Is one of California’s Original Mavericks still a Maverick?
Is being called a maverick a compliment? A maverick is described as someone who challenges established thinking, a loner, a rebel and potentially someone who is potentially disruptive. Much has already been written about Randall Grahm and his maverick reputation, and another life history is not needed. But Grahm has not stopped being a maverick, and his current plans are possibly even more revolutionary than anything so far. As Grahm says, “Thirty years ago I was considered a maverick, but in some instances, I have been proved right. Maybe I am contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian? If everyone made Tibouren, I’d be making Cabernet and Chardonnay.”
When I first met Randall in 2015, it was to explore the indigenous Provençal variety Tibouren. Walking through the vineyards, Grahm showed his true love, happily touching the soil, the vines, the grapes, discussing pruning, harvest dates and Tibouren’s propensity to irregular ripening. He is evidently at his happiest amongst the vines, so his latest project, Popelouchum (meaning paradise in the local Utian language Mutsun), should come as no surprise.
Purchased in 2011, this 168ha estate set out to achieve Grahm’s “long term vision being one of both simplicity and great complexity: a property which will produce wine of distinction, as well as a destination to host thinkers, leaders, contemporaries and wine enthusiasts – an epicentre of a new wine community.”
Still a work in progress, Grahm is attempting to do what no vigneron has ever attempted: “to propagate 10,000 new grape varieties, some from disease-resistant progenitors, with the aim of identifying one or more new ‘genius’ grape varieties,” but, in Grahm’s view, likely more promisingly, “employing a radical new methodology for creating complexity in wine (the elucidation of terroir) by creating a highly diverse population in a vineyard (every variety being genetically distinct from the other).”
Well known, and less well known own-rooted varieties, with the source material coming from around the world in suitcases, the post, nurseries and friends, were planted. Over the years Grahm has worked with creating new crossings, as well as more controversial self-crossed vines to create “genetically diverse selections (maybe 60 – 80 different biotypes in a given block) but not necessarily each one genetically different.”
Here it is possible to hear global shudders of horror at the maverick varieties being created. “When I first started, everyone told me what an extremely bad idea this was. You’ve got problems, you’ve got inbreeding, there’s a lot of genetic defects that are expressed, you don’t end up with the best grape varieties.” Both José Vuillamoz and Jamie Goode have both been supportive, but also see the problems, with Goode commenting that “Every time you grow a vine from seed it is a new variety, even if it is a self-cross. Hit rate from breeding projects is incredibly low: it’s a numbers game. Take two varieties and cross them and you don’t get something with the shared characteristics of the parents.” But what excites Grahm is that you also “get a lot of differences and it’s the differences that are interesting.” His biggest fears are that the self-crossed selections would have problems with in-breeding, while the “proper crosses” are not guaranteed to be successful or taste particularly great.
With most vineyards boasting at most twenty varieties, Grahm has lost count of how many varieties he is working with at Popelouchum. “That depends on how you count them, every vine is genetically different and is its own unique variety, so by that count I have 5,000 and counting. With the self-crossings of Sérine Noire (which itself has a red parent, Dureza, and a white parent, Mondeuse Blanche) the white grape characteristic is expressed on a recessive gene, so a fraction (approximately 25%) of the offspring are white grapes. They’re more interesting in their cluster conformation and more consistently delicious, some varieties are very floral (like Viognier), some peppery (like Syrah). Grahm believes that a set of them will make a much more interesting wine. The “selfed” offspring of Sérine Noire should not be referred to as either Sérine Noire nor as Sérine Blanche because they are now a distinctive new grape variety and Grahm admits that the nomenclature becomes quite convoluted – maybe the ‘red (or white) self-crossed offspring of Sérine.’”
Grahm is clear that this is not criticism of traditional clonal selection, but rather reflects his curiosity and his search to find “a biotype better suited to us, one not specifically adapted to Côte-Rôtie but to California.” The reference to the Rhône brings to mind his early role as a “Rhône Ranger,” used to describe the Californian producers who planted Rhône varieties in California. Grahm admits that “frankly, I’m not crazy about the term Rhône Ranger, we should be aiming higher. We shouldn’t define success as our ability to replicate European wines. We should be aiming to make our own distinctive wines, not to be a copycat of the old world.”
As with all innovative experiments, the results remain unknown. “My biggest fear with these self-crosses is that they will be less productive or even sterile. I’m confident that a blend will produce an interesting, delightful and harmonious wine, they’re all from the same family. In my other project, where I’m doing complete crossings, such as Ciliegiolo x Picolit, I am genuinely concerned that the composite of these ‘proper crosses’ will be something dreadful or non-descript and might make a wine that no one will want to taste more than once.”
With the Popelouchum experiment, Grahm is hoping that with the “proper crosses” he will “see the effacement of varietal characteristics, and thus, (one hopes) the emergence of more distinctive soil characteristics … it is my observation that in a strong terroir, if you can find a way to express those soil characteristics, you will likely have an interesting and complex wine. The intriguing thing about this wine is that every vintage will be different and impossible to replicate. The only consistent element is the terroir of Popelouchum … [but] whether I’ve matched the soil type up with a given variety remains to be seen, there’s a lot of diversity.”
Grahm is excited by creating something totally new and unique. “What I’m doing is very radical, maybe even doomed to failure, making a lot of breathtaking leaps of faith. If you plant a vineyard in a strong, distinctive terroir with a lot of soil expression, it may almost not matter what grape you grow, you’ll likely make a complex wine. I’m doing what I can to efface varietal expression to permit soil expression to be the dominant character of the wine – it’s cheeky and ambitious.”
The project is still young, but already the potential for this maverick project is emerging. “What I do have now is this incredible diversity, which is interesting in and of itself. This composite is way more complex than any individual component.” A trial vintage of a red and white version of the self-crossed offspring of Sérine will be made in 2023.
Sometimes the life of a maverick can be lonely. If everyone else was doing the same thing it would become mainstream. Grahm admits that currently his most maverick moments are in the field and that when it comes to winemaking, “Not so much, [only] in my dreams. You need financial stability and resources to sustain total losses in the cellar. I can’t afford to risk that much in the winemaking department.” As he puts it, “the challenge is to sell the wine, and whilst Popelouchum is not quite providing the required financial stability at the moment, it certainly provides a constant intellectual challenge.”
Is Randall Grahm a maverick? According to Grahm, no, “just someone with imagination and the desire to make something original. If you have imagination in the wine business, you can do something special. Because it’s such an old business, sometimes there is a bit of a lack of imagination.”
Elizabeth Gabay MW grew up a Londoner but always travelled around Europe with her family. After backpacking around the world, Elizabeth returned to London where, by accident she fell into the wine trade when her parents bought a holiday cottage in Provence. Elizabeth passed the Master of Wine exam in 1998, and, in 2002, moved to a village an hour north of Nice. Her thirty years of working in Provence led in 2018 to her first book ‘Rosé, Understanding the Pink Wine Revolution.’ With her son Ben Bernheim, they have put together an on-line ‘Buyers Guide to the Rosés of Southern France’, published in 2021. Elizabeth recently released a natural rosé called Sen (Dream) made with Slovakian producer Vladimir Magula.