PDF file - Bonny Doon Vineyard

Fall/Winterish, 2007Oh, you. So interesting to bump into you here in this altogether different context.Yeah, it’s Randall, from the, y’know, the winery. We have been communicating, that is tosay if you call unilateral ranting and raving in those endless biannual screeds, those ofgreat ah-tistic pretension, communicating, for the last twenty years or so. The newslettershad become very fancy-schmancy, very high-brow, with impeccable production values,brilliant illustrations, the Portrait of the Artist as a Self-published Man. I’d even stoppedbeing so crude to actually mention the fact that we were in the business of selling wine –this was High Art, after all, not base commerce.And so, some increment of sylvan wilderness was deforested, some tree fiberpulped (this is no pulp fiction), some volume of soy inka-dinka doon, to produce thosemany reams of bluesprint. I envisage postal workers’ vehicles idling curbside, as theirmasters, wary of a warm and acuate canine welcome, lurch to the mailbox, gravid withschleppèd Doonian ephemera. Fossil-fuel depletion may thus be added to my karmicoverdraft. All of this and see, oh, too!Bound to Please. 1 I do love the feel of paper, the heft of a bound volume, the reassuringpebbly texture of the cover – I’ll be honest with you – but in some strange way, this airy,weightless electronic communiqué is somehow more intimate. I will likely not agonizinglyrevise, edit and polish with the remote, Olympian obsession of a lapidarist. I’ll simplypress “Send” and Bob’s your uncle. And for the price of a few electrons, you can writeback, if you wish, and we can chat about heptagonal vineyards or what they’re not tellingyou about malolactic fermentation.It is somewhat pro forma in these autumnal communiqués to chat a bit about thevintage, putting the very best face on absolutely everything. We are in fact in the veryfinal throes of a harvest that has seemingly gone on forever. All of the grapes are in(thank God), the whites and pinks still ticking merrily away thanks to the magic ofindigenous yeast 2 and almost all of the reds are already pressed or soon to be so. We1 I am recycling a fairly industry-specific in-joke that I picked up from a former boss of mine, Bill Arnold,who, when tasting wines such as Sauternes or white Graves that were made with very high levels of SO2,both “free” and “total,” would, out of rote compulsion (I’ve picked up the same habit) invariably say, “That’sgot a sulfur that’s bound to please.”2 We have had very good luck for the last couple of years using almost exclusively indigenous yeast.Fermentations are slightly cleaner, tend to go to completion, even the gluconically well-endowed; oneparticular benefit is that indigenous yeasts, because they are building biomass in the creation of successivepopulations, are slightly more inefficient alcohol converters (esp. in red ferments) relative to “cultured” yeast,resulting in wines with more humane levels of ethanol.1

will be tackling our preliminary blends of Cigare in the next week, a prospect that fills mewith equal parts of excitement as well as fear + trembling. This year was not withoutsome challenges. It was remarkably cool (in a climatic sense) and windy in the northernSalinas Valley this season and our own vineyard really struggled to make it to the finishline. Yields were not, shall we say, overly generous. A few of the vineyards from whichwe purchase fruit had a challenging go this year for reasons that are not at all obvious. 3But in general, the overall quality of the vintage appears to be rather marvelous,somewhat across the board. We have adopted some interesting new winemakingtechniques (cf. infra) that are moving our wines in the direction of greater complexity andsoulfulness, an outcome devoutly to be wished.I am hoping to write every two or three months – call it more or less quarterly, withthe latest news from the Doon. This letter will be longer than most because it is has beensuch a long time and there have been so many vast changes since we have spoken.Doon-sizing. The epic and dramatic changes in the company are of course old news, butit wouldn’t hurt to review them ever so briefly for those who may have been absent whenthe relevant material was covered. We sold the Big House and Cardinal Zin brands ayear ago August to The Wine Group and they are going on their merry way. Pacific Rimspun off as an independent company, operating in the Northwest, with a sales andmanagement team independent of Bonny Doon. (I still own it, but am not so activelyinvolved in its operation, being somewhat geographically disenabled, habitating as I dohere in Santa Cruz.) At the peak of production, Bonny Doon was producing anddistributing on the order of 450,000 cases annually, with more than thirty differentproducts (inclusive of our D.E.W.N. club and our imported range from Italy and France); itwas a very complicated enterprise with many moving parts. We are now producingapproximately 35,000 cases annually with no plans for growth (except spiritually) andhaving a lot more fun.Sighs Matters. Why such a vast sea-change? There is a multiplicity of reasons for anyonedoing anything. Certainly the size at which we found ourselves was an extremelychallenging one and I did not have the resources