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Buy any 12 bottles and save 10% (excludes wines on offer). Free UK delivery on orders over £100. Tel: 02922 337454
Buy any 12 bottles and save 10% (excludes wines on offer). Free UK delivery on orders over £100. Tel: 02922 337454
2018 Le Cigare Volant 'Cuvée Oumuamua', Bonny Doon Vineyard

2018 Le Cigare Volant 'Cuvée Oumuamua', Bonny Doon Vineyard

Monterey County, California, United States

The Flying Cigar Returns

This is the Rhône Ranger in full cosmic mode, Californian sunshine filtered through a Châteauneuf-du-Pape daydream. The 2018 Le Cigare Volant, labelled Cuvée Oumuamua, is a brighter, more lifted expression than some of the older, weightier vintages, blending 52% Grenache, 35% Cinsault and 13% Syrah. Expect plum, raspberry, red cherry and blackcurrant, with cracked pepper, dried herbs, rose petal, anise and a little savoury spice drifting through the glass. 

On the palate, it is medium-bodied, juicy and wonderfully alive, less about brute force and more about perfume, snap and drinkability. The Grenache brings red-fruited warmth, the Cinsault gives lift and floral brightness, while the Syrah adds pepper and darker edges. There is a lovely food-friendly freshness here, with enough spice and savoury grip to make it more than just a charming red. This is Bonny Doon at its most playful, but still with real winemaking intelligence underneath.

For when: you want something characterful, Rhône-inspired and just a little bit eccentric.
Pairs with: lamb koftas, roast chicken, chargrilled aubergine, Moroccan-spiced vegetables, cassoulet or good sausages.
If this wine were a cult sci-fi film, it would be strange, stylish, oddly brilliant and far more fun than it has any right to be.

Bonny Doon Vineyard was founded by Randall Grahm, one of California’s great wine eccentrics and a pivotal figure in the rise of Rhône varieties on the West Coast. Le Cigare Volant is the estate’s flagship wine and takes its name from a 1954 decree in Châteauneuf-du-Pape that famously banned flying saucers from landing in the vineyards.

Whats in the bottle
52% Grenache, 35% Cinsault and 13% Syrah

Notable Awards
93 points, Wine Enthusiast

£25.00 - £25.00
£25.00
£25.00 - £25.00
£25.00
Availability:
6 in stock, ready to be shipped

Bonny Doon Vineyard, as it stood around 2018, was still inseparable from the singular mind of Randall Grahm, California’s original “Rhône Ranger.” Founded in the early 1980s, Bonny Doon became one of the great countercultural names in American wine, championing Rhône varieties at a time when much of California was focused on Cabernet and Chardonnay. Its flagship, Le Cigare Volant, first made in 1984, became a landmark wine for New World Rhône blends, inspired by Châteauneuf-du-Pape but delivered with Californian wit, imagination and a label story involving flying cigars, or flying saucers, being banned from the vineyards of Châteauneuf.

By 2018, Bonny Doon was in a period of reinvention. Grahm had already built, grown, reduced and reimagined the estate several times, moving away from scale and towards more thoughtful, transparent, terroir-minded wines. His long-standing interest in biodynamics, alternative varieties, screwcaps, lighter extraction and wines of place made Bonny Doon feel both pioneering and slightly mischievous, serious in intent but never solemn in personality. Around this period, Grahm was also increasingly focused on Popelouchum, his ambitious San Juan Bautista vineyard project, aimed at exploring regenerative farming, distinctive soils and the creation of a truly Californian expression of terroir.

The 2018 vintage also marked a notable stylistic shift for Le Cigare Volant, with the wine moving towards a fresher, brighter, more immediate style. The 2018 Cuvée Oumuamua was built around Grenache, Cinsault and Syrah, showing Bonny Doon’s willingness to evolve rather than simply preserve its own mythology. That is what makes the estate so compelling in this era, it was iconic, self-aware and historically important, yet still restless. Bonny Doon circa 2018 was not just a winery selling Californian Rhône blends, it was a living argument for curiosity, originality and the idea that wine could be intellectually serious, deliciously drinkable and completely unafraid to have a sense of humour.