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As he leads his guests on a tour of Popelouchum, his San Juan Bautista vineyard, winemaker Randall Grahm is, compellingly, being Randall Grahm: observant, witty, creative, eccentric and hyper-intelligent.
Talking about the successes with his Grenache gris, blanc and noir, he sidetracks into more technical talk of botrytis and alcohol levels. With a melancholy glee, he points towards a dry crater he had excavated, intended as a pond before it developed a leak, and a failed experiment of making a wine with Furmint grapes—“remarkably unpleasant,” he says.
Grahm delivers this narrative while standing amid one of the remarkable experiments on his property: more than 900 red and white Sérine vines grown from seed, each genetically distinct. He practically rubs his hands together at the prospect of discovering which of those might become the perfect grape to propagate.
“Nobody does this,” he says. “But if you are willing to commit economic suicide, you can make some amazing wines.”
As he talks of all things Popelouchum, Grahm samples a grape, estimating its sugar content in a casual aside. There is a sense that even as he relaxes as host, the complexities of the vineyard are always on his mind, as if he can’t stop scrutinizing this paradise he has created.
“Just look at it and feel it and smell it,” he says. “There’s a serenity, a quality, an aura. It’s a very special place. I feel such a real sense of affinity and connection here.”
Grahm’s international reputation as a winemaker was cemented with the wines produced under his first label, Bonny Doon, named for his vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains. His flagship wine, the legendary Le Cigare Volante, showed both Grahm’s skill as a winemaker and his distinctive sense of humor.
Inspired by the wine blends of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the name references a law that the French village passed in 1954 that bans flying saucers (“flying cigars”) from flying over, landing, or taking off in its vineyards.
With more honors bestowed on him than can fit in this article, Grahm might also be the only winemaker with an asteroid named after him: number 4934, Rhôneranger, from a nickname bestowed on him for his role in popularizing Rhône grape varieties in California.
Charismatic and fascinating, he has been profiled so many times that the prospect of sitting down with him to do an interview for this article was somewhat daunting.
Last year, during one of Grahm’s tours, I’d asked if there has ever been a question he has not heard before. His bemused response was, “Not recently, including that one.”
BenitoLink: What brought you to San Juan Bautista?
Randall Grahm: When I saw this place, I realized I had actually dreamt about it, which was very encouraging. It felt like I was coming full circle back to my beginning in the wine business. I had a sense of completion or wholeness. It was a unique moment.
I had the rather idealistic, quixotic hope, fantasy, dream of producing a wine of place, and I was looking for a place with a distinctive personality, presence and aura. This place certainly has that charismatic quality in spades, as far as I can tell.
What does the concept of “wine of place” mean to you?
It’s a little tautological because every wine, every grape, every vineyard is grown somewhere, so by definition, it’s grown in a place. But not all places have as much distinctive personality. The French term is terroir: the qualities that are intrinsic, unique to the site itself, that are expressed through the produce, whether it’s grapes or chickens or peaches or onions or whatever it might be.
Some places are more eloquent than others, more complex, more distinctive. You’re looking for a wine with a distinctive quality and harmony. In other words, the whole point of terroir, or the appropriateness of a site, is that a particular site will solve the grapes’ issues or the vines’ issues successfully most of the time. The whole idea of a great terroir is one that engenders or conduces to homeostasis in the plant.
I’m making a sincere effort to change my winemaking style. To be more respectful and more aware of the place where the grapes are grown rather than my own ideas about winemaking. I’m trying to discern what the intrinsic qualities of Popelouchum are and how I can sort of get out of the way enough to allow these things to kind of shine through in the wine.
How do you balance the different soil types and microclimates here?
Darn good question. It’s not very precise. There are rules, but they generally don’t extend to oddball varieties. For example, in Bordeaux, you plant your Merlot in clay soils, and you plant your Cabernet in rocky, gravelly soils. That is understood. But where do you plant your Tibouren? Where do you plant your rosés? We’re not trying to copy the old-world paradigm; we’re trying to figure out which old-world decisions we can apply.
For example, our Pinot Noir block. Everyone knows that Pinot Noir loves limestone. We have some limestone on the property, but it isn’t necessarily in the best position or the best exposure for the Pinot. What I do know about Pinot is that it really doesn’t like super windy conditions; it wants a very gentle maturation. So we found a very protected area up above where we planted the Pinot, and it was kind of a little amphitheater. It seems like a really good spot, and the exposure and microclimate seemed right.
What other environmental elements help mold your final releases?
The main issue is getting the grapes ripe. If you can’t ripen your grapes in this climate in most vintages, you’re probably growing the wrong grapes. Tibouren has been problematic. A prodigious variety, Cinsaut, has been problematic.