nor the stomach to compete with the verylarge fish that swim in that particular pond. But far more significantly, I found that I wasno longer deriving any real joy from the business. It was too large, the wines were good,some very good, but lacking real distinction, uniqueness and above all, sense of place. Iwas devoting more of my time to sales and marketing and little to winemaking and grapegrowing. I wrote numerous articles and gave speeches about how precious and valuablewas the notion of terroir, the expression of the uniqueness of an individual site, but therewas little in my own work that reflected that ideal. I had discovered and embracedbiodynamic farming in our Soledad vineyard a few years back; I was extremelyfrustrated at the impossibility of bringing the sheer number of contract growers into thefold. It had become urgently necessary for me to bring my beliefs and actions intocongruity.We made those structural changes, doon-sized the company 4 and radically cut ourproduct line – gone many of the “old standards,” but with the clearing 5 came now a3 Most likely cause is the severe drought of last winter, which perhaps overly stressed the vines.4 It was indeed painful for all concerned to lose approximately one half of our staff, some who had beenwith the company for ages.2

possibility for the emergence of something new and extraordinary. 6 What is compellingto me now is to use my rather eclectic experience to produce wines of originality anddistinction, wines that matter, that make the world incrementally more interesting. To feelthat I am aiming at anything less would personally be heartbreaking. 7 But how is one tobegin?Grand Cruz? Apart from thoughts about my lovely and brilliant daughter, Amélie(currently 4.85 years of age), my principal ideational preoccupation for the last two yearshas been: What might a site for a great vineyard in the New World look like, andhow/where am I going to find it? I have been looking for a site to plant grapes in thecentral coast of California for the last several years with the aim of establishing a trulydistinctive and original vineyard. It is not a fulltime occupation of my waking hours, but aquest that bleeds over into my dreams on a fairly regular basis. I have more or lessconcluded that I will need to locate this mysterious place in my dreams before it willsubstantially materialize in that particularly vivid shared dream that we term “reality.” Ihave been so perilously close to “closing” on one property or another, but time and againthere has suddenly and unexpectedly appeared a mild Aeolian gust that has wafted thisor that property just out of reach. 8, 9Green Hectares. I have several important criteria that make the selection processparticularly challenging. I very much want to plant a vineyard that is truly sustainable,that is to say, not requiring external inputs. Therefore, the site has to be large enough topasture animals – this will be a biodynamic farm, after all, but I confess that this prospectis giving rise to visions of Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor. Most significantly, I want to farmthe vineyard without irrigation, dry-farming it is called, and this means finding a site ofsufficient annual rainfall and adequate water-holding capacity in the soil, i.e., a non-trivial5 The most significant “cleansing,” not to get too morbid about it, was the disentanglement from some of ourlong-term grape contracts with growers who would contemplate farming biodynamically essentially whenHell froze over. This is perhaps too important a point to relegate to a footnote but it bears repeating. Thequalitative potential of a wine is only as good as the grapes from which it derives. We are now workingonly with the most exemplary vineyards and with the most progressive growers we can find.6 We received Demeter Biodynamic® certification for our own CDS vineyard last year and that designationwill appear on our labels, beginning with the ’07 vintage. Now, I could talk your ear off about howchallenging it is to grow grapes in Soledad, CA and yet, despite the manifest absurdity of growing grapesin a frigid (except when it’s torrid), windy desert with a slightly saline water supply, the wines that we havereleased made from our own grapes are, may I say, quite fine, if relatively modest in their aspiration. Theyare nervy, mineral intensive and clean, sans maquillage – the vintidote to the gimmicky, tricked-out, over-thetop,so impressive as to be undrinkable wines that currently plague the marketplace.7 If I were to die anytime soon, they would say, “What a great marketer he was!” and that is just notsatisfactory to me, even in observation from the Other Side.8 Quite often, the owner of the property, despite promises to the contrary, suddenly and inexplicablydecides to sell the property to someone else or more commonly, unexpectedly withdraws the property fromsale. There have also been dramatic discoveries of toxic substances cached on the site, the presence ofmultiple endangered species, and a complex assortment of political impedimenta in securing approvals fromthe relevant Kafkaesque Santa Cruz County governmental agencies. Many larger properties seem to beheld in family trusts, the product of multiple generations of familial dysfunction, and the disposition of theproperty requires the agreement of bitterly disputatious siblings. When an owner of a particularlycompelling property tells me that he or she is fairly certain that the property might be offered for sale, butneeds to hold a “family meeting” to finalize a few small details, I have learned to immediately initiate aprocess of deep breathing and meditation with the aim of attaining a Zen-like detachment to any projectedfavorable or unfavorable outcome vis-à-vis the subject property.9 I do imagine a chorus of Greek demiurges having their sport with me.3

