Stuart Pigott's Planet Wine

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about turbulence, not least because of the storm this week on Facebook. This question was already on my mind, because I’ve been reading Michael A. Singer’s extraordinary book about spiritual development, The Untethered Soul (New Harbinger, 2007). In everyday language he expounds the key beliefs and practices of Eastern Religions, including Buddhism. Few readers realize it, but I’m a practicing Buddhist and therefore many of his ideas were familiar to me. However, the way he explains how internal and external turbulence disrupt the centered awareness that allows us the possibilities of spiritual development gripped me, because it is so clear and simple. Each of is almost continuously faced with the choice of giving in to the influence of turbulence or of letting go of our egos and all the baggage they laden us down with.

This week, the first after my return to NYC, there was a lot of external turbulence as a result of something I said in an interview with a journalist from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the German equivalent of the New York Times for the Sunday edition of which I have written a column since September 2001. The interview was first published in November 2015 in the print edition and nobody took any notice of four words about my daily reading habits: “Weinblogs? Um Gottes willen!” wine blogs, oh God no thanks! Then a few days ago the interview was also published in the online edition of the newspaper (for German speakers the link is below) and the shit hit the fan big time.

Some people – mostly bloggers, others merely active Facebook members – immediately assumed I was dismissing all wine blogs as rubbish, others went even further and accused me of adopting an aggressive position in The Great Print vs Internet War. Neither of these things was true. All I was saying is that there’s a bunch of boring and stupid wine blogs, just as there’s a bunch of boring and stupid stuff about all kinds of other subjects on the internet. However, that didn’t prevent certain people from demonizing me as an anti-blogger, fascistic asshole. Others jumped to my defense, and I thank them.

This controversy attracted the attention of internet journalist Patrick Meier in Frankfurt and yesterday on his site blogg.de he published an interview with me in which I clarified exactly what I’d meant by those four words in the FAZ. His questions were concise and precise, and the interview therefore fully reflects my opinions. However, it’s publication only unleashed another wave of turbulence on Facebook. This time the main accusation was that I was praising this blog and denigrating all other bloggers. Actually, I never made any claims about the quality of this blog (the postings are obviously of mixed quality) and was only trying to fairly assess and describe the quality of the reporting on wine on the Internet. I’ve been the object of controversies any number of times, so that didn’t bother me. One thing did though, and that was how several well-meaning colleagues who are very active on Facebook asked me not to post anything more on the subject. Yesterday, I felt compelled to reply with the following statement on Facebook that deserves to be repeated here in full:

Several people told me during the last days that I should shut my trap and not express the opinions I hold. There is a nasty name for this and it is SELF-CENSORSHIP and all dictatorships rely on this to function, even if they also have censors. In an open society where there are no censors self-censorship is more insidious, undermining freedom of speech in ways that are invisible or almost invisible. It is a rot that quickly spreads. There is no way that I can go along with that, and for that reason I answered all Patrick Meier’s questions.

To my own astonishment I remained calm during this latter disturbance, and put that down to the influence of The Untethered and the daily practice it prodded me into resuming after a break of some years. Lastly, I must thank German wine blogger Dirk Würtz (one of the best wine bloggers around) for pointing out to the angry people on Facebook, “es ist nur Wein!” it’s only wine! I’d call those other four words fair comment, and in this positive spirit I will drink some Rieslings today and report on them as usual.

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/stil/essen-trinken/ein-weinkritiker-der-keine-weinblogs-mag-13943356.html

A lot of people think that my life is just one amazing dinner and wine tasting after another, and that nothing I experience is ever less than completely awesome. I don’t want to let you down with a bump, but the truth is that a lot of the time I’m kept busy by PR people with the job of making rather unremarkable and over-priced products look like they’re of enormous significance and a steal too. Sometimes I do get lucky though, and Saturday night was one of those genuinely inspiring moments, although it didn’t look like it was going to be that stunning when at 7pm I arrived at a pop-up restaurant in what looked like an art gallery on a dingy street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The email invitation I received told me that this was the NYC guest appearance of an avant-garde restaurant in Vancouver, BC (British Columbia) called The Acorn, and that just like in their beautiful home town they would be serving a seriously vegetarian menu. The invitation deliberately didn’t shout out the V-word, but in the end what was served was indeed a vegan meal. However, that really isn’t the point at all. What I tasted at Exhibit C, an exciting space for culinary and other arts at 88 Eldridge Street, was a breathtaking exploration of the gastronomic possibilities of vegetables and the fermented juice of the grape in BC. Even when a dish involved ingredients I’m rather familiar with like pumpkin (see the photo above), Shira Blustein and Robert Clarke of The Acorn always found an angle that I hadn’t thought of. In the case of the dish pictured above, slow-cooked squash was dusted with ground pumpkin seeds, pepper and cumin adding far more to the experience than a mere seasoning.

This sequence of dishes wouldn’t have been as stunning as it was without the complementary BC wines that sommelier Kurtis Kolt had picked. The star of these was the 2012 Riesling from Tantalus not only accompanied the flavors of the slow-poached and glazed carrots (the unpretentious, but delicious first dish of the menu), it’s lemon curd and salty-mineral character set them alight. This may not be a “big” wine, but on the other hand it’s certainly not light-weight. It also isn’t bone dry, but neither is it by any stretch of the imagination sweet. BC wine often has a radical freshness and a remarkable ability to defy the conventional categories of taste. This was a perfect example of that phenomenon! Of course, the label of this wine (like all the Tantalus wines) features a mask from one of the indigenous tribes of this part of North America. What winery in the US would dare to do that? None Instead, their labels are either cool, but hopelessly dull imitations of French/Italian classics, or they do things like feature machete-wielding nubile young women in a half-hearted nod to Tarantino. Sorry, but neither of those things excite me.

At their NYC pop-up The Acorn delighted me with each dish they served, but their variations of the Bassica family, pictured above, blew my mind. I am not a restaurant critic and I feel obliged to point out that this is not a restaurant review, not even a pop-up restaurant review. I must also point out that there are no points, stars or any other kind of symbols on offer here. The reason for these things is that the conventions of restaurnat reviewing no less than those ranking systems make it more difficult for you the reader to grasp what an exciting restaurant or winemaker are actually doing. This dish did was conjure an entire spectrum of aromas and flavors from one of the least loved and appreciated vegetables. A lot of chefs have tried to do that, also for the cabbage family, but it never stirred me before as this combination of rosemary roasted red cabbage, pickled cabbage and roasted cauliflower did. The textural contrasts were no less exciting than the flavor contrasts, but there was nothing self-consciously intellectual about this dish (or any of the other dishes), it just tasted simultaneously complex and satisfying. That’s a darned good reason to head to the airport and get on a plane to Vancouver RIGHT NOW!

Dear chefs of America, please prove me wrong if I am wrong, but it seems to me that The Acorn is a highly inventive vegetarian restaurant of a kind lacking in the USA. At no point during the evening did I feel even the slightest pang of longing for meat or fish of any kind. That was an experience I only had three times before, which means The Acorn is something very remarkable, even within the creative context of Vancouver. I got lucky that they came to NYC when I was here, and Kurtis Kolt thought of asking me if I could come. NYC got lucky that Exhibit C provided an ideal frame for this introduction to the world of BC food and wine here in the city. I went along expecting to be interested and I came away totally amazed. It is these rare experiences that make my job not only worth doing, but a luxury!

For more information go to:

www.theacornrestaurant.ca

www.exhibitc.co

I was seriously distracted for about a week after arriving in Europe, and this caused a delay in writing and posting this second story about Randall Grahm. That was unhelpful, because the first story (scroll down to read about his Le Cigare Volant reds) attracted a lot of attention. Here it finally is! Please note that unlike the photos accompanying the first story, this one was supplied by Bonny Doon Vineyard.

For me there never was any doubt that Randall Grahm (the winemaker of Bonny Doon Vineyard of Santa Cruz since it’s foundation in 1983) is not only a rock star winemaker, but that he is also the first American Rock Star Winemaker I ever met. In the first of these two stories I compared him to Neil Young, because of the latter’s talent for radically and brilliantly reinterpreting his old songs. Randall was a bit taken aback by this characterization and suggested that maybe Franz Zappa was a better comparison. I found that an interesting thought, and I certainly get the comparison when I think of Zappa’s often brilliant and sometimes seriously crazed early material: “I’m a rock!” However, when I think about some of Frank’s later numbers like Titties and Beer, then – thankfully! – I don’t see any comparison at all with Randall and his wines.

Although Randall and his wines are often misunderstood, there’s no avoiding the fact that he has a certain reputation for his red wine, even if they are usually judged not to belong to CA’s first league. And he used to have quite a reputation for white wines when he was transforming the Pacific Rim from a Riesling brand (first vintage 1991) into a Riesling winery, and finally a major force in Washington State and American Riesling. Then he sold Pacific Rim to Banfi Vintners at the very beginning of 2011 and his white wine profile took a hit. A few insiders and his loyal are well aware that, for example, Bonny Doon producing the best dry white Albarino in America. However, most of the American wine scene put Randall firmly in the red-wine-guy-with-fun-products pigeonhole where he’s remained stuck ever since. The white side of the Bonny Doon went from obscure to virtually unknown, and now resembles an Atlantis of CA white wine!

For this reason I decided to taste the white and rosé wines Randall recently sent me samples of by themselves. I figured that I should give them a chance to come out of the shadow cast by the reds, and as soon as I began tasting I realized that I made the right decision. I’m going to focus on just three of those wines here, because they seem to me to add up to a strong argument for regarding Randall as a seriously talented CA white winemaker with a unique vision. The 2012 Vin Gris de Cigare Reserve was aged on the lees (deposit of fermentation yeast) in the 5 gallon glass demijohns you can see behind Randall in the photo, and that has given this pale and barely pink-tinged rosé a totally different personality from the fresher and more fruit-driven, but also bone-dry, regular bottling of Vin Gris de Cigare. The 2012 Vin Gris de Cigare Reserve the closest thing to a Bandol Rosé I ever tasted from anywhere in America. At once creamy, savory and pithy with just a hint of funk (most of all in the aftertaste) this is a wine that lives from its complex textural qualities and whatever associations its non-fruity character awakens in you. I felt myself transported back to the beautiful town of Collioure on the coast of Roussillon, France (admittedly a long distance to the west of Bandol, but in the same climatic zone). Either you will love this wine or you will hate it and – on your knees – beg for a bottle of fruity, fresh, spritzy rosé with a dollop of sweetness!

Those demijohns also worked their magic on the 2011 Le Cigare Blanc Reserve and together with the blend of 62% Grenache Blanc (a grossly underrated white grape for CA) and 38% Roussanne have resulted in a great dry white. With its hazelnut and flinty aromas, it is about as far removed from Riesling – the “home territory” of this blog – as you can get, but I found it totally distinctive, the textural and savory qualities even more fascinating than those of the Vin Gris de Cigare Reserve. It is also extremely well-balanced in bone-dry, mid-weight style (with just 12.5% alcohol) that is very rare in CA. The nutty-lemony aftertaste drew my hand back to the glass for more, which is the real test of any wine! The 2011 Le Cigare Blanc Beeswax Vineyard is broadly similar, but with a smoother and more polished personality than the Reserve version. It is also more fruity with a ripe melon aroma that I found very appealing. This is a very well-conceived and executed wine that is certainly not mainstream, but it is a little bit more conventional and was therefore a shade less exciting for this seeker of uniqueness.

I strongly urge you to seek out these and the other white and rosé wines from Bonny Doon Vineyard, because they are all more or less striking and they also offer great value for money. Visit Atlantis now!

An Initiative of Stuart Pigott, Manuela Sporbert and Jürgen Hammer

Now is the time for more democracy in the world of wine, and to reject the recent spread of rigid ideologies. The pleasure of wine is free – each person with their own taste and preferences – and dogma is the exact opposite of that!

