Kunin Wines Jurassic Park Sparkling Chenin Blanc 2020

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Bottle of Kunin Wines Jurassic Park Sparkling Chenin Blanc 2020, from the Santa Ynez Valley, reviewed by Campbell Mattinson.

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.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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