amount of clay – not so easy to find around here. When you plant a vineyard with theintent of dry-farming it, you follow a rather different course, bringing it into productionfar more slowly than is typical at least in the New World, and this more or less induces anervous ticcing, almost Tourette-like syndrome among my finance people.Reign of Terroir. For the longest time, I supposed myself to be an “agnostic” on thequestion of the possibility of finding terroir in the New World. I was not in any sense amember of the anti-terroirist brigade, quite the opposite. For me, a wine that captured asense of place was the only wine that was truly “necessary,” incrementally making theworld slightly more interesting, beautiful and just more meaningful as far as creating aconnection between ourselves and the natural world. Yet there appeared to be, at leastat the time, a plethora of fatal impediments to the creation/discovery of a true terroirwine in the New World, and the appearance of something like a New World GreatGrowth nothing less than a real miracle, on the order of American winemakers suddenlyembracing a style of elegance and restraint, permanently parking their vinous SUVs onthe side of the road.Søren Kierkegaard Walks into a Bar… This is in fact the central paradox or perhaps theexistential dilemma facing anyone who is in some sense “serious” about making great ormeaningful wine in the New World. You can try to learn from what others have donesuccessfully or unsuccessfully – which of course is the logical way to proceed. 10 We dosomething very well, maybe diabolically well in the New World, but despite ourvociferous protestations to the contrary, what we do is, I would gently suggest, not aboutterroir. 11 Were one to be really serious about producing an authentic vin de terroir inthese parts, one should be filled with a great and overpowering sense of existential Angstand there should be much gnashing of teeth and rending of garment. The verycornerstone of the proposition of producing great, authentic and original wine is verytenuous, indeed; it is the construction of an elaborate edifice on extremely shifty sand,gravel or perhaps clay loam.Judy, Judy, Judy… The belief in terroir holds that a vigneron might produce a wine thattransparently exposes both the inherent distinguishing qualities of a particular vineyardsite and the unique qualities of the vintage year. The differentiating qualities of the siteand ultimately of the wine, its originality, are most certainly linked with the site’s ability tosolve particular environmental challenges. There are small but telling differences thatdistinguish the site from that of its neighbors, redounding to the clarion-like distinctivenessof the more favored sites. Terroir is about solving environmental challenges and certainlyabout solving them elegantly. In a warm and challenging environment, a great site allowsvines to keep their cool, in a suave, Cary Grant-like kind of way.Elegant and So Intelligent. Put another way, in the Old World, there has co-evolved asort of homeostasis or “learning” between vine and soil under the watchful eye of a humanbeing. Vines have in some sense “taught” soils – certainly through the mediation of theirsymbiotic microbial demiurges, mycorhyzzae, what their specific needs are. Soils (and10 Of course in doing so, you will end up making wines that greatly resemble the ones already in existence,which doesn’t really help you find the path toward true originality.11 New World winemakers are fiendishly successful in the program of producing wines that receive highpoint scores, but this should in no way be confounded with wines of real distinction, in the same way that theability to perform well on examinations should be mistaken for true knowledge or wisdom.4

microclimates) have in some sense taught vines what they might expect over a growingseason. Over many generations a sort of stately, rhythmic dance has emerged. Certainlythe most interesting wines that arise from this dance are the ones that have captured thisdistinctive rhythm or waveform, this unmistakable signature, which we call terroir. My greatdilemma, indeed the dilemma of anyone interested in producing a truly distinctive wine is:How are you going to be so clever/lucky to work out this exquisite balance, this elegantharmonic in the one lamentably brief lifetime that we are given? How might one identifya priori a site that is capable of expressing terroir and real distinction? There is so much tobe doon, and at the same time, so much to be left undoon. 