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I know you like to keep your finger on the pulse of what's new and exciting with your partners, so I thought I’d share this:

We are excited to announce that we are now representing Bonny Doon Vineyard! This is the best price AZ has ever seen on their well-known lineup of 'Cigare' wines.

See below for a brief history on the winery as well as links to a bio on winemaker, Randall Grahm (he recently sold the winery but is staying on as winemaker and consultant), and tech sheets on the three wines.

A FEW NOTABLE WINES

Bonny Doon, Le Cigare Volant 'Cuvee Oumuamua' Red Blend, 2018 - Monterey County, California93 Points WINE ENTHUSIAST, Top 100 #19 — **Bonny Doon,** Le Cigare Volant 'Cuvee Oumuamua' Red Blend, 2018 - *Monterey County, California*
93 Points WINE ENTHUSIAST, Top 100 #19

Bonny Doon, 'Vin Gris De Cigare' Rose, 2018 - Central Coast, California 2019 releasing end of March — **Bonny Doon,** 'Vin Gris De Cigare' Rose, 2018 - *Central Coast, California*
2019 releasing end of March

ABOUT BONNY DOON

While Bonny Doon Vineyard began with the (in retrospect) foolish attempt to replicate Burgundy in California, Randall Grahm realized early on that he would have far more success creating more distinctive and original wines working with Rhône varieties in the Central Coast of California. The key learning here (achieved somewhat accidentally but fortuitously) was that in a warm, Mediterranean climate, it is usually blended wines that are most successful. In 1986 Bonny Doon Vineyard released the inaugural vintage (1984) of Le Cigare Volant, an homage to Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and this continues as the winery’s flagship/starship brand.

Since then, Bonny Doon Vineyard has enjoyed a long history of innovation – the first to truly popularize Rhône grapes in California, to successfully work with cryo-extraction for sundry “Vins de Glacière, the first to utilize microbullage in California, the first to popularize screwcaps for premium wines, and, quite significantly, the first to embrace true transparency in labeling with its ingredient labeling initiative. The upside of all of this activity has brought an extraordinary amount of creativity and research to the California wine scene; the doon-side, as it were, was perhaps an ever so slight inability to focus, to settle doon, if you will, into a single, coherent direction.1

Bonny Doon Vineyard grew and grew with some incredibly popular brands (Big House, Cardinal Zin and Pacific Rim) until it became the 28th largest winery in the United States. Randall came to the realization – better late than Nevers – that he had found that the company had diverged to a great extent from his original intention of producing soulful, distinctive and original wines, and that while it was amusing to be able to get restaurant reservations almost anywhere (the only real tangible perk he was able to discern from the vast scale of the operation), it was time to take a decisive course correction. With this in mind, he sold off the larger brands (Big House and Cardinal Zin) in 2006 and Pacific Rim in 2010.

In the intervening years, the focus of the winery has been to spend far more time working with vineyards in improving their practices, as well as on making wines with a much lighter touch – using indigenous yeast whenever possible, and more or less eschewing vinous maquillage, (at least not to Tammy Faye Bakker-like levels). Recently, Randall has purchased an extraordinary property in San Juan Bautista, which he calls Popelouchum, (the Mutsun word for “paradise,”) where he is profoundly intent on producing singular wines expressive of place. There are also very grand plans afoot to plant a dry-farmed Estate Cigare vineyard.