Disaster struck Bonny Doon in 1992. As the vineyard started to succumb to an insect-born plague called Pierce’s disease, its iconoclast owner Randall Grahm bought 150 acres in Soledad, the South County town best known for its large state prison. On the 125 acres he eventually planted, he intended to grow some of the varietals he knew from traveling through Italy. In practice, he repeated the same pattern he had followed with his legendary Le Cigare Volant (or “flying cigar,” an offbeat phrase for a UFO), the wildly successful Rhône blend that landed him on the cover of Wine Spectator in a too-small cowboy suit and the sobriquet of the Rhône Ranger, the foremost of an expanding group of California winemakers turning to the varietals of the Rhône valley.

“I ended up buying grapes that were better than the ones I was growing, and which cost less, too,” he says. The wine took off, with much of the customer approval probably attributable to what Grahm terms the “funny label.” Even though the grapes came from many places, he assigned the wine a virtual terroir. And what a terroir. Wryly saluting Soledad’s most famous feature, he branded it Big House and commissioned a label picturing a penitentiary. “My broker in Northern California said, ‘Who is going to buy wine with the name of a prison on it and a picture of a prison on the label?’” he recalls. “She had also said, ‘Who is going to buy a bottle of wine with a flying saucer on it?’ I think if you are chasing your audience, you’re chasing yourself around in circles. You’re much better off with an aesthetic and vision– following it and explaining to people what it is you’re doing.” In 2005, the year before Grahm sold the brand, Bonny Doon sold 175,000 cases of Big House blends.

Looking Elsewhere: “I’m trying to make the very painful transition between public approval and internal approval,” Grahm says. “Much of my career has been intended to produce acclaim.”

For the full story about Randall Grahm, “The Do Over” by Arthur Lubow, visit http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080701/the-do-over.html.