PIT OF CHAOS: A Full-Circle Wine from HAwks Hill Ranch
Chenin Blanc is the ultimate survivor, living on the margins of California wine, often overlooked by the masses yet still prized by those in the know. It’s why we are now proud to introduce our own Chenin Blanc, a new passion project from Hawks Hill Ranch owner-vintner Kit Kuyper.
The 2024 “Pit of Chaos” Chenin Blanc comes from the old-vine, dry-farmed Bailey Ranch Vineyard in the Adelaida District, delivering a truly distinctive drinking experience. This wine falls under our Open Outcry label, which is dedicated to boundary-breaking wines from top local vineyards.
You may join our Insider Trading Club to purchase this wine starting the week of July 29.. It will also be available to sample at our tasting room.
Enter the “Pit of Chaos”
Kit’s foray into Chenin Blanc has been a long time coming. He’s been a fan of California Chenin Blancs going back many years, and he fell even more in love with the grape when visiting his brother in South Africa, where Chenin Blanc—known there as “Steen”—is the signature wine.
Traveling through Swartland in South Africa, Kit visited Eben Sadie (Sadie Family Wines) and Adi Badenhorst (Badenhorst Family Wines). “The overwhelming beauty and vastness of the area was stunning,” he recalls “There is a raw and natural approach to these old-vine plantings, and their namesake style ‘bush vines’ is a fitting image to these vineyards.”
The stories of winemaker Eben Sadie finding abandoned century-old vineyards and bringing them back to life with impossible logistics was fascinating. Even more so was the finished product. “Wines with limited inputs and unbelievable focus and complexity,” Kit says. “This is where I first tasted Chenin Blanc with acid and minerality coupled with stone fruit aromatics.”
Going Full Circle
Later, after Kit launched Hawks Hill Ranch, he became friends with Winemaker Neil Collins, who operated his family’s nearby Lone Madrone Winery. The tasting room occupied a 90-year-old horse barn on Adelaida Road (which would later become the Hawks Hill Ranch tasting room after Lone Madrone moved out).
Kit would drop in frequently, and one of his favorite Lone Madrone wines was an old-vine Chenin Blanc, which came from Bailey Ranch Vineyard in the Adelaida District. Dave Bailey and his family planted their own-rooted vineyard starting in 1970. Dave still farms the site to this day, and he continues to propagate cuttings in order to maintain this historic vineyard. The clone itself remains a mystery.
“I always loved that wine, it really struck a chord as a proper old-vine Paso Robles Chenin Blanc, delivering those characteristics of the Chenins from Stellenbosch,” Kit says.
So, when Neil reached out many years later to offer Kit some of his coveted Bailey Ranch Chenin Blanc fruit, Kit jumped at the opportunity. And thus the 2024 “Pit of Chaos” was born and things came full circle. It’s a wine that is sentimental to Kit, yet entirely new to Hawks Hill Ranch.
Kit Kuyper comes full circle with our first-ever Chenin Blanc
California’s Sleeper Grape
We are also proud to play a small role in the comeback story of California Chenin Blanc. The grape is native to the Loire Valley of France and was first planted in California in the late 1800s. By the 1970s, it was one of California’s predominant wine grapes—but it became increasingly associated with pedestrian “jug” wines.
As domestic palates became more refined and tastes shifted toward Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc faded into relative obscurity. Acreage dropped from roughly 32,000 acres in 1980 to under 5,000 acres by 2020. But Chenin Blanc was far from