We made a beautiful Cinsaut three years ago, and we haven’t been able to replicate it since. We’ve thinned it probably three or four times now. Left to itself, it’s a beast. It’s very productive. But we’ve been trying to ripen it unsuccessfully the last few years. It just didn’t get ripe.
The wind can be problematic. Fog. Last year was a really tough mildew year. And then, of course, there is predation: birds, rodents, ground squirrels, gophers, rats, tree rats, larger mammals. Wild turkeys go berserk. We planted slightly more Grenache Gris than Blanc, but the birds favor the Gris because they can probably see it better. Who knows why they favor Grenache Gris? So, they ultimately make the final blending decision for us.
How has your idea of what to plant evolved?
I’ve been chasing after Pinot Noir for all these many years, and I don’t know that I have any real new ideas to add to the world’s knowledge about Pinot, or that I’m going to be able to produce it. I think that seeking the great American Pinot Noir was too restrictive a vision. Over the last few years, I’ve decided the vision should be broader. Maybe if I want to make Burgundy, it doesn’t have to be made out of Pinot Noir. Maybe Burgundy, or my conception of Burgundy, could be another variety, not Pinot Noir.
I cannot afford to be too fixed in my obsession with achieving a certain style of wine. I really have to let the site itself, the experience, time, and other things do their thing, and observe, pay attention, and follow my intuition. Observation and intuition are key. Sometimes you have to leap before you have full information. You have to make a decision based on limited factors, but you still have to make a decision. At that point, intuition is quite important.
Instead of trying to find the so-called “best biotype” out there, maybe we use this opportunity. Maybe there’s something interesting and distinctive you can fashion from what you’ve got or what you’ve created. We want to observe what this genetic complexity does to a wine, if that is indeed a strategy for producing a really complex wine. Now, it may turn out to be a total failure. I may end up with Pinotage at the end of the day, which would be a tragedy. Then it’s seppuku time.
Many of the vines here are seed-grown. What do you gain?
We don’t plant the final vineyard from seed. We did attempt to grow rootstock from seed; unfortunately, not successfully. The cool thing about seeds is that they let us create genetic variation as an intermediate step, then observe the differences and propagate from there.
What we could have done if we had a gopher-free vineyard! I would not have grafted the seedlings onto rootstock; I would have planted them directly into the ground. What’s interesting about seedlings is that the rooting habit is a taproot. It goes straight down, whereas a cutting will branch. You could apply that to grapevines if you wanted to produce truly drought-tolerant plants. Seedlings may well be the way to go.
What’s your role as a steward of the land?
What I’m hoping to do is restore the tilth—texture, lack of compaction, friability, fertility. The better the tilth, the more biological activity. So I want to enhance the organic matter and microbial populations in the soil, and basically leave the place in better biological shape than when I got it. And more plant species diversity, if we can.
Working so closely with the land, do you find you’ve developed a spiritual connection?
That’s interesting. It’s hard to say. I grew up in L.A. as a city kid, so agriculture is not exactly second nature to me. But this place—“Popelouchum” is the Mutsun word for “Paradise”—I just felt such a strong affinity when I first saw it. I saw it as an opportunity for me to grow as a person, to learn—and I’m not sure how successful I’ve been—how to become more present, more observant, more sensitive to what was going on around me, and to care for something beyond myself.
That, I think, is sort of a spiritual practice: devoting yourself to the service of something beyond your own immediate gratification. Obviously, if things work out well, I can bask in the reflected glory of fulfillment. If the wines turn out great, people might remark on how clever I am.
But really, I’m hoping I can find a way to care for this land. To allow it to develop its full potential and create something that will significantly outlive me and continue to grow and reveal itself. I’m not very adept at that, but ensuring continuity is the highest priority right now.
Popelouchum wines and wine club memberships are available online. For other inquiries, contact hello@popelouchum.com. A documentary about Randall Grahm by Golden Globe winner Jeffrey Reiner, “The Terrorist,” will be released later this year.
The Popelouchum Wine Dinner
Randall Grahm will host a tour of Popelouchum on Sept. 27 that includes tastings of some of his wines and ciders followed by a coursed dinner at Inaka Fusion paired with “ultra-rare new and some special vinous surprises.” A limited number of tickets are available through Inaka Fusion.
Recommendations for future Eat, Drink, Savor articles can be emailed to the author at roberteliason@benitolink.com.
BenitoLink thanks our underwriters, Hollister Super and Windmill Market, for helping expand the Eat, Drink, Savor series and for giving our readers the stories that interest them. Hollister Super (two stores in Hollister) and Windmill Market (in San Juan Bautista) support reporting on the inspired and creative people behind the many delicious food and drink products made in San Benito County. All editorial decisions are made by BenitoLink.
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