on creating wines that will ‘nourish’ us physically, emotionally and spiritually.
What was clear from the tasting of the ten wines was the blend of thought and science that went into them. He talked about the importance of exposing wine to oxygen early in its life to polymerise the phenols (and the barrel is perfect for this) before a dose of oxygen just before bottling and screwcap closure. All his wines are now screw-capped and he was insistent that post-bottling oxygen is not needed to enable the slow continued evolution of wine which gives the greatest complexity.
Screw caps also reduce the need for sulphur dioxide and one of the aims of Grahm’s continued experimentation is to make wines that are SO2 free. He was dismissive of the US ‘culture of control’ and prefers experimentation with the simple proviso that “if it’s a total bust then don’t do it again”.
The problem with Robert Parker, he says, is that “he wants all wines to taste the way he wants”. Not the case with Grahm’s wines.
We started with a pairing of the elegant Ca’Del Solo Albarino (fresh and direct and described by its maker as ‘sans maquillage’) and Le Cigare Volante, a Rousanne / Grenache Blanc blend with a touch of oak.
The two wines that followed – the 2005 Ca’Del Solo Sangiovese and the 2004 Carignane Ancient Vines – epitomised a distinctive characteristic of the Bonny Doon wines, their capacity to evolve in the glass as the slightly closed, earthy reductive aromas of the first sniff cleared and the fruit came through in the mouth.
Then 2004 Old Telegram Mourvedre (a grape once widely distributed through California as Mataro but in decline since the 1880s) and 2005 Syrah ‘Le Pousseur’. The latter bucks the West Coast trend to higher and higher alcohol – a trend leading, said Grahm, to wines “so impressive as to be undrinkable”.
The last three reds were examples of his flagship red, Le Cigare Volante (named after a regulation proposed by the local commune in Chateauneuf du Pape to prevent flying saucers from landing). They are blends of Grenache, Mourvedre and Syrah with a dash of Cinsault. The style of the wine is gradually shifting towards northern rather than southern Rhone with higher acidity, greater elegance and a more ‘Burgundian’ flavour.
We closed with a dessert wine – Le Vol des Anges – made from 100% Rousanne with lots of botrytis, an attractive waxy / lanolin quality and beautiful balance despite its relatively high alcohol.
The overall feedback from the tasting was highly positive – bar one or two sceptics who thought it too ‘scientific’ – and the great majority would like him back for a repeat tasting.