12Goute-à-goute de Terroir. All of our efforts in the New World to “improve” our vines –whether it be through the selection of “superior” clones, the use of deficit drip irrigation orsoil amendments, help us to produce wines of breath-taking consistency and of the “highestquality,” but perversely rob the vines of their originality, soilfulness and soulfulness. In ouraim to improve quality, we obviate the possibility of originality, the essence of a GreatGrowth. We love our dear friends for their uniqueness, their strange quirks, and foibles,their vulnerability, their humanness. In the New World, one finds oneself experiencingwines that are easy to admire but very difficult to love.New World viticulturists live in the culture of control, and this is the single majorstumbling block to the discovery of the truly original. It is a non-sequitur to talk about theterroir of an irrigated vineyard, rather like trying to accurately describe the naturalhistory of an animal by observing its behavior in a zoo. So, if you are sincerely seeking toproduce a wine that expresses terroir, where do you begin? The lessons learned fromgrowing clonally selected, virus-free, irrigated grapes of selected popular varietals, onmodern trellis systems have little applicability to the establishment of a truly originalvineyard.Qi Whiz. A true vin de terroir, whether or not it has been sulfited, whether it is rich intannin or not, high in acid or not, possesses a certain life-force, which I believe is linked insome way to its mineral content, or perhaps to how the minerals in it are held. The lifeforce of a wine, its qi, is its ability to tolerate oxygen, and this is a quality that is easilydemonstrable. A wine with life-force can be opened for days at a time, often for as longas a week, without becoming discernibly oxidized; this just does not seem to happen muchin the New World. Terroir wines, apart from their aesthetic harmony, provoke a certainemotional reaction from us and I think that this is linked to the physical, visceralapprehension of the depth and organization of the wine – again, a link to the earth, andsomething that I believe only comes from wines made from deeply rooted vines whichhave retained an imprint of where they have been. So, the question remains: How to findsomething that is truly authentic, something that truly matters and makes the world richerand happier for its existence? If you are lucky or skilled enough to find it, how do youknow you have found it, especially if its virtues may be utterly opaque to the relevantopinion-makers?Catharsis. I have a friend in the Côtes du Rhône by the name of Philippe Viret, whopractices something called “cosmoculture” and I think that perhaps he is making among the12 Undoon in the sense of not “messed” with, adjusted, tweaked, obsessively controlled, revised, redactedand rearranged, as had for a long time (but no longer) been our wont.5

most distinctive wines in the world. Philippe does not use any treatments or fertilizers in hisvineyard at all. He employs what are called “cosmic pipes,” not something to be smokedas one would imagine here in Santa Cruz, but rather, essentially stone menhirs,strategically situated throughout his vineyard, the better to balance the energetic field ofhis domaine, as a kind of “viticultural acupuncture.” Philippe’s father, Alain, is a “sensitive,”a water-witch, who has been able to identify the significant energetic vortices on the siteof the domaine. The winery itself, which has been constructed from formidably massivelimestone blocks, is configured at the confluence of two extremely powerful energeticvectors. The scale and geometry of the winery has of course been precisely calculated foroptimal harmony, and one cannot escape the feeling that you have inadvertentlywandered into some sort of mystically powerful Druidic edifice.Gnoserie (Bob). Philippe uses no SO2 in his wines at all, neither for red, white or pink,and what is truly remarkable is that the wines can be open for as long as a week, andthey just don’t oxidize. I must confess to a somewhat strange and disquieting sensationwhen I visit the Virets. Coming from Santa Cruz, I am of course no stranger to what onemight call New Age methodologies. Maybe it is the fact of being in southern France,historic home of the Gnostics, Cathars, and Kabbalists of all stripe, but when I visit with theVirets, I can’t help but feel more than a little like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. I feel utterlyunworthy that they seem to be sharing the Secrets of the Universe with the likes of me.They are definitely practicing a sort of alchemy, and I feel a sort of implicit “Do NotAttempt this at Home At the Risk of Inadvertently Precipitating the Potential Heat Death ofthe Universe”-like quality to their work.Clos but No Cigare. I am currently working through my own issues – fear of commitment,fear of failure, etc. – as far as the potential identification of a great vineyard site here inCalifornia. I sincerely doubt that I will ever possess the psychic sensitivity of someone likeM. Viret père, required to fully apprehend the subtle energetic potential of a particularsite; I will never be able to see with a sorcerer’s eyes. Yet I still feel that there is a crucialbalance to be struck between the scientific or “objective” assessment of a site’s potentialand the more personal, emotive or spiritual apprehension of its suitability. Those whomthe gods favor