2020 Bonny Doon ''Vin Gris de Cigare'' Rosé, Central Coast, California, USA
ABOUT THIS WINE:
The Grenache came in large part from bespoke sections of the Alta Loma Vineyard, a cool climate site in the Arroyo Seco region of Monterey County that gives grapes with a distinctive black currant character. A substantial percentage of the wine is composed of the elegant Grenache Blanc variety, adding a lovely richness and foundation to the wine. The Cinsaut,... ah, a delicate cherry top note. They also employed the practice of post-fermentation bâtonnage—the stirring or re-suspension of yeast lees—to give the wine a certain creaminess of texture.
ABOUT THIS PRODUCER:
While Bonny Doon Vineyard began with the (in retrospect) foolish attempt to replicate Burgundy in California, Randall Grahm realized early on that he would have far more success creating more distinctive and original wines working with Rhône varieties in the Central Coast of California. The key learning here (achieved somewhat accidentally but fortuitously) was that in a warm, Mediterranean climate, it is usually blended wines that are most successful. In 1986 Bonny Doon Vineyard released the inaugural vintage (1984) of Le Cigare Volant, an homage to Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and this continues as the winery’s flagship/starship brand.
Since then, Bonny Doon Vineyard has enjoyed a long history of innovation – the first to truly popularize Rhône grapes in California, to successfully work with cryo-extraction for sundry “Vins de Glacière, the first to utilize microbullage in California, the first to popularize screwcaps for premium wines, and, quite significantly, the first to embrace true transparency in labeling with its ingredient labeling initiative. The upside of all of this activity has brought an extraordinary amount of creativity and research to the California wine scene; the doon-side, as it were, was perhaps an ever so slight inability to focus, to settle doon, if you will, into a single, coherent direction.
Since early 2004, Bonny Doon has adopted Biodynamic viticulture and biodynamic practices in as many of thge vineyards as practicable. (Biodynamic seems to work best when it is voluntarily adopted, not something that is taken up coercively.) Because they work with fairly esoteric grape varieties, it has not always been possible to find growers of these varieties who are equally passionate about Biodynamic practice. It has been an ongoing work to try to lead by example, and Bonny Doon is hopeful of eventually bringing 100% of their growers to the practice out of their own sincere interest. Bonny Doon believes this practice gives them the best opportunity to produce the most distinctive and interesting, and in a word, the most vibrant wines possible.