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Adding panache to the grenache

A California vintner known for his wit gives Dante's Divine Comedy a special twist. Might The Grapes of Wrath be next?

By CHRIS SHERMAN
Published September 7, 2005

	Illustration by Alex Gross In the Bonny Doon parody of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the waiting room outside the gates to wine purity abounds with creatures and people whose ordinary wines will never get high ratings. How many can you identify? Answers below.
	WHO’S WHO IN THE ILLUSTRATION Among the masses of bulk wines and vintners that Randall Grahm sees crowding the market place are hordes of French look-alikes (some on Gallo bicyclettes), the rooster of Rex Goliath, a not-so Little Penguin from Penfolds, plus an emu, kangaroo, moose and roaming goat representing wines from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

When last we saw Bonny Doon's Randall Grahm, the inventive jester and self-anointed conscience of American wine, he was rewriting a version of Dante's Divine Comedy, hunting rhymes to assign vinous villainies to various circles of hell.

You'll remember Dante's nine circles of the Inferno from school or your own misspent youth and middle age. In the 14th century masterpiece, Dante's pilgrim makes slow progress to purgatory and paradise, but first his guide Virgil takes him past the levels of hell and the miscreants who live there: Limbo, Lustful, Gluttonous, Misers and Spendthrifts, Wrathful and Sullen, Heretics, Violent, Fraudulent and Traitors.

In place of the poetry of Dante Alighieri, substitute the wit and unvarnished prejudice of Grahm. Grahm is one of the first American winemakers to revive Rhone wines and other forgotten varieties, and to throw away corks for screw caps. He is also wine's first Chief Minister of Silly Names. He created Cardinal Zin, Big House Red, Critique of Pure Riesling, Heart of Darkness and Bouteille Call among others.

The first cantos of Grahm's parody, Da Vino Commedia by Al Dente Allegory, are out now in his newsletter. In them, the pilgrim is Grahm's alter ego, a forlorn winemaker who confesses in midlife that "I have loved multitudinous grapes o'erwell," but admits that Rhone grapes "have been berry, berry good to me." He scales the heights of pinot noir, whose secrets are hidden behind a door marked "abandon all oak, ye who enter here."

Where Dante crossed the River Styx with Charon, Grahm's characters are ferried across Chypz (clever spelling for the oak fragments used in cheap winemaking) with Char-On, a bull literally barrel-chested. Char-On is described in footnotes as "Mr. Chips Goes to Hell."

Grahm recounts his struggles with ratings, bad corks, the great Yellow Tail and other Australian monsters and lists the sins and travesties he finds in modern winemaking.

Warning: The medieval erudition, Latin, French and bad puns will send you to every reference book in the house. Among the bad guys in the circle of wine marketers are Andre Simonists, a Grahmism linking European race car driver and celebrity vintner Andre Simon to the medieval practice of selling church offices for money.

Still, Grahm's new comedy vintage is delicious and will make your belly ache and your brain hurt.

Here's a glimpse of where some of Grahm's foes fall in his Vinferno:

- Second circle: "Espousers of Gracious Living."

- Fifth circle: "The Avaricious, the wine conglomerates (pinot greedio)."

- Seventh circle: "The Vine-Olent: Over-pricers ... pinot noir growers in Fresno ... inventors of green Hungarian blue nun ... wine coolers."

- Eighth circle: "Wine Marketers: Slavishly imitative packagers ... fraudulent geographical denominators."

To sign up for the newsletter, and request the latest with the first four cantos of the Da Vino Commedia and clever illustrations by Alex Gross, click on www.bonnydoonvineyard.com or write Bonny Doon Vineyard, P.O. Box 8376, Santa Cruz, CA 95061.

Chris Sherman can be reached at 727 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 6, 2005, 09:19:04]