Don’t misunderstand us, we’re also against the irresponsible use of chemistry and high-tech in the vineyard and cellar; we’re also opposed to the industrialization of wine production in the cause of profit-maximization. The movement that reacted against them – whatever name you decide to give it – has enriched the world of wine with many fascinating new and new interpretations of old wine styles. However, sometimes it has provided the basis for dogmatic ideas. Those who spread this poison ignore the fact many wine producers who do not fit into any of the now fashionable categories have also turned away from the use of chemical fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, cultured yeast for fermentation, etc. The levels of sulfites generally added to wine today, even mass-produced wines, is now well below what it was one or two generations ago. This too, is real progress! Of course, organic and biodynamic viticulture  are more systematic and serious expressions of the desire to bring wine production back into step with ecology. The growth in these categories is cause for optimism.

A growing group of winemakers have taken a more extreme path, letting nature take it’s course in the cellar, sometimes without in any way influencing how the result tastes. Turning the fascinating ideal of “natural” wines (no wine is really natural, since wine is always the product of human intervention) into alcoholic beverages that not only taste strikingly different, but also lack basic flaws is not an easy task. Once Francois Mitjavile of Tertre Rotebeuf said something very important to me: “too much human influence and the wine tastes totally boring, too much nature and you end up with vinegar, but where exactly is the right point between these extremes? That isn’t easy to say.” Does the fact that a wine is “natural” excuse an excess of volatile acidity (vinegar), a mousy aroma or extremely high histamine content? We don’t think so.

For us, the decisive thing about wine is style, and achieving that requires a winemaker who gently guides her or his wines in a particular direction without falsifying its inherent character. Whether she or he uses, for example, sulfites (legal in Germany since 1497!), barrique barrels or concrete eggs is a question of style, not a moral issue. All winemaking requires technology, and the amphora is just an ancient winemaking technology that has once again become an option in the modern cellar. The great French oenologist Jules Chauvet once said to his friend the Swiss winemaker Hans Ulrich Kesselring, “wine is science and sensuality.” Chauvet is a guru for many natural winemaker and we applaud both his honesty and open-mindedness. In this spirit we say, #gowinefreestyle

This is South Dakota author and buffalo rancher Dan O’Brien at the reading from his new book Wild Idea he gave at the Patagonia store on Columbus Avenue. Of course, the main focus of this blog is wine, and when it considers landscapes it is therefore mostly vineyard landscapes that it deals with. However, every landscape is also an ecosystem, even if many of the world’s vineyard landscapes are what I would call dysfunctional ecosystems, because man has so radically manipulated them. Mostly, vines grow were there was once forest or scrub, and if nothing is growing between the rows of grape vines or only a single plant species (seeded by man) grows between them, then the bio-diversity is very low with correspondingly negative results for soil and vine health. No wonder so many grape growers (not all organic or biodynamic) are now encouraging the growth of complex communities of “weeds” in their vineyards to combat this problem. However, the ecosystem of the Cheyenne River Valley where Dan O’Brien ranches buffalo on a square plot of land eight miles on each side is still pretty close to what it would have been before the white man arrived on the scene (except for the absence of wolves). That is another situation entirely to any vineyard I know on Planet Wine! As he said of his company Wild Idea (!), “biodiversity is our main product and buffalo meat is a delicious byproduct!”

This in itself would have made Dan fascinating enough for me, but we also go back quite a long way. Back in 2004 I read his autobiographical Buffalo for the Broken Heart and was so fascinated by its insights into the world of the Great Plains that I contact him and asked if I could visit. During the first days of October 2005 I travelled to South Dakota for the first time and stayed for a couple of days at Dan’s ranch about an hour’s drive from Rapid City in the Buffalo Gap National Grassland. That’s where I took the picture below.

