Dunites Wine Co.
Appellation: San Luis Obispo Coast
Proprietor: Tyler Eck & Rachel Goffinet
Walk on the Wild Side
Tyler and Rachel Eck learned the ropes of traditional California winemaking—then jerked the reigns down an alternative path.
Wine marketers generally steer clear of allusions to the most notorious murderer in English literature, but there’s a touch of Jekyll and Hyde to the story of Dunites Wine Company.
Consider the protagonists. Tyler Eck got into wine as a student at UC-Santa Barbara, when he’d taste around the Santa Ynez Valley during visits to his uncle and aunt in Los Olivos. After a spell in environmental consulting, he bolted to New Zealand to study oenology. Following a few years of the “cellar hand hemisphere hop”—from NZ to Sonoma, back down under to Tasmania, an extended stretch in the northern Rhône, California again—he had the credentials to land an assistant winemaker position at Fess Parker, where he’s worked under Blair Fox since 2014.
Rachel Goffinet Eck, meanwhile, emerged from Cal Poly-San Luis Obisbo to trace a parallel path. She too worked a harvest in Martinborough, New Zealand, before snagging an enology position under Paul Lato, whose Santa Barbara County pinot noir, chardonnay, and Rhône-style bottlings are routinely lavished with critical praise. But while the experience in the cellar was first-class, the dirt was calling. First she found work as a pest control advisor in Santa Maria’s vegetable fields, and then she spent three years in vineyard management.
So far, so conventional. Tyler and Rachel got married and sunk deeper into SLO’s small, coastal farming community, where “everyone knows everyone”—acquiring viticultural insights and cultivating tight relationships that set the couple up for a plot twist.
“Our region has a lot of great wineries and vineyards,” Tyler says, “but typically they’ve been more conventional—or more classically Californian—in their approach.” The wines that had most captivated him in New Zealand and the northern Rhône were fresher and vibrant, with structures driven by acidity, and a shape-shifting spontaneity that’s become the calling card of so-called “natural” wine. Tyler and Rachel thought that SLO’s mild, coastal climate was actually perfectly suited to that sort of winemaking—favoring grapes with ample acid and moderate sugars, no filtration, no fining, low or no sulfur—and got the Parkers’ blessing to start a side hustle.
Their independent project drew its name and inspiration from the most famously eccentric group in local history: the Dunites, a Depression-era community of poets, philosophers, nudists, and free-thinkers who lived on the sand dunes of southern San Luis Obisbo County, dreaming of a different way to be. Tyler saw it as a chance to “take risks that I don’t think I’d feel comfortable doing, working for someone else.”
Nothing epitomizes their vision more vividly than the Dunites Sans Soufre Syrah. Made after the style of Cornas phenoms like Franck Balthazar and Thiérry Allemand (“whose wines we can’t afford to drink”), this completely unsulfured bottling launches scintillating blueberry aromatics from a nexuberantly layered core of dark fruit—and pulls off the trick of feeling both pungently alive and utterly pristine.
“We’re not trying to make natty kombucha wines—though we share the ethos of a lot of those producers,” Tyler says. “Our aim is always to have clean wines. We want wines that are classically structured and varietally correct, and show the terroir of the vineyard. And to do that, we feel that native yeast and no filtration and no fining is the best window into terroir.
“I love Syrah, and it can have so many different characteristics,” he elaborates. “The styles that are age-worthy, structured, and have richness and density—those are awesome. But for normal-occasion drinking, the styles that are very fresh, bright, and exuberant—much more that berry-flavor profile—I just love that. Every glass is unexpected. It’s a kind of journey that a bottle of wine can take you on: If you are able to decant a bottle and drink it over a couple hours with someone, and just reflect on how it changes over that period, that’s a peak drinking experience for me.”
Working with carefully selected vineyards that are all within 12 miles of the ocean—and as close as one-and-a-half—Tyler and Rachel dig deep into the cool-climate aspects of several SLO varietals. They make a livewire Chardonnay that takes cues from the Mâcon, an unsulfured Albariño, and steer their Pinot Noir bottlings between crunchy immediacy and creamy Côte de Beaune elegance via gentle pumpovers and basket pressing to promote light extraction ahead of aging in neutral French oak.
And now they’re beginning to turn another corner. Feeling the dirt call her name again, Rachel has gone back out into the vines—this time, a 2.5-acre parcel that Dunites has leased to farm organically about ten minutes away from the Pacific. Mornings now find the new mother tending Syrah and Grenache next to a wintertime creek that harbors a pair of ospreys. So even as Tyler keeps his “real job” at Fess Parker, Dunites is drilling even deeper into its own energetic vision of SLO wine.
Wines:
Varietal/Blend: Albariño
Vineyard Area: The Albariño is drawn entirely from Bassi Vineyard on terraces.
