lgsjr – Page 5 – Power Tasting – The Wine Tasting Experience

A Day in Champagne

We have gone to the Champagne region for wine tasting in the past. The drive from either of the Paris airports seemed a lot easier on the map than behind the wheel. Once you’re there, the countryside is wonderful and the two major cities, Épernay and Reims are fascinating. And, of course, there’s all that sparkling Champagne to try. But let’s say you don’t have the time for several days of wine tasting or you have other things you want to do in Paris. Luckily, there are ways to enjoy a day trip from Paris to Champagne.

Don’t even think of driving. It’s a minimum of 2 and a half hours trip, much of which is spent navigating the streets of Paris as you leave town. And don’t forget, you have to drive home after a day of imbibing.

Pol Roger on the Avenue de Champagne in Épernay.

A better idea is to take a train. There are several each day from Paris to Reims that get you there in only 45 minutes. It takes longer to go to Épernay, an hour and twenty minutes on the fastest trains. All these trains leave from the Gare de l’Est, which is about twenty minutes by taxi from Montparnasse and longer from the Right Bank. (A friendly tip: the croissants at the coffee shop at the Gare de l’Est are delicious and are served warm.)

Yes, it takes longer to go to Épernay, but it is an easy walk to the Avenue de Champagne with one Champagne house after the other, many of which can be visited without a reservation. If you want to tour the cellars at the bigger names, such as Moët and Chandon or Perrier-Jouet, you will need to book in advance.

The Chagall windows in the Cathedral of Reims.

On the other hand, Reims offers other attractions besides wine tasting and has many more spots for a quality lunch while you’re there. The cathedral at Reims is an architectural wonder and the windows painted by Marc Chagall shouldn’t be missed. There are a few Maisons in walking distance of the train station and Mumm is in the center of town. You’ll need a taxi or an Uber to get to most of the better known Champagne houses. Three of them are in close proximity to each other: Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot and Pommery. You can walk easily from one to the other. But you’d better get your reservations closely aligned, with at least an hour and half at each. Lunch is an issue as well in that part of town. There are places to eat, but they’re all rather elegant and pricy.

Unfortunately, the last return trips back to Paris don’t allow a lot of time for a nice dinner, with the last trains leaving at 7:30-ish. However, you do have the chance to keep on with Champagne tasting. La Banque in Épernay and Le Parvis in Reims offer you the chance to compare Champagnes side-by-side and still make your train. Be careful, though. If you’ve been tasting all day, either restrain yourself at the Maisons or take it easy at the Champagne bars. If nothing else, you don’t want to miss your train!

Pommery

Of all the Champagne houses we have visited – and that’s quite a few – Pommery feels the most Californian. There is no Napa palace here but the architecture is palatial and it has its roots in the 19^th century. The grounds are enormous and are dotted with artworks. Pommery has added a large pavilion that shows that the proprietors have recognized that wine tourism is a business that attracts visitors to their brand. (A word about those proprietors: You may see the estate referred to as Vranken-Pommery. That’s because a Belgian fellow named Paul Vranken bought it in 2002.) But the cellars are ancient and the Champagne is the real deal.

The grounds of the Pommery Champagne house, with its “art works”.

Pommery is located in Reims, in a sector where several other Champagne houses reside, so you can easily walk from one to the other. Be certain to line up your schedule, since all the houses offer tours combined with tastings. The working property includes a Tudor-style castle and a French château. The pavilion adjoining these buildings contains the entrance to the cellars, a chic restaurant, some exhibits concerning the history of the firm and a Champagne bar. The most notable exhibit is called the Émile Gallé tun. A tun is a massive wine barrel; this one holds 75,000 liters. It was built to be shown at the 1903 World Fair in St. Louis and illustrates the friendship between France and the United States.

The pavilion at Pommery, with the Émile Gallé tun at the left and the Champagne bar in the center.

As mentioned, there are numerous artworks on the grounds although we were not enamored of the particular pieces being shown on our most recent visit. The dedication to art, both 19^th century and contemporary, is carried through in the cellars. These are reached via a staircase of 116 steps. (There is an elevator for those who can’t handle the stairs.) There is a history to the cellars, which were adapted from Gallo-Roman chalk pits. As the guide explains how Champagne is made and what the various areas in the cellars are used for, much attention is paid to the art installed throughout. Some of it is contemporary and edgy; others were installed when the cellars were created.

116 steps into the cellars!