Of course, this is what most of us would call the Wild West. My trip to South Dakota with photographer Vuk Karadzik and driver Dr. Doom the Optimist turned into a pretty wild ride due to the tensions between them, the sudden and unexpected arrival of arctic winter conditions and my puzzling sickness. Only after I left the Dakotas did I discover that I had been ill with West Nile Virus. No wonder that after a long afternoon of Dan’s ranch in biting cold wind even standing under a hot shower for half an hour didn’t make me feel any warm. However, the amazing burgers made from his ground buffalo meat that Dan grilled for us that night warmed all our hearts. They had the most intense and original taste of any meat I have ever eaten, and unlike some of the steaks from Wild Idea, this is not an expensive delicacy. That’s what Dan’s referring to when he says that Americans should eat, “red meat but less of it. Buffalo meat is healthy us and for the Great Plains.” Unfortunately, much of the buffalo meat sold in the US is from animals that were fattened up with GMO crops in feed lots, then slaughtered in big industrial facilities. In contrast, Dan’s herd (pictured below) eat only indigenous plants, receive no additional feed, are harvested on the range and also butchered there in small mobile slaughterhouses. This is an uncompromising approach, but it avoids supporting industrial agriculture in the form of those GMO crops, and the herbicides sprayed on them (to which they have been genetically manipulated to be resistant to). To order buffalo meat from Wild Idea go to: http://wildideabuffalo.com

These are all beautiful images, but I feel that it’s my responsibility not to dodge the truth, rather to point out to you that “harvested on the range” means shot at close range with a high-powered rifle, “one inch behind the ear and one inch below the ear.” Then the animal dies instantly and drops where it was standing without experiencing any pain. I know that, because I was present when this was done and I saw everything. Inevitably, there is plenty of blood and if you are squeamish about blood DO NOT SCROLL DOWN from here to the next image. If, on the other hand you wanted to see that truth, then you should scroll head down straight awy. I should point out that I am sometimes a bit squeamish about anything except animals or people that are suffering, not that I look away (never!) but they can turn my stomach, so I have complete understanding if the image below is not for you. I show it hear, because one of my fundamental principals is to face unpleasant truths, or #unpleasanttruths as I call them on twitter.

Dan O’Brien not only speaks about his passion for buffalo and the eco-system of which they are such a vital part with great conviction and earthy eloquence, he also writes about those same subjects extremely well. Part of me is a little envious of the quiet confidence with which he finds such fitting words to describe the dramatic sights and sounds of the Great Plains, and his feelings about them. I think my writing must look a bit flashy and over-thought in comparison, maybe even uncertain and hesitant compared to his. However, if this is the case it is part of who I am. Let’s face it, the best writers are those who, like Dan O’Brien, write themselves. I haven’t yet read his new book, Wild Idea (Bison Books, 2014), but on the strength of his NYC reading I feel sure this is another classic from this remarkable man that captures the essence of the complex grass-based Great Plains ecosystem and his part in it.

PS what I have revealed above of my trip to the Dakotas in 2005 is on the tip of the iceberg. Sadly, that story was so far only published in the German language. Please be patient! At some point during the next year I hope to publish something in my e-book series ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA on the subject of the Dakotas.

This is how most of the wine scene and the wine-drinking public see Randall Grahm, but who is the “court jester” of Californian wine really? And are his wines as “sunny” and “fun” as they are made out to be, or do they taste very different from what most people imagine? Answering those questions requires me to tell quite a story!

Let me straight be with you, for me Randall Grahm (vintage 1953) of Bonny Doon Vineyard in Santa Cruz, California was the first American rock star winemaker, and for that reason alone I always get a thrill when someone pours me a glass of his Le Cigare Volant red, a blend of grape varieties that originated in the French section of the Rhône Valley. The label is based on an old engraving of a French château surrounded by vineyards to which the graphic designer added a cigar-shaped UFO floating in the sky that’s firing a dangerous looking red ray into the vines. There’s quite story behind this about the town of Chateauneuf du Pape in the Rhône banning UFOs from landing, but it was Randall’s genius that turned this story into this unique label (scull down to eyeball it). It was quite a shock to see it the first time in 1986 in a San Francisco wine bar. “This is something really new from California!” the server said to me as he poured me a big glass of 1984 Le Cigare Volant, the first vintage. It tasted nothing like the heavy, oaky “Reserve” Cabernet Sauvignon reds then so fashionable and I immediately knew this was something different, special. That wine, and the thoughts of its maker get a whole blog posting today (it will be followed shortly by one about Randall’s dry whites and rosé).

