Kunin Wines Jurassic Park Sparkling Chenin Blanc 2020

Kunin Wines Jurassic Park Sparkling Chenin Blanc 2020
Santa Ynez Valley, DIAM cork.

Winemaker Magan Kunin described this as a “love letter to Santa Barbara.” It’s chenin blanc, sparkling, made using Methode Champenoise techniques. It was the first wine that I tasted on a trip to California recently, it was just really an introductory sip, and yet it had me rocked from the outset.
This sparkling wine is complex, earthen, awash with intense apple – cooked and fresh – flavours and infused with notes of rosewater, crushed fennel, quince, cumin and peach. It’s textural, characterful and well sustained but it’s the wine’s waxy, honeyed, earthen notes that really draw you in. This is a beautiful sparkling wine, character-laden. 

This wine saw zero-dosage, I believe. If so, it didn’t need the adulteration; it’s got it all going on without it.