will find that there will be a perfect congruence between the objectivefactors – wonderfully textured, geologically distinctive, limestone soils, for example, withadequate rainfall for dry-farming, and the hauntingly compelling subjective features – alandscape that feels like home, the feeling of safety or wholeness that one experienceswhen one observes a site that is also a clos, an enclosure, a proper domaine.There is an interesting point of divergence between orthodox terroirists, who mighthold that a great terroir is a great terroir in a sort of eternal, timeless sense, independentof the human beings who exploit it, and the more humanistic view that would suggest thatterroir requires not just the human presence, but a specific human presence. Unless aspecific human being is capable of resonating with his terroir, the discussion of terroir iseffectively moot. An indispensable element of terroir might be the deep emotional andpsychic connection that the grower has established with his or her land. A winegrowermust absolutely and unconditionally love his or her vineyard. Whether love conquers apotassium deficiency for me remains somewhat of an open question.Ars longa, vitis brevis. A grand cru is great because its terroir has a unique and sublimeorganization; the parts – the vines, soil and human presence – fit together to create a6

seamless homeostatic feedback loop. Some iterative mechanisms over multiplegenerations, certainly massal selection 13 being one of them, have been in play for thisorganized entity to have evolved, for the living, vegetative element to have synchronizedwith the more static hardscape. So, the question is: How can one learn enough in a singlelifetime to bring to light a vineyard of great distinction? What can be done to acceleratethe process of learning and adaptation?Resergence or Poly-Sci. I very recently spent a day in New York 14 with my friend, SergeHochar, the proprietor of Chateau Musar in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, discussing thesethings. I had last seen Serge a few years back in Spain and at that time we had a verylong, speculative discussion about whether the geometric configuration of the vineyarditself might have an effect on grape quality, possibly from the standpoint of optimal solarreception or from considerations of a more subtle, energetic level. Serge had read anarticle claiming that vineyards planted on a heptagonal 15 scheme would be particularlywell-favored. After I returned to the States, the image of heptagons began to burn in mybrain. My desk was littered with heptagons and other shapes that I had cut out ofpaper, 16 in an effort to find an elegant way to array them. I searched the internet to tryto find the article that Serge had mentioned but to no avail. (I did find interesting articleson crop circles – maybe not a bad place to start – and on various obscure heptagonalmolecules.) I attempted several times to reach Serge to follow up on our discussion but thiscoincided with a time of great emergency in his country and I was just not able to makethe connection. I was very pleased to now see Serge well and in good spirits. After wehad talked a while, I dumped out my bag of paper heptagons on the table. We spent acouple of hours moving the strange shapes around until a rather elegant, indeedcompellingly beautiful pattern began to emerge. I know from this point forward, that itwill effectively be impossible for me to plant a vineyard in straight lines. I am keen on thenotion of a real polyculture (the better to complement polygons), a proper ecosystem. Idon’t know yet how I can defend the staggering inefficiency of what it is that I amenvisioning, but this dream-vineyard will be rather like a labyrinth and its core will bepenetrated – in much the way that I am essaying to locate the site itself – by a rather nonlinearpath.Seedy Business. I have yet another idea that may be utterly mad, but equally, may bethe most inspired, revolutionary, if enormously impractical viticultural practice evercontemplated: Why not grow grapes from seedlings, that is to say, collect the seeds fromthe fruit that one has harvested and then germinate them, selecting for characteristics that13 The selection and propagation of individual vines from a given site that seem to be particularly wellsuitedto that site, (in contradistinction to clonal selection).14 Serge was there for The New York Wine Experience, an event sponsored by the Wine Spectator, to whichI had been disinvited a few years back. We sat in one of the restaurants of the Marriot Marquis Hotel,drinking endless cups of tea and moving the heptagons around, with illustrious viterati flitting around us. Ofcourse some part of me was unhappy not to have been included in the event as a pourer or speaker, butbeing there, as invisible as a ghost, trying to at least conceive of a higher plane – the paper piecesarraying themselves as if by magic – felt exactly right.15 The most mysterious of all polygons and perhaps the deepest of all numbers as far as spiritual resonance– it generally does not play well with others, that is to say, array well with other polygons, at least in twodimensions.16 My daughter, Melie also caught the bug and she has been drawing and cutting out polygons like there isno tomorrow. She recently mentioned the word “polygon” in conversation to a woman who was sitting acrossfrom us at a Winemaker Dinner and the woman was mightily impressed.7