Soil: Sandstone and shale
Exposure: South-southwest
Vinification: A combination of whole bunches and gentle crushing by foot before pressing. No SO2 added. Fermented in 100% neutral French oak barrels and puncheon by native yeast. Malolactic conversion by native bacteria.
Maturation: Aged 11 months on lees prior to bottling unfined & unfiltered. Minimal effective SO2 added prior to bottling.
Tech Sheets:
Varietal/Blend: Chardonnay
Vinification: Whole bunch pressed. No SO2 added. Fermented in 100% neutral French oak barrels by native yeast. Malolactic conversion by native bacteria.
Maturation: Aged 5 months on lees prior to bottling with minimal effective SO2 added.
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Varietal/Blend: Pinot Noir
Vineyard Area: From various sites on the San Luis Obispo Coast
Soil: Varying soil types consisting of sand, shale and loam
Vinification: Grapes were hand harvested with an average of 20% whole bunches retained. Fermentation took place by native yeast with no addition of SO2. A combination of gentle pumpovers and punchdowns were performed until the fermentation was complete and the must was basket pressed. Malolactic conversion was by native bacteria.
Maturation: Aged 5 months in neutral French oak barrels prior to bottling unfined & unfiltered. Minimal effective SO2 added to preserve freshness.
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Varietal/Blend: Pinot Noir
Vineyard Area: Planted just 1.5 miles from the ocean at the entrance to See Canyon on a steep hillside
Soil: Sandstone
Exposure: South
Vine Training Method: Guyot
Farming Practice: Biodynamic
Vinification: Grapes were hand harvested with 30% of whole bunches retained. Fermentation took place by native yeast with no addition of SO2. A combination of gentle pumpovers and punchdowns were performed until the fermentation was complete and the must was basket pressed. Malolactic conversion was by native bacteria.
Maturation: Aged 10 months in neutral French oak puncheon and barriques prior to bottling unfined & unfiltered. Minimal effective SO2 added prior to bottling.
Marketing Materials:
Tech Sheets:
Varietal/Blend: Syrah
Vineyard Area: 90% Zeferino, 10% Spanish Springs
Vinification: Grapes were hand harvested with an average of 50% whole bunches retained. Fermentation took place by native yeast with no addition of SO2. A combination of gentle pumpovers and punchdowns were performed until the fermentation was complete and the must was basket pressed. Malolactic conversion was by native bacteria.
Maturation: Aged 8 months in neutral French oak puncheons prior to bottling unfined & unfiltered. No SO2 was added prior to bottling.
Marketing Materials:
Varietal/Blend: Syrah
Vineyard Area: 46% Hi Kite, 30% Bassi, 24% Spanish Springs
Vine Training Method: Guyot
Vinification: Grapes were hand harvested with an average of 65% whole bunches retained. Fermentation took place by native yeast with no addition of SO2. A combination of gentle pumpovers and punchdowns were performed until the fermentation was complete and the must was basket pressed. Malolactic conversion was by native bacteria.
Maturation: Aged 10 months in neutral French oak puncheon and barrels prior to bottling unfined & unfiltered. Minimal effective SO2 added to preserve freshness.
Tech Sheets:
Varietal/Blend: Syrah and Grenache
Vinification: Grapes were hand harvested with an average of 48% whole bunches retained. Fermentation took place by native yeast with no addition of SO2. A combination of gentle pumpovers and punchdowns were performed until the fermentation was complete and the must was basket pressed. Malolactic conversion was by native bacteria.
Maturation: Aged 10 months in neutral French oak puncheon and barriques prior to bottling unfined & unfiltered. Minimal effective SO2 added prior to bottling.
Varietal/Blend: Grenache
Vineyard Area: "Dune Song" is drawn mostly from Hi Kite vineyard on the San Luis Obispo, which is farmed by the Ecks under a lease agreement. A 10% addition from Zeferino Vineyard was added.
Vinification: Hand harvested with an average of 25% whole bunches retained. Fermentation took place by native yeast with no addition of SO2. A combination of gentle pumpovers and punchdowns were performed until the fermentation was complete and the must was basket pressed. Malolactic conversion was by native bacteria.
Maturation: 6 months in neutral French oak puncheons prior to bottling unfined & unfiltered. Minimal effective SO2 was added prior to bottling.
Marketing Materials:
Tech Sheets:
Varietal/Blend: Syrah
Vineyard Area: Dune Child is drawn entirely from Hi Kite vineyard, which is farmed by the Ecks under a lease agreement.
Vinification: Grapes were hand harvested with an average of 25% whole bunches retained. Fermentation took place by native yeast with no addition of SO2. A combination of gentle pumpovers and punchdowns were performed until the fermentation was complete and the must was basket pressed. Malolactic conversion was by native bacteria.
Maturation: 6 months in neutral French oak puncheon and barrels prior to bottling unfined & unfiltered. Minimal effective SO2 added to preserve freshness.
Marketing Materials:
Tech Sheets: