Bonny Doon Vineyard

Bonny Doon Vineyard is a wine producer located in Santa Cruz on California's Central Coast and is well-known for its unconventional array of wines with quirky labels. The proprietor, Randall Grahm, is considered to be one of California's original Rhône Rangers, and helped popularize grape varieties like Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre. The flagship wine, Le Cigare Volant, is an homage to the wines of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

The estate vineyard, a 113-hectare (280-acre) property in San Juan Bautista, has a warm, Mediterranean climate suited to classic Rhône varieties such as Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre, Cinsaut, Roussanne and Picpoul. The estate is farmed biodynamically.

Since 2010, Bonny Doon has focused on producing terroir-driven wines rather than large-scale commercial production. Previously, production was more than 450,000 cases annually, but the sale of major brands Cardinal Zin, Big House Red and Pacific Rim has seen this drop considerably. Today, Bonny Doon still produces a wide range of wines, including red, white and rosé wines, as well as sparkling wines, dessert wines, and hard cider.

Beyond popularizing Rhône style blends, Bonny Doon was the first winery in California to practice microbullage – the method of adding small oxygen bubbles to wine to soften tannins. It was also the first to successfully produce a sweet wine by the process of cryo-extraction whereby grapes are force-frozen to extract concentrated, sweet juice. In 2001 it was one of the first premium wineries to adopt the use of stelvin screw caps for all its wines and in 2008 it was a pioneer for labeling ingredients on its wines.