The eclectic wines of Bonny Doon

Winemaking can be both artistic and spiritual. You only need to look to Randall Grahm, the founder of Bonny Doon Vineyards, to find an artistic and eclectic winemaker. One look at the unconventional labels that Grahm uses will help you understand that Bonny Doon is unlike most wineries.

Bonny Doon Vineyard was founded in 1983 in Santa Cruz, Calif. The winery is known for producing Rhone-style wines.

The Rhone wine region, in the south of France, produces red wines using Grenache and Syrah varietals blended with other grapes, including the white varietals — roussanne and marsanne. The white wines are produced from the Viognier grape.

Bonny Doon produces a number of wines, including the red blends Le Cigare Volant and Syrah Le Pousseur, a white blend named Le Cigare Blanc and two dessert wines that Grahm has labeled as Le Vol des Anges and Vinferno.

Grahm’s wine education began as a clerk at the Wine Merchant, a retail wine shop in Beverly Hills, Calif. During his time there, he was introduced to numerous great-tasting French wines. Grahm decided to pursue a career in the field and ended up enrolling at the Davis campus of the University of California — a school that is widely regarded as the Harvard of Enology.

In December 2009, the Wine Enthusiast gave the 2006 Syrah Le Pousser a 93 rating and ranked it at number 32 in the top 100 wines of the year. This wine consists mostly of Syrah with a slight amount of Grenache and contains flavors of black fruits with a hint of licorice.

The 2005 Le Cigare Volant is a blend consisting mostly of Grenache, Mouvedre and Syrah. This wine pairs well with grilled lamb chops marinated in Italian dressing. The wine appears deep red in color and contains the aroma of sweet, dark cherry. The wine tastes somewhat earthy with flavors of dark chocolate and hints of vanilla.

The 2007 Le Cigare Blanc starts with the aroma of honey, leading into flavors of ripe pear and finishing with a slight mineral taste. The wine is a blend of 64 percent Roussanne and 36 percent Grenache Blanc. Although I tasted this wine without food, it would pair well with just about any type of grilled seafood — especially lobster.

The mineral taste in the Le Cagare Blanc is consistent with Grahm’s goal to produce wines that remind one of the concept of terroir — meaning that a wine does have certain characteristics due to the soil and other geographic factors from where the grapes were grown.

Many of the great French wines contain mineral flavors that come from the terroir of the vineyards.

Jim Rawe, a family attorney in Bradenton, is an avid collector of fine wines. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at jimrawe@gmail.com.