Press coverage of the Californian wine industry tends to focus on a few groups: the entrenched psuedo-Italian family dynasties (such as Gallo, Mondavi, Sebastani); the gargantuan, multinational "alcoholic beverage product" companies; and the wonderful, but obscure artisan winemakers. But among them all, one voice consistently stands out from the pack, defying categorization -- Bonny Doon's Randall Grahm.
A longtime champion of once unfashionable Rho^ne-varietals, Grahm's latest quixotic mission is to convert the entire production of his winery to screw-top bottles.
Grahm first caught the wine bug while working in a bottle shop in Beverly Hills in the 1970s. After tasting several French wines that he describes as "transcendental," he headed to the University of California, Davis, for a degree in viticulture, and soon planted his first vineyard in the Santa Cruz mountains.