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Bonny Doon Le Cigare Blend Half-Bottle 6-Pack - (Your Choice: Red Blend, White Blend, or Mixed)

Sold by: Bonny Doon Vineyard

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WOOT VINACULAR: YOUR INDISPENSABLE WINE GLOSSARY [volume 1]

Acidic: The quality of acid - usually excessive - on the palate.

Aroma: A smell or collection of smells inherent in the grapes.

Berrymandering: Occurs when a wine falsifies its berry qualities.

Bucket: The aroma a wine adopts as a result of bottle aging.

Decanticipation: Impatience that occurs while a wine is decanting.

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Buy This & Receive...
Red Blend 6-Pack:
(6) - 2011 Le Cigare Volant Red Blend, 375ml Half Bottle
or
Red Blend 6-Pack:
(6) - 2013 Le Cigare Blanc White Blend, 375ml Half Bottle
or
Mixed Red & White Blend 6-Pack:
(3) - 2011 Le Cigare Volant Red Blend, 375ml Half Bottle
(3) - 2013 Le Cigare Blanc White Blend, 375ml Half Bottle

Visit the Bonny Doon Vineyard website

2011 Le Cigare Volant Red Blend, 375ml Half-Bottle

  • 93 Points - Wine Enthusiast

A worthy successor to the ’10, though perhaps slightly less muscular, but conversely, incrementally more elegant. We have gotten particularly adept in allowing for the expression of a wonderful savoriness in Cigare, and a pretty nice mastery of tannins. Recent vintages seem to show more structure than years past, and we are convinced that this vintage will be capable of very long ageing.

Winemaker Notes: A beautiful wine-dark, mulberry color, and a first nose of dark, cool loamy earth with suggestions of raspberries, Damson plums and cherry/chocolate. On the palate, it is sleek and racy with a lively acidity, very soft tannins and great persistence. This is a wine from an extremely cool and elegant vintage, and by all experience, should be a great prospect for very long ageing and development.]

Production Notes: Grenache (15% from our former Ca’ del Solo estate, now called Rancho Solo) adds rich black fruit flavors and a discreet spiciness. Syrah is principally sourced from Bien Nacido vineyard in Santa Maria Valley, which produces the closest analogue we have found to a Northern Rhône Syrah—tannic and meaty in the lower registers; peppery, fruitful and delicately floral in the top, all the while showing great balance and harmony. A select group of non-irrigated, centenarian Contra Costa vineyards continues to provide Mourvèdre for Cigare. A touch of Cinsault provides a very particular fragrance of flowers and aromatic herbs.


2013 Le Cigare Blanc White Blend, 375ml Half-Bottle
Le Cigare Blanc is the white analog of Le Cigare Volant, our homage to the complex blended wines of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The great white Cigare is not unlike the great white whale; rarely seen, difficult to catch, yet its name is legend. It’s a rich, savory wine with greater power and extraction than one typically finds at Bonny Doon.

With a color as pale as drying grass in mid-summer, the ’13 Cigare Blanc immediately takes me to the heady fragrance of the Beeswax Vyd. itself—pears and other pome fruit, citronella, muskmelon, fennel, along with a white flower that I can’t quite place. But, the very odd thing is that all of the grapes grown at this vineyard have the fragrance of beeswax itself. On the palate, the wine is rich and elegant at the same time—great persistence on the palate but with a refreshing acidity and a slightly chalky mineral aspect. This is a wine that you definitely want to serve with a rich beurre blanc, though a lobster risotto would also serve quite nicely.

Vineyard/Production Notes: Since 2003, we’ve produced this blend of grenache blanc, roussanne and picpoul, derived from a single vineyard source, the Beeswax Vineyard in the Arroyo Seco region of Monterey County. Farmed organically, surrounded by wilderness, and shielded from the cool Pacific Coast winds by the Santa Lucia Mountains, Beeswax Vineyard grows complex, concentrated and mineral intensive grapes from deeply rooted vines. An intensely flavored wine at a relatively modest degree of alcohol; the ’13 Cigare Blanc underwent a complete malolactic fermentation.

Specs

2011 Le Cigare Volant Red Blend, 375ml Half-Bottle

  • Alcohol: 14.2%
  • Production: 2,527 cases
  • Varietal Blend: 37% Mourvèdre, 34% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 9% Cinsault
  • Appellation: Central Coast
  • Vineyards: 22% Ventana, 21% Del Barba, 15% Rancho Solo, 13% Evangelho, 11% Alamo Creek, 9% Bechtold, 6% Bien Nacido, 3% Gonsalves
  • Cellaring: 10-15 years from release (April 2015)
  • Alcohol by Volume: 14.2%
  • TA: 5.8 g/L
  • pH: 3.34
  • Production: 2,527 cases


2013 Le Cigare Blanc White Blend, 375ml Half-Bottle
Ingredients: Grapes, tartaric acid, and sulfur dioxide.

In the winemaking process, the following were utilized: indigenous yeast, yeast nutrients, bentonite and French oak barrels.

  • Varietal Blend: 55% Roussanne, 26% Grenache Blanc, 19% Picpoul Blanc
  • Vineyard: Beeswax
  • Appellation: Arroyo Seco
  • Alcohol by Volume: 14.5%
  • TA: 4.5 g/L
  • pH: 3.64
  • Production: 1,757 cases
  • Optimal Drinkability: Drinkable upon
  • release (April 2015), 4-7 years ageability

Specs

2011 Le Cigare Volant Red Blend, 375ml Half-Bottle

  • Alcohol: 14.2%
  • Production: 2,527 cases
  • Varietal Blend: 37% Mourvèdre, 34% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 9% Cinsault
  • Appellation: Central Coast
  • Vineyards: 22% Ventana, 21% Del Barba, 15% Rancho Solo, 13% Evangelho, 11% Alamo Creek, 9% Bechtold, 6% Bien Nacido, 3% Gonsalves
  • Cellaring: 10-15 years from release (April 2015)
  • Alcohol by Volume: 14.2%
  • TA: 5.8 g/L
  • pH: 3.34
  • Production: 2,527 cases


2013 Le Cigare Blanc White Blend, 375ml Half-Bottle
Ingredients: Grapes, tartaric acid, and sulfur dioxide.

In the winemaking process, the following were utilized: indigenous yeast, yeast nutrients, bentonite and French oak barrels.

  • Varietal Blend: 55% Roussanne, 26% Grenache Blanc, 19% Picpoul Blanc
  • Vineyard: Beeswax
  • Appellation: Arroyo Seco
  • Alcohol by Volume: 14.5%
  • TA: 4.5 g/L
  • pH: 3.64
  • Production: 1,757 cases
  • Optimal Drinkability: Drinkable upon
  • release (April 2015), 4-7 years ageability

Vendor Details

Bonny Doon Vineyard

Owner:
Randall Graham
Founded:
1983
Location:
Santa Cruz, California

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.

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 Stated. 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. #staydooned.

Sales Stats

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Bonny Doon Le Cigare Blend (6) - Your Choice
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