Once the tour is over, you are led back to the pavilion where you can drink some bubbly. A glass of Champagne is included in the cost of the tour, at various levels of quality and price. Since each visitor gets only one glass, it’s not really a tasting, but it is possible to buy more glasses at the bar. There are comfortable seating areas in the pavilion where you can enjoy your drinks.

There is a certain sameness to all tours of Champagne houses (or for those of domestic sparkling wineries, for that matter.) All of the other attractions give a visit to Pommery a certain spice not found elsewhere. So does the history of the Maison. It was founded in 1836 and, under the management of the founder’s widow, it became one of the world’s largest producers, producing up to a million cases annually today. In the 19^th century, all Champagne was intensely sweet, with up to 300 grams of sugar per liter. Madame Pommery invented brut, which today must have less than 12 grams per liter. It’s worth raising a glass to her at the winery that bears her name just for that achievement.

France Isn’t California

If you’re an American who enjoys going on wine tasting trips, there are many places to go in your own country, but unquestionably the premier destination is California. On the other hand, if you are looking to have a wine tasting adventure abroad, the first place that generally comes to mind is France. At a very elementary level, the experiences are the same. You visit a winery or a tasting room; they pour you some wine; and you taste it. The resemblances end there.

Map courtesy of About-France.com.

California’s wine regions extend from Temecula in the south, through the Central Coast, to Napa and Sonoma counties and up to Mendocino and beyond. Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay are king and queen, thought there are sections that specialize in Pinot Noir, Zinfandel and Syrah. While there is some regional variation, each winery offers a range of wines from different grapes.

In France, almost every sector grows its own distinct grapes, by law. Whatever variation you’ll find in a given winery is different levels of quality of wines from the same grapes. So, if you’re used to wine tasting in California, here are some tips for tasting in France.

Choose regions with the type of wine you like. This is as simple as choosing between red and white wine. Let’s say you’re starting in Paris. Go east for Champagne and further to drink Chardonnay in Chablis and even further for Riesling in Alsace. If you want reds, head to Burgundy in the east (where there’s plenty of Chardonnay as well) or south to Bordeaux or Provence.
Don’t just go to the most famous regions. There are so many high quality winemaking regions in France that if you bypass Chablis for white wines and go to the Loire Valley south of Paris, you’ll do quite well with Vouvray and Sancerre. If you go to the Southwest or Languedoc for red wines, you won’t taste a premier cru, but you won’t face the crowds and the costs either. Think of it as wine tasting in Santa Barbara instead of Napa Valley.
Most places don’t have seated tastings. At the same time, you will often need reservations to visit wineries in Bordeaux or Champagne. In much of France, you can just pull up to a vineyard and ask the person in the tasting room (often the owner) to taste their wines. If you can remember the olden days in California’s premier wine areas, much of France’s wineries are like what that was, but not anymore.
If you stick with a sub-region, wineries are fairly close to one another. In California, even if you stick to a specific AVA, say Russian River within Sonoma County, you’ll do a lot of driving. If you just do Pommard or Pauillac, you won’t need to go very far from one châteaux to another.
Oh, yeah, they speak French. If you do, too, then visiting is a breeze. These days, most French people can speak at least a little English so you can get by. A lot can be accomplished by pointing and smiling. Frequent use of the words s’il vous plait and merci is a good idea.

Weinbau Prinz

Before we introduce you to this particular winery, we’d like to say a few words about how we got there. We visited Vienna for the first time and fell in love with the city. Our purpose was not wine tasting, but as long as there was an opportunity to see some vineyards, we couldn’t resist (of course). Quite frankly, we don’t usually like to take a tour for wine tasting purposes, but in this instance, we thought it was the best choice. Not every winery we visited was worth reporting, but Weinbau Prinz (www.weinbauprinz.at) was a very pleasant experience so we’re pleased to share it with our readers.

Weinbau is a German word for viticulture or wine growing, what we would call a winery. This particular one is owned by Roswitha and Martin Prinz, who are from winemaking families stretching back for centuries. Their small (3.1 hectares) vineyard is located in the village of Stetten in the winemaking district known as the Weinviertel, the largest in Austria. The Weinviertel (“wine quarter” in German) abuts Vienna and this winery is only a 45 minute drive from the city center.

The village church in Stetten, Austria rising over the vines of Weinbau Prinz.