One of the high points of Randall’s career came in 1989 when Wine Spectator Magazine put him on the cover dressed as the Lone Ranger. That was a joke about him having been nicknamed a Rhône Ranger because of his fascination with making wines like Le Cigare Volant, and it was the beginning of his “court jester” image. Finally, on March 2nd, 1992 I stood face to face with the wild-haired, wild-eyed, wildly funny and dangerously creative young Randall in the tasting room of his winery.  He described the kind of wines he was making as, “red wines, sunshine wines, fun wines!” so this is where that perception of the Bonny Doon wines has its root: he said it a thousand times! Then he poured the first vintage of his game-changing Pacific Rim a dry white Riesling, which tasted nothing like that at all.  When I asked him what made California a special place to make wine he told me, “1) lack of history, 2) flexibility, 3) cheap land, 4) sunshine.” I found him totally fascinating. Some the wines he poured for me tasted great, the rest were very solid, which was good enough for me. His was clearly a freewheeling creative enterprise and the wines that he was making were all a work-in-progress.

I’ve kept in touch with Randall ever since, and the periods when contact was more sporadic never eroded the openness of the relationship. I remained interested, because he continues to develop exciting new wines, and the latest vintages of his old favorites are often stunning. He’s the Neil Young of winemaking, each of his new creations surprising me just like Neil’s new songs, and the radical reinterpretations of his old numbers he frequently does. That’s why a couple of years back I was excited to receive an invitation to an audience with the Randall at The Breslin Restaurant in the ACE Hotel just off Broadway, New York City on November 18th, 2013. I’d last seen Randall 18 months before in San Francisco, not long after he’d sold the Pacific Rim brand and winery in the Columbia Valley, Washington State after cranking production up to over two million bottles of Riesling per year. He told winebusiness.com, “This gives us some wherewithal to develop our 280 acre San Juan Batista property, 85 of which will comprise our new estate vineyard, at a quicker pace… We’re also retiring a significant amount of debt with this sale and I might go out for dinner tonight with some of the proceeds.” At our San Francisco meeting in the spring of 2011 he’d told me he was planting some of those vineyards from seed, which is definitely not the normal way of doing things, so this is clearly a very daring project. If anything it became even more daring since then!

I got to the Breslin exactly on time, which meant that I had some time to talk to Randall before the other journalists and somms who were invited turned up. I may be an Englishman in New York, but I’d already learnt how to hustle and get ahead of the game Big Apple style. After pouring me a couple of his latest wines Randall suddenly turned pensive and within moments his usual expansive tone had vanished, and that’s when I took the above photograph.

“Nobody’s written about the sea change in the wine industry. 20 years ago it was much more idealistic. People in the wine industry wanted meaning and now they want money. OK, I’m interested in both. Now there’s a cynicism and self-consciousness, and a sense of randomness…” His words instantly reminded me of the scene in Cameron Crowe’s autobiographical movie Almost Famous in which the aspiring young music journalist William Miller, the central figure of this great rock movie, is told something very similar about the music industry by Lester Bangs, then one of the senior rock journalists of America. In retrospect, that moment in The Breslin was the conception of my series ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA, although it took me almost two years to realize which that e-books for Kindle was the right medium was right for my subject, because that required me to overcome the stupid idea that I needed to print them.

“20 years ago your job as a winemaker was to make a really great wine. If you did that and the price was OK, then you sold it. The weird thing is now you don’t know if you can sell it however good it is! Then you’ve got all the new shock labels. Is that how you sell wine now?” I couldn’t help thinking of some wines Randall himself had created with new shock labels. Then he sheepishly admitted setting that ball rolling was partly his fault, but this didn’t make what he said any less disturbing. What did it mean for him and his own wines? Sadly, we never got the chance to talk this through in any detail face to face, nor have I been able to taste recent Bonny Doon wines in a more thoughtful situation. For this reason I ordered samples and he happily provided them.

