February 3, 2015 – In a bid to finally finish financing his visionary plan to create 10,000 new vinifera grape varieties by hybridizing them from seed, Bonny Doon Vineyard’s Randall Grahm is getting ready to launch a massive $750,000, multi-platform crowd-funding campaign.
Grahm started the hybridizing project in 2011 at Popelouchum, his San Juan Bautista ranch, in something of a personal quest to create a truly unique American wine exhibiting the fullest possible expression of place—in this case, the limestone-rich soil of San Benito County.
But the risky experiment has gained broader urgency and relevance as the continuing drought and accelerating climate change have highlighted the need for new grape varieties that are more heat and disease resistant—and especially well-suited to our region.
“It’s just kind of a wild ride. I’m hanging on for dear life,” says Grahm of the ambitious project.
Bonny Doon is still finalizing its plans for the crowd-funding campaign but among the gifts that will be offered to funders is the chance to have a grape varietal named after them, and—of serious potential interest to other vineyardists—to have early access to some of the plants themselves.
One of the platforms that Bonny Doon will use is Kickstarter, but because the winery wants to offer funders wine, something Kickstarter doesn’t allow, Bonny Doon will also be running its campaign on other platforms as well.
Thus far, Grahm has been able to grow well-established grapevines on just ¾ of an acre of the 280 polyculture ranch. But in addition, he’s planted several acres of nurseries and row crops, and he’s eager to get the rest planted and see his experiment through.
Grahm is also encouraged by the barrel of wine he made from Grenache grown on the site after this past year’s harvest.
Grahm notes that he “lives” for minerality in wines and the deep-colored Grenache’s qualities include “really intense perfume, wonderful acidity, great body, this wonderful, earthy mineral aspect.”
“I’m extremely happy with it,” Grahm says.
About the author
SARAH WOOD—founding editor and publisher of Edible Monterey Bay—has had a life-long passion for food, cooking, people and our planet.
She planted her first organic garden and cared for her first chicken when she was in elementary school in a farming region of Upstate New York.
Wood spent the early part of her career based in Ottawa, Canada, working in international development and international education. After considering culinary school, she opted to pursue her loves for writing, learning about the world and helping make it a better place by obtaining a fellowship and an MA in Journalism from New York University.
While working for a daily newspaper in New Jersey, she wrote stories that helped farmers fend off development and won a state-wide public service award from the New Jersey Press Association for an investigative series of articles about a slumlord who had hoodwinked ratings agencies and investment banks into propping him up with some early commercial mortgage securitizations. The series led Wood to spend several years in financial journalism, most recently, as editor-in-chief of the leading magazine covering the U.S. hedge-fund industry.
Wood now lives with her family in Washington, DC, where she is a freelance writer and manages communications for Samaritan Ministry, an antipoverty and antiracist nonprofit that provides struggling Greater Washington residents with highly personalized and compassionate life counseling and coaching.
