"The only wines I deeply care for are the wines that come from a place." So spoke Bonny Doon winemaker and visionary Randall Grahm, who has extended through midnight Thursday the deadline to raise $150,000 in his Indiegogo campaign for Popelouchum, the biodynamic wine laboratory he has planned for San Juan Bautista, on California's Central Coast.
As Grahm told Grape Collective at a recent gathering at Manhattan's Terroir Tribeca, the project was enabled by his sale several years back of some of Bonny Doon's biggest-selling brands. "I am extremely interested and serious about making wines of place." This is fortunate, since his plan is to breed ten thousand new grape varieties.
At his 400-acre Popuelouchum estate, boasted Grahm, "everything we grow tastes sensational--the tomatoes, asparagus, peas--whatever! At the end it's the place that's going to make the difference, not the grape."
Yet as you would expect from Grahm, the grapes will get a lot of attention in his "living lab of a vineyard," one "not dictated by spreadsheets and statistical analysis, but rather one that takes a long view."
Perks for donors include the opportunity to name a grape variety after yourself--or anyone. Presumably this will be a practical offer considering the ten thousand wine varieties Grahm envisions developing. Also available are "Doon Art," and an "Esoterica Pack" curated by Grahm, which is sure to live up to its name.
