Bonny Doon and Randall Graham

The guy is a kick in the butt. At last July's Rhone Rangers dinner I found myself sitting around a table with Randall (Grahm, not "Graham," btw) and Harry Alhadeff and Brian Carter of Apex. All great guys who make some excellent wines, and share a flair for innovative marketing. They were asking me for *my* opinion. Yipes...

I see some of the 2002 Cigare Volant at wine-searcher.com is listed as having screw caps. That surprises me. I've always thought of CG as pretty much their top end wine, and I figured they'd hold onto cork for it. Was the bottle you tasted a screw cap?

I don't find this too surprising. It seems like everybody wants to make wine these days, which implies the better grapes are perhaps being siphoned off to make mid and upper range wines. The rest are filling the plonk bottles at Bronco. (I suppose you've heard of Franzia's new $3.99 adventure.) So, maybe he just can't get the kind of quality out of growers who know they can always make a buck by turning their juice into Two Buck Chuck.

Consider the source. 400,000 cases isn't all that much when you figure how many different wines Bonny Doon is producing. You tasted 13, for instance, and I know of many more. Plus, as you noted, he's importing. Now, if he was making 400K cases of Cigare Volant, Cardinal Zin, Sirah Syrah or Madiran Heart of Darkness, I'd be worried. I'll concede that bigger doesn't always mean better, and 20 years ago Bonny Doon was a substantially smaller operation. But I'm not sure that, in this case anyway, size has much to do with it. :)

Spell it "Citron" and it means lemon. Pretty good desciption of that car, if you ask me. LOL! (Ever watch one of those things boot up? The rear end is raised to operating height by some sort of hydraulic drive pump.)

Lots of 2001 still out there. But woo-hoo -- $25? That's what I used to pay for it nine years ago. Lately it's been impossible to find in the Seattle area for under $35. Guess I'll have to start buying direct.

Randall will most likely be in town again for the Rhone Rangers Northwest Tasting on August. 6th. I'm looking forward to that.

JJ

snipped-for-privacy@unspameljefe.net wrote in news:ei9dd1hlke32vupvastmmvgtc57k8rp16g@

Randall is very much screw cap is best see

I used to really like Bonny Doon, but I am now over both them and their wines. It does not help that I got in an argument with the tasting room employees over the availability of a wine that I had. (They claim it wasn't produced in years and that I must have been mistaken, but I later found it on the shelf at a wine shop.) They were also rude and conceited in other ways and the wine just wasn't worth it. I belive entirely that they are having trouble getting good grapes, but I guess that happens when you need enough to make 400,000 cases of wine. My personal suggestion (for which I demand a share of the profit) is that they spin off a premium label and go back to what made them famous using that label. If they can only get 10 tons of great grapes, then use those and market them (and charge for them) appropriately. It might also behoove them to grow more of their own fruit, so that they can maintain control. It sounds like they have already considered that option.

Dimitri

Yes, it was screw cap. I think only the port and some of the Italian wines had corks.

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