These bottles, more than any others he sent made me, convince me that Randall is a winemaker who has been radically misunderstood, because too many somms and journalists who tasted the wines couldn’t get that court jester image off him out of their minds. In a blind tasting I would have confidently identified all three of them as European wines of elegance and sophistication. The 2011 Le Cigare Volant immediately reminded my very much of the first time I tasted the Chateauneuf du Pape Vieux Telegraphe back in the Mid-1980s. On more careful reflection those wines were a bit more dryly tannic and a shade less fruity than the 2011 Le Cigare Volant. So this wine does have a certain Californian aspect to its personality, but in the CA context it is seriously dry, mellow and  mysterious; I get the mystery most in the cool herbal freshness at the finish. I would never have guessed that it has 14.23% alcohol, because the wine is seamless, but you could say very much the same about the best reds from the Southern Rhône.

The 2010 Le Cigare Volant (I had the unfiltered bottling) is a more meaty wine with an edgy side to it that is unlike the 2011, and either you will love it or not depending upon your palate. I really went for that edgy side, perhaps because it matched the more savory flavors of this wine really well. Possibly that edge is due to the inclusion of a big slug of wine from the Carignan grape in the blend, which under hot dry conditions tends to retain more fruit than the other Rhône grapes, but never gives subtle wines. However, there was no doubt in my mind that the 2009 Le Cigare Volant (also the unfiltered bottling) was the star of the trio, perhaps because it has moved out of the youthful, fruity phase of it’s life, but still retains so much energy and freshness. I love that combination in wines of all kinds. As one of the friends who tasted with me said, “it’s got all the earthiness and the mushrooms, it’s dusty too…but there also this raspberry note.” I couldn’t have described better myself, so I’m not going to do so. Seeking this many-sidedness, that means embracing the non-fruity character without rejecting the fruit, is the at the heart of Randall Grahm’s art, and he is now a master of it. Somehow Randall has found a way to negotiate that sea change in the wine industry and the stormy waters they brought, or perhaps his own stylistic development maneuvered him out of the harms way without him consciously seeking a safe harbor? In the end it doesn’t matter which of those it is, it’s the results that count.

After tasting these wines I also drank some of them and felt elated. That is something only a great winemaker can do with three consecutive vintages of one wine!

Often people ask me what the subject of my blog really is, and quite often they ask me if my latest blog posting isn’t off-subject. I feel that I owe all of you questioners an answer, and it’s really simple.

For me wine is a beverage in the glass, but it is never just that, because every wine comes from somewhere and doesn’t smell and taste the way it does by accident, rather there is a complex network of factors, intentions and relationships which lead to that wine being as it is. There’s therefore a story behind every wine, and those stories all fascinate me, regardless of the wine’s place of origin, the grape variety/varieties from which it is made, the greater or lesser price it commands and the esteem it is held in. (FYI some material about Two Buck Chuck is on it’s way!) These stories, no less than the wines they are connected to, are a continuous source of inspiration to me. And that inspiration is like the spark in a spark plug in an internal combustion chamber, it ignites my imagination.

My imagination, just like yours, is inaccessible to everyone else. It’s visions and vibrations must be given a concrete form in order to become accessible to others. That’s what all my writing, including these blog postings, is. I take the materials I have gathered during my re-search for truth, and with them I build boats (that I hope are sturdy enough for a long voyage), then I launch them onto the high seas of the Big Wide World. Last year, 2015, that worked better than it has for a very long time (scroll down for more about that), but this only makes me want to build more and better boats, then launch them onto those same choppy and rough waves. Although building them frequently requires me to face painful truths they are all bear a cargo of hope, and journey forth to overcome fear and the negativity it breeds. Please join me on that voyage!