one deems appropriate? One should immediately bear in mind that there is a reason why99.99% of grapevines on the planet are planted from vegetative cuttings, rather thanfrom seeds. Apart from the fact that it is orders of magnitude easier to propagate fromcuttings, the cutting or daughter plant remains genetically true to the mother plant, so ifone likes the characteristics of the vine that one observes, a cutting will enable you toreplicate it. Conversely, taking the seeds from a plant will utterly and randomly re-assortall of the genetic material that is in the vine’s DNA but is not expressed. So, a red grapelike pinot noir will yield progeny that are mostly red, but also white and pink andeverywhere in between, some with thicker skins, some with thinner, some very productive,some not at all, ad infinitum.Going Deep. This is a very, very ambitious project and it rests on a couple of coreassumptions the validity of which are essentially unknowable until the deed is doon, as itwere. The first is the belief that the wine produced from grapes grown from a largenumber of genetically distinctive vines, none or few possessing “superior” characteristics,will in fact be more interesting and complex than a vineyard planted to relatively fewgenotypes, all possessing highly favorable characteristics. The second, perhaps moreprovocative belief is that the rooting characteristics of vines grown from seeds allow oneto render a much more amplified and perhaps distinctive expression of terroir. 17 Whyshould this be the case? Vines grown from seeds exhibit a much higher degree ofgeotropism, or the tendency to form a taproot, growing straight down to China. You cancertainly observe this in the volunteer plants that pop up in one’s garden which havegerminated from seed. A vine with a more downward rooting habit will root moredeeply, possibly exploit a wider range of minerals, and by my surmise, would make avastly hardier, drought-resistant plant.Middlesex. To be utterly rigorous, one would begin with non-grafted vines planted on thesite, with the widest possible range of clones and subvarieties. When these vines comeinto production and the seeds are harvested, approximately one half of the seedlings willbe sterile, being either “male” or “female” and thus not capable of pollinating themselves;these would then be discarded on the slag-heap of viticultural history. The offspring will,of course, only resemble their parents tenuously, and yet, there should be a certainfamilial resonance and harmony, if one considers this ragtag collection of vines as aunitary entity. This may well be an irrational belief, but I imagine that there is somethingtransformative in the production of seeds; that the mother plant may impart some words ofwisdom to her children. “It doesn’t rain in California, at least in the summer,” she whispers.“Don’t exert yourselves and grow too vigorously, too abundantly in the springtime; it is along, dry stretch until October.”In this project is the profound opportunity for a grower to take advantage of thestunning richness and diversity of nature, expressed in the potential of a seed, to equip apopulation of vines to respond to a particular set of environmental challenges. What ismost compelling to me is the chance for a human being to employ his intelligence to makemultiple, discriminating, empirical judgments as far as what assortment of vines seem to bemost harmonious and congruent to the creation of a wine that speaks most personally tohim. There is a lovely open-endedness and scale to the project that perfectly suits my own17 There is a doon-side to this of course, as there always is. Grapes grown from seeds will push adventitiousshoots, known as “suckers,” from under the soil surface, essentially for their entire lifetime. This anima, ordark side of the proposition must be embraced of course, or one will drive oneself crazy.8

slightly eclectic and obsessive/compulsive personality. I love the fact that I do not knowwhere the project will ultimately go, and that the road there will be a very, very slow andmeandering one.Eye an Aura or Kristall Knocked. The mantra at Bonny Doon, as you may have divined is:How can one optimally reflect the terroir of a particular site 18 (assuming that one has thewit to have previously identified a site capable of expressing terroir)? The other aspectof this is: Absent an individuated site, what can be done to optimize the harmony andbalance of a given wine and to augment that wine’s vitality or “life-force,” i.e. the abilityto age well and tolerate oxidation? Yes, this is Santa Cruz, an excellent spot to haveone’s aura read (or red), one’s chakras adjusted, one’s karma road-tested. I got the ideafrom Philippe Viret, (cf. supra), who lined some of his older wooden tanks with cement intowhich he had mixed fine quartz crystals. We took Philippe’s idea one step further andembedded rather large, beautiful clear and rose quartz crystals 19 on the sides of thewalls in a pleasant, regular sinusoidal pattern and then covered them up with anotherlayer of plaster. 