Randall Grahm is a force to be reckoned with in the wine industry. A troublemaker of the best kind who is always challenging industry norms and challenging himself to innovate, Grahm is stepping into his final chapter. As his industry friends and family gather to lend their assistance on this endeavor, questions about mortality, legacy, and the quest for the perfect grape are set in motion in The Terroirist.
Veteran director Jeffrey Reiner (Friday Night Lights, The Affair) infuses Randall Grahm’s unique career in the world of wine with intimacy and rich storytelling. Reiner brings to the screen a character study in which Grahm is presented as the obsessed wine geek protagonist striving to turn the page and make history simultaneously. Interweaving interviews with his closest colleagues and his life partner and daughter, we learn about his groundbreaking career with the launch of Bonny Doon Vineyard and who he is at the human level.
The film is set against beautiful locations, primarily his Popelouchum Estate Vineyard located in San Juan Bautista, CA. Additional footage spans the broader Santa Cruz and Central Coast viticultural corridor, providing a window to Graham’s personal residence and tying back to his roots where he originally launched Bonny Doon Vineyard. All is masterfully captured by Reiner, who also serves as cinematographer and editor. The camera floats directly above the canopy, moving with a steady, observational patience that contrasts the human ambition on the ground with the indifferent vastness of the Central Coast terrain.
A cluster of ripe dark grapes hangs among autumn vine leaves in The Terroirist.
“Grahm invites us into the details of how his parents helped him purchase his first vineyard, with his mother serving as his primary sales rep.”
Grahm invites us into the details of how his parents helped him purchase his first vineyard, with his mother serving as his primary sales rep. We learn about how the Bonny Doon Vineyard rose to success due to Graham’s non-conventional approach to wine snobbery. From his definitive proprietary label Rhône-style red blend Le Cigare Volant (“The Flying Cigar”) to his commercial label spin-off brands released in the 90s and early 2000s such as Big House and Cardinal Zin, this is a deeply layered vintage of documentary filmmaking.
The rewards are not limited here, as Grahm also takes us through the grape-growing process and his quest, planting from seed, not clones. Traditional winemaking involves grapes that are grown via rootstocks through a process called vegetative propagation (cloning cuttings grafted onto rootstock), meaning every vine of Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir is a genetic clone of a centuries-old European plant. Contrary to this, Grahm has set out to take a non-traditional approach where instead of planting identical cloned cuttings, he crosses parent grapes and plants thousands of unique seeds, asking whether a vineyard of genetically distinct sibling vines will harmonize into complex polyphony or dissolve into cacophony.
The process that Grahm has decided to take can take approximately 3 to 5 years just to get fruit. This long journey and 73-year-old Grahm’s recent Parkinson’s diagnosis shed light on new questions about whether he will live to see the fruits of his labor and his long-term legacy. In the film, Grahm’s daughter Amélie Grahm emerges as a wine enthusiast and blooming expert in her own right, proving that the grape does not fall far from the vine. She seems primed to step up to continue the vibrant work of her father with flying colors. With an original score by Evan Reiner and sound design that preserves the sounds of nature, there is a lot to nourish the senses here. The Terroirist is a rich, unfiltered pour for wine obsessives. A film best savored slowly, sip by contemplative sip, and I highly recommend it.
"…The Terroirist is a rich, unfiltered pour for wine obsessives."