The wine tasting experience at Weinbau Prinz is highlighted by the setting. Your party is seated at a long table right in the vineyard, with the steeple of the village church looming over you. If, like us, you have seen scenes like this in the movies and were ever-so-eager to do it yourself, you’re hooked before you even take the first sip.

Tasting in the Weinbau Prinz vineyards.

The wines are poured by Roswitha Prinz herself. (Martin is the cellar guy.) Besides owning the winery, she is a lecturer at BOKU, which we gather is the Viennese university for viticulture. She seems unfazed at answering questions from those who know little about Austrian wine or wine in general, as well as from wine snobs. You get all kinds in the wine business, we guess.

Weinbau Prinz is proud to proclaim that they have been fully organic (or bio as they say in Europe) since 2018. For a small vineyard, they make quite a wide variety of wines, ranging from the inevitable Grüner Veltliner, through a white blend they call, simply enough, Cuvee Weiss to some sparkling wines known in Austria as sekt. Weinbau Prinz has a number of wines made from unusual (to us) white grapes, including Blütenmuskateller, Donauriesling, Cabernet Blanc, and Sauvignac. Although the Weinviertel is primarily known for white wines, they also offer a few Zweigelts, a red grape more frequently found in Western Austria.

We’ll leave it to others to discuss the subtleties of aroma and taste of the wines at Weinbau Prinz. Power Tasting is all about the wine tasting experience, not wine reviewing. If your objective is an enjoyable hour well spent, in scenery that seems to come from the winemaking Tourism Bureau, we recommend Weinbau Prinz without reservation. Oh, maybe a reservation would be a good idea, since they welcome tours.

Café Central and Others

Vienna is a city that was built to be the capital of a vast empire, one that had reigned over great swaths of Central Europe for centuries. Then the Austrians fought on the wrong side in two disastrous World Wars. The empire disappeared but the imperial grandeur of Vienna remained. What was a good Viennese to do in these circumstances? The answer is obvious: stop for a coffee and have some cake.

Dotted throughout the city are cafés and konditorei (bakeries specializing in pastries, as opposed to bread). Many of them were built more than a century ago and continue to serve strong coffee, often with steamed milk or mit schlag (with whipped cream). If you want the 50-50 coffee and steamed milk, ask for a mélange.

Café Central in Vienna, with the usual line of tourists waiting to be admitted.

The most noted of Vienna’s coffee houses is Café Central, located in an elegant building that once housed the Stock Exchange. The interior seems more like a movie set than any Starbucks would ever dream of. With its marble columns, vaulted ceilings, globed chandeliers and parquet floor, Café Central looks like a little bit of an idealized 19^th century that just decided not to go away. Which it is.

The interior of Café Central, with one of its pastry cases and Peter Altenberg waiting up front.

Today you are as likely to hear American accents at the table next to you than German ones. But there’s an echo of Grand Dukes, intellectuals, revolutionaries, movie stars and spies that you can imagine you can hear. Andy why not? Café Central was frequented by many other influential minds of the last century including Stefan Zweig, the novelist; Artur Schnitzler, the dramatist; Sigmund Freud; and Leon Trotsky, who was evidently a demon chess player before he got back to Russia. One of them, the poet Peter Alternberg, was such a Café Central habitué, that there is now a statue of him sitting by the door, waiting for a table no doubt.

You can get a meal in many coffee houses, including Café Central, but there are better places to eat. It’s the pastries that are the pride and joy of Vienna. Chocolate! Crumble! Mousse! Jam! Nuts! All spun together in miraculous inventions and fantasies of sweetness. Desserts stand alone as a reason for living in Vienna, so it seems, and it’s very easy for a visitor to get right into the swing of things.

Perhaps the best known Viennese pastry is apple strudel, with its flaky crust and a hint of cinnamon. Then there’s something called kaiserschmarrn, which translates roughly to “the emperors mess”. It’s a thick, chopped-up pancake served with powdered sugar and preserves. Evidently Emperor Franz Josef loved it, as did we.

Service at Café Sacher.

The pastry most closely identified with Vienna is called Sachertorte, invented at and still proudly served at Café Sacher. It’s a two-layer, dense chocolate cake with apricot jam between the layers and a thick fudgy icing. Served mit schlag, of course. Don’t leave Vienna without trying it.

Both Café Central and Sacher are very popular with tourists, so there’s often a long line outside waiting to get in. It’s worthwhile to make a reservation and skip the line, but it’s not that easy to book a table at the times you might want. You won’t do badly at any of the hundreds of other cafés in town, but patronizing the best known ones is part of the charm of a trip to Vienna.