20 Cement tanks are profoundly old-fangled – believed by some to beexceptionally difficult to clean to the level of hygienic rigor demanded by the ModernWinemaker. For me, they seem to represent the return of the wine to at least one of itsoriginal elements, earth, of course – an element which we are trying our best to captureand express in our wines. In candor, I cannot say whether the crystals will do any realgood, 21 nor even whether cementing the sides of the tanks will ultimately prove feasible.But there is no question in my mind that if one is really intent on making wines that areprofoundly different (as we are), one must go about making them in a rather unorthodoxway, willing to risk appearing to be very foolish. On the subject of foolishness, it appearsthat we failed to get a photo of the quartz crystals as they were being immured, 22 so youwill have to simply use your imagination to visualize this beautiful array.18 Of course having a site would be an excellent way to begin.19 Being the rigorous empiricist that I am, one tank has been treated with clear quartz, one with rose, onewith a combination of the two and of course one with none at all. There are also some magical runicsymbols cunningly and strategically insinuated on the floor of the tanks, though their efficacy is likelyunascertainable.20 Working in a small confined place with a plasterer on a somewhat occult mission does seem to bring upcertain deep, atavistic fear of immurement and E.A. Poe’s Cask of Amontillado is never far from mind.21 We have just days ago pressed out the grapes in the cement tanks. While matters appeared a littledicey at times during the fermentation (don’t ask), the resultant wine appears to have far more depth andcomplexity than similar lots fermented in stainless steel, a vessel that has all the feel-good warmth of say,Rutger Hauer. We will perform sensitive crystallizations on both lots and I am confident that realdifferences will be visible.22 But the wine remembers.9

Going with the Flow. On the subject of unorthodox methodologies, we have taken theopportunity to incorporate biodynamic techniques into our winemaking process as well.One such technique is biodynamic stirring, said to dynamize a liquid, or render itsenergetic configuration more orderly and capable of transmitting information, water’s“memory,” as it is called. We are using a “flow-form” 23 in the process of déléstage, whenduring fermentation, the fermenting juice is removed from the tank (allowing the cap toheat up nicely) and then is reintroduced over the top. Preliminarily, it does appear as ifthe wines treated with the flow-form are more backward, less open, seemingly possessedof greater reductive capacity, a datum which greatly warms my heart.23 The flow-form device looks a little bit like a Marcel Duchamp-like multi-tiered urinal, or water-sculpture,depending on your point of view.10

In Conclusion. It is particularly difficult to communicate the profundity of the sea-changethat has occurred both in myself personally and within Bonny Doon Vineyard. I would likenothing better than to trot out a wondrous Estate vineyard to buttress my case. Failingthat, I invite you to re-taste the wines if you haven’t in a while, especially the ones thathave come from our own vineyard, Ca’del Solo; perhaps you will then get a sense of howmuch we have grown to esteem “frank” wines, wines ungimmicked, un-tricked up, moreclosely linked to the vineyards from which they are derived. 24 Indeed, for me, the twinvirtues of transparency and soulfulness are what I am seeking most assiduously to renderin our wines. 25 The recent vintages of Cigare, beginning with the ’03, and the CentralCoast Syrah “Le Pousseur” (the ’05 makes me weep in joy for its familial resemblance toCornas) are so much closer to the wines of my dreams – wines of real substance andcoherence. Then of course there is Le Vol des Anges – from the Boy Who Cried Roussannehimself, ironically enough – an absolutely exquisite botrysized roussanne, which is far andaway the best sweet wine we have ever made. For now I will close here and thank you foryour support and patronage through all of our ups and doons. Please feel free to writeme at randall@bonnydoonvineyard.com with any thoughts or questions about our newdirection that are burning with urgent prismatic incandescence.With very best wishes for the holidays and beyond,24 We are not yet producing real vins de terroir in our blended wines, viz. Cigare and Syrah “Le Pousseur”,which derive from multiple vineyards but there is no question that the recent vintages have far more lifeforce,complexity and ageworthiness than vintages past.25 I will certainly follow up in the next communiqué with more detail, but beginning with the current vintage,we will essay to provide something like ingredient labeling on all of our bottlings. It is quite a trickyproposition, as you might imagine, as the TTB does not show particular sensitivity to the subtle ontologicaldistinction between ingredients used in the processing of the wine (oak chips, or even oak barrels) and those(sulfur dioxide, for example) that more permanently repose in the wine. But, it seems that we havesuccessfully muddled through the label approval process and barring a last minute change of heart from theagency, you will begin to see ingredients listed early next year.11