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

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He founded The Winefront, is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion (and former editor of Halliday magazine), and is the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He is 100% independent, and tastes between 5,000 and 10,000 wines each year, blind and in comparative brackets as often as is practicable.

More about Campbell Mattinson

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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