Bonny Doon Gravitas White North Coast 2015
Ok, guys. Red, crimson alert. DROP WHAT YOU ARE DOING!
Here’s what you need to know. BONNY DOON! Randall Grahm, the California winemaking VISIONARY and the ORIGINAL Rhone Ranger made this 90-POINT white, a wine we instantly loved in our tasting and the one bottle that was hoovered up in minutes by our thirsty staff.
*** You have read too far. It’s going to sell out. Get some and read the rest later. This is ten bucks!! A “case me” buy if we ever had one! ***
OK. Back to the legendary Bonny Doon and Randall Grahm. Eric Asimov at the NYT called Grahm’s recent efforts “fascinating, creative, iconoclastic.” Your humble scribe sold one of the earliest vintages of his legendary “Le Cigare Volant” back in the 90s up in chilly Anchorage, Alaska. The man is a force of nature. Anyway, he makes a lot of eclectic blends and this one is mandatory summer drinking, pool or no pool in sight. And really any other time you need a white wine, which is nearly every day at our house.
Biodynamically grown Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon and a dash of Gewürztraminer makes up this DRY, lip-smacking, headily aromatic wine --- can you say ORANGE BLOSSOM? Heady exotic citrus? Crisp and pure, bright and refreshing, why, we think this might be better than a cup of coffee in the morning….the lemon, the lime, dry but oh-so floral and perfumey…! MMM!
Seriously -- a SCREAMING-great deal while it lasts...something super-cool as this always sells out!!
Technical Details
Country: United StatesRegion: California
Appellation: North Coast
Varietal: White Blends
Vineyard: 47% Fortress, 22% Las Lomas, 18% Yount Mill, 9% Loasa, 4% Brassfield
Winemaker: Randall Grahm
Aging/Cooperage: Stainless steel fermentation, extended lees stirring for 5 months.
Alcohol: 13.40%
PH: 3.52
About The 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.
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