Wine Tasting in Restaurants

The best way to get to know the wines of any section of Wine Country is to travel there and taste those wines in view of the vineyards. Essentially, that’s what Power Tasting is all about. But most of us don’t have the wherewithal to jet off around the globe, just to check out the latest trends and vintages.

So, you can go to your local shops and buy a bottle from a region you may have read about. There are a number of problems with that approach. You’re at the mercy of the distributors who supply that shop and may not have a good selection from the region you’re interested in. (Since this issue is focused on Austrian wines, let’s use that country as our example.) The wine store may have two Grüner Veltliners, a Blaufränkisch and that’s it. You don’t know too much about these wines either, so it’s a crap shoot that you’re not likely to win.

Wallse in New York, our favorite Austrian restaurant. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

Another alternative is to visit a restaurant that specializes in the food from the region you’re interested in. It surely has some of the wines you’re interested in and someone who knows a bit about them. But it’s not that straightforward, either. So here are a few tips for doing your wine tasting in a restaurant.

Choose the right cuisine. This should be obvious, but it’s worth stressing. If you don’t enjoy the food, you probably won’t be thrilled with the wine either, no matter how well-chosen the list. So if wiener schnitzel and goulash aren’t your thing, maybe wine tasting in an Austrian restaurant won’t work out well for you.
Sit at the bar. Even if you do like the cuisine, it’s a bit much to have to pay for a meal just to sample the wines. Most restaurants have a by-the-glass list; this is a good way to take a preliminary tour across the grapes and vintages that are made in the restaurant’s native country. There are some drawbacks to this approach, however. The wines on the by-the-glass list are generally not the best and are often among the least expensive of their types. So while you may taste a broader variety, you may not get to sample the qualities that are associated with a particular type of wine.
Don’t taste alone. This is good advice for wine tasting in general, but where you’re interested in an introduction to the variety of a particular region, you shouldn’t be knocking back full glasses, much less whole bottles. Of course, those quantities are how restaurants sell wine, so if you’re with someone with whom you’re comfortable sharing, you’ll try more and drink less.
Get help. If you don’t know anything about the wines or the labels, ask the sommelier or the bartender for the one wine that would serve as a good introduction to what that country produces. It’s a good question, not easy to answer. (Could you pick just one wine that typifies California, for instance?) The sommelier might be able to give you a few sips to help him or her understand your taste in wine, thereby giving you a broader sample right up front. More important, you’ll get your feet – er, your lips – wet right at the start.
You can come back. If you find you like what you’ve tried, you can always dine or drink at that restaurant again. And if you are tasting at a restaurant far from home, you’ll have a basis for sampling at some other restaurant near you.

Discovering Austrian Wines

There are many ways to become acquainted with the wines of any particular nation that contains a section of Wine Country. Some countries are so large that it is meaningless to talk in any specific way about, say, American wine or French wine or Italian wine. These nations produce so much wine and distribute it so widely that we are more likely to sip specific regions such as Napa or Bordeaux or Tuscany, with many subdivisions within them.

Then there are countries that are so small that almost all their wine production is consumed at home. For example, Power Tasting recently featured wine tasting in Croatia, a country that clearly fits that model. It isn’t that they make bad wines; in fact there are many excellent ones. It’s just that their grapes and their wineries are too poorly known to justify international distribution.

There is a small group of countries in the middle, with a long history of winemaking and the quantity and quality to send their wines overseas. Some have gained renown in recent years, including Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Others have just begun to garner some attention. Austrian wines are among these.

There are many Central European countries that make wine. Sadly, many of these fell under Soviet domination after World War II and found their native vines torn out and their winemaking facilities converted to Russian tastes. Austria adopted neutrality then and were spared. Still, Austria is only 32,000 square miles, with much consisting of mountains, and its population is only 9 million. Still, their wines are catching on in the US.

Photo courtesy of Vivino US.

In our experience, Austrian wines were essentially unknown in the United States until a craze for Grüner Veltliner began around the turn of the millennium. And why not? Here was a white wine that wasn’t quite like anything else most people had tasted. Maybe just as important, it was everything California Chardonnay wasn’t. It was light, refreshing, unoaked, not very expensive and went well with almost everything except a rare steak. We Americans couldn’t quite pronounce it, but we liked it. (It’s more like greener velt-leaner than grooner felt-liner, as many of us said it.)

With that initial experience, many Americans, ourselves included, sought opportunities to try other Austrian wines, particularly the reds. We are fortunate that there is an excellent Austrian restaurant, Wallse, in our neighborhood, with an extensive wine list. [There is more in this issue about wine tasting in restaurants.] Our first try was Zweigelt, which some people describe as a lighter red but we’ve always found quite dense. The wine is named for a Dr. Felix Zweigelt, who created the grape by cross-breeding two other varietals.

Those two varietals were Blaufränkisch and Sankt Laurent. The former grape translates to French Blue, but it doesn’t seem to have any French derivation. It makes rich, tannic wines, often vinified in a style evocative of Northern Rhônes. It quickly became our favorite Austrian wine, perhaps because it complements wiener schnitzel so well. We recently got around to trying Sankt Laurent and find it very much like Pinot Noir. We’ve read that DNA studies confirm that parentage.

It’s fun to discover a whole new world of taste sensations, and having a source of so many fine examples of Austrian wine just up the street makes it even more enjoyable for us.

The Wine Tasting Life Cycle

There is a cycle to life from infancy to youth to adulthood to old age. In information technology, we speak of a systems development life cycle. The Museum of Modern Art in New York recently presented “Life Cycles: The Materials of Contemporary Design”. Well, there’s a life cycle for wine tasting – at least for wine tasting visits – that enthusiasts ought to think about. Here are the phases of that cycle.

Anticipation. For us, we start looking forward to our next visit to Wine Country almost as soon as we return home from the last one. Of course, Wine Country is a large place, so we first have to decide where to go next. We generally try to go to California at least once a year, but that state is a large place with many wine-tasting destinations itself, so we have to choose.
Planning. Once that decision is made, we have to plan our next visit. If we’re going to a place we’ve been before, do we return to old favorites or try to find new ones? If we’re heading to somewhere new, we have to study maps and lists of wineries, most of which are just names to us. In that case, we need to consult the internet for reviews, recommendations and some descriptions of the wines and wineries in the region we are to visit.
Tasting. This is the best phase of the life cycle but, alas, the shortest (unless you are a professional wine taster). So we savor every moment of it. Everything tastes a little better when we look at a vineyard while we sip, but we think we retain enough objectivity to recognize quality from plonk. If we’ve done a good enough job in the planning phase, there isn’t any poor wine at all.
Remembering. This is the longest phase. Some people – not us – have good enough taste memory that they can precisely recall what they tasted. We rely on the bottles we shipped home, the clubs we’ve joined, the wines that we order in restaurants and a general recollection of what we liked and what we didn’t.
Sharing. A corollary to remembering is sharing our memories. We have some friends who are interested, but we recognize that most people don’t care about the interesting Pinot Noir we tried in some faraway place that they’ll never see. Of course, sharing is what Power Tasting is all about, so we hope you enjoy our memories.

And so it starts over again, as is the nature of cycles. Every wine tasting trip is unique, even if we return to the same regions and wineries repeatedly. Sometimes a wine tasting trip is akin to visiting family and old friends. There are few surprises but there are always changes, some subtle and some rather more extensive. As with wine, there are excellent years and less good ones. (Rarely are there truly bad ones.) Then there is the excitement of visiting new friends, who over time become old ones. Yet another cycle.

Castles on the Loire

There are some mighty rivers in this world that have had historical importance. There’s the Mississippi, the Nile and closer to home, the Hudson and the St. Lawrence. In France, there is a river that is long but not mighty, the Loire, with history all along its route. It rolls along quietly with very limited navigability. But from the late Middle Ages into the Renaissance, France was ruled from various spots along the Loire.

Many of the castles where the kings and nobles lived in those days are still there, open for public visits. And oh, by the way, they make wine in the Loire valley, mostly light white wines such as Vouvray, Muscadet and Sancerre. There are some reds, the best known of which is Chinon. But about those castles…

There are nearly 50 of them and it seems that you see a château (French for castle) every time you turn a corner. They are hard to miss as you travel around the Touraine region. (The region is centered on the city of Tours, hence the name.) We haven’t visited them all but have seen quite a few. These are our favorites.

Blois Castle, with Francois I’s staircase. Photo courtesy of France This Way.

Blois. This was a royal château, occupied off and on by a number of French kings, the most notable of whom were Francois I and Henri IV. It’s where Jeanne d’Arc went to be blessed before setting out to war. Each noble and king added or renovated a little here and there, so the result that can be seen today is massive. Much of the architecture is Italianate, due to the wars fought by the French in Italy during Blois’ heyday. Its most famous feature is the spiral staircase erected by Francois I.

The roof of Chambord castle. Photo courtesy of the Domain National de Chambord.

Chambord. While this is the largest château in the Loire valley, it was originally Francois I’s hunting lodge. Unlike many of the other castles, this one was never really used for defensive purposes. Architecturally, it is the most decorated, with towers, turrets, buttresses and curlicues that don’t seem to have any particular function. It is worth walking around the roof, to see all the fanciful additions that make Chambord more beautiful. The double helix staircase in the interior is said to have been designed by Leonardo da Vinci.

The chapel of St. Hubert at Amboise, where Leonardo da Vinci is said to be buried. Photo courtesy of the Orange County Register.

Amboise. And speaking of Leonardo, his remains are interred at Amboise, another royal château. He was lured away from France by, yes, Francois I who was a patron of the arts as well as a warrior king. The history of the castle goes back to the High Middle Ages, when it was quite definitely used for military and defensive purposes. It looms over the village of Amboise, where we have had some pleasant lunches.

Chenonceau castle. Photo courtesy of L’Indre par Velo.

Chenonceau. We have saved the best for last. Chenonceau spans the little river Cher, with arches allowing the river to pass beneath it. One of the pleasures of visiting Chenonceau is rowing under the château. An interesting fact is that the Cher formed the border between Nazi-occupied France in World War II and so-called Free France to the south. Jews and other persecuted people would enter in the north and escape from the other end of the château. There are two notable gardens on either side of Chenonceau. One was built for Catherine de Medici, queen of France and wife of king Henry II. The other was built for the king’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers; she got the bigger, nicer garden but was forced to give it up when the king died.

Kunin Wines, Take Two

A few issues back, Power Tasting featured a winery, Margerum, that had moved from the refined area of Santa Barbara to the raucous Funk Zone. Here, we report on Kunin Wines (www.kuninwines.com), which went the other way. Some years ago we featured Kunin in their old digs (now occupied by the Santa Barbara Winery). We are pleased to say that the wine is just as good, maybe better, and the vibe is way, way cooler.

We last visited Kunin in early 2017. Tragically, the founder, Seth Kunin died later that year. His widow, Magan, joined in time by their daughter Phoebe, took the reins. Maybe we were just in a better mood in the new tasting room; maybe the vintages were better this time; or maybe Magan has just improved the wines. Whatever the reason, we enjoyed the wines even more this time.

The new facility is in the Presidio section, once the center of Spanish colonial administration in Santa Barbara. In fact, some of the old buildings are visible out the window. It’s a storefront, with an adjoining cheese shop. You can buy some cheese or sliced meats to accompany your tastes, if you so choose. The tasting room is small and sparsely furnished, with a few stools at the bar, and a few chairs and tables in an open room.

The Kunin tasting room, with a server ready to pour.

Crowd control is not the problem it was in the Funk Zone, because there are no crowds. Most of the uptown wineries have tasting rooms on the main drag, State Street. Kunin is a few blocks away. We hope that they attract dedicated tasters, because we suspect that foot traffic is sparse.

Kunin still makes Rhône style wines with Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre taking the pride of place. (We hate to hear them called GSM, but that seems to be the American way.) But Kunin also produces wines from a variety of grapes not often found in the US. These include Carignane, Cinsault and Counoise. Whites are made from Viognier and Chenin Blanc. Many are estate wines, but Kunin does have several single vineyard sourced wines.

Two wines available for tasting are somewhat different. Kunin has two wines that they call Pape Star, which are their take on Chateauneuf de Pape. The white is a blend of Grenache Blanc and Rousanne, which we don’t think any other American wineries make. The red is made of Grenache, Mourvèdre, Counoise and Carignane. These wines are a tribute to the great wines of the Southern Rhône. But make no mistake; they’re unmistakably California Rhône-style wines that don’t need to tip their proverbial hats to their French cousins.

There’s also a real oddball wine that they call MV Special K. MV means multi-vintage; Special K doesn’t mean breakfast cereal. Moreover, this wine is a blend of different vineyards from around Santa Barbara County. It’s usually reserved for Kunin’s club members. If it’s not on the tasting list, ask for it politely. If they have it open, we’re sure they’ll pour you some.

If you’re wine tasting in Santa Barbara, make a point of visiting Kunin. Don’t let them be lonely.