


Winemaker Notes


Kunin Wines will never make 5,000 or even 10,000 cases of wine for just this reason. I want to make the best wine possible from the best vineyards possible year after year. Unfortunately, the best vineyards don’t always have that many grapes, so it is a fact of life for me that Kunin Wines will always be small, and that our production of various wines from different vineyards may fluctuate from vintage to vintage. By staying small and letting vineyard and vintage quality dictate production levels, however, we will always be able to make the best wines possible from the best grapes available. When you open a bottle of wine with a Kunin label, you can be assured that, from the vineyard to the glass, as little as possible was done to obscure the purity of fruit and terroir that Mother Nature created.

Today it is an integral part of the greater Santa Barbara County wine region, but at one time the village, Los Olivos, was a stop on the Wells Fargo stagecoach line.

Unquestionably one of the most diverse grape varieties, Chenin Blanc can do it all. It shines in every style from bone dry to unctuously sweet, oaked or unoaked, still or sparkling and even as the base for fortified wines and spirits. Perhaps Chenin Blanc’s greatest asset is its ever-present acidity, maintained even under warm growing conditions. Somm Secret—Landing in South Africa in the mid 1800s, today the country has double the acreage of Chenin Blanc planted compared to France. There is also a new wave of dedicated producers committed to restoring old Chenin vines.