The Do Over

When a business grows as rapidly as Bonny Doon had, its proprietor can find himself frantically spurring the horse to keep the cart from toppling. That was Grahm's predicament. As Bonny Doon's big brands flourished, the company had to meet its distributors' expanding demands by borrowing money to buy ever more grapes, then sell more wine to pay back the loans. To broaden the customer base, Grahm devoted his time to marketing and publicity. The business model was evolving into one better suited for a large company with ample financial resources and a mass-distribution network. That was a long way from the company Grahm had set out to create. "In the trade, unfortunately, Bonny Doon became known as Big House," says Greg Brady, Bonny Doon's general manager. "Everyone, Randall included, was focused on it." Grahm says, "Once the Big House thing got rolling, it absorbed all the resources. There was no time, no bandwidth." Big House was becoming a gilded prison.

So Grahm resolved to break free. He says the desire to change was inspired by life transitions, some pleasant, others not. He turned 50. Overcoming his self-described psychological blocks against emotional commitment, he fathered a child with his partner, Chinshu Huang. (Their daughter, Amélie, is 5.) He came down with a life-threatening case of osteomyelitis, a bacterial infection of the bone; after surgery and reconstruction of his neck vertebrae, he was required to wear a halo brace for three months. All of these upheavals led him to reassess his life. "It changes one's perspective," he says. "I had a 1-year-old daughter, and I couldn't hold her. I couldn't wear regular clothes. My mother-in-law fashioned me a blue serape. I looked like a deranged New Testament prophet meandering through Santa Cruz. I couldn't wash my hair for three months. That was part of my inspiration to go beyond clever wine labels and cute newsletters and selling loads of wine. At the end of my life, whether that's sooner or later, I want to feel that I've given it my best shot to do something extraordinary. And, without being maudlin about it, something inspirational."

Inside four of the cylindrical tanks in the Bonny Doon fermenting room, a layer of ground-up quartz, decorated with a looping pattern made from intact crystals, had been applied; the quartz was then completely covered with smooth concrete before the macerating grapes were added. At the cost of $2,000 a tank, the invisible quartz linings constitute one of Grahm's less expensive experiments to gauge the value of biodynamic winemaking. In some ways, biodynamic practices -- which originated in the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian social thinker from the early part of the last century -- resemble organic farming; but at times, biodynamic principles veer into areas that a more conventional mind might find loopy. (For example, compost is made and applied according to solar and lunar cycles.) Still, the proof is in the tasting, and a number of esteemed European wines are produced biodynamically. Grahm wants to make all Bonny Doon wines from biodynamically grown fruit; he estimates that he is 50 percent of the way there. Last fall, Philippe Coderey, the viticulture director at Bonny Doon, was urging that the backward Besson vineyard be dusted with a light coating of ground quartz silica -- what in biodynamic parlance is known as a "501" -- to enhance photosynthesis. Although dubious that a 501 would be enough to revitalize those laggard grapes, Grahm enthusiastically endorses the efficacy of biodynamic techniques. He was spending his free moments contemplating how he might plant a new vineyard on a heptagonal scheme, because proponents of biodynamics hold that a seven-sided figure contains great stores of energy.

One reason Grahm divested himself of Big House and Cardinal Zin was that there was no way wines made in such high volume and at such low price points could be biodynamic. He would have sold Pacific Rim, too, but no one was willing to pay what he deemed a fair price for it; instead, he split it off as a separate company, based in Washington State. "It's also a little bit of a hedge against things going south," he admits. "It's prudent having two models. I'm totally confident that Bonny Doon is going to work, but it's nice to have something you can fall back on." Grahm estimates that biodynamic farming is 15 percent to 20 percent more expensive than conventional farming, and that is only one of the extra costs he is assuming. "If you're really serious about making great wine, it is not remotely a commercial proposition," he says. "It has to be sponsored; it can't be a for-profit venture. You have to have a kind of Maginot Line in your mind where you say, 'This is what I do commercially' and 'This is what I do for passion and won't compromise,' and not conflate the two. I had to make a lot of Big House to make this new project a possibility." Without a big inheritance, a winery proprietor needs to have made a pile of money in some other business (such as a commercial winery) to bankroll a high-end, biodynamic operation, on the against-the-odds chance that someday it will turn a profit. But Grahm is a believer. He discontinued some profitable Bonny Doon wines because the grapes came from growers who balked at converting to biodynamic procedures. Now he is shopping for some 125 acres on which to plant a biodynamic vineyard (perhaps heptagonally, if he can figure out what that would mean in practical terms). Once that vineyard is operating, Brady, the general manager, estimates that to be profitable, a biodynamically produced single-vineyard bottle from Bonny Doon will have to retail for about double the $30 that Le Cigare Volant currently commands. Whether the customers who are now buying 4,000 to 4,500 cases of Le Cigare Volant a year will be willing to pay that price for a biodynamic (and, Grahm hopes, better) wine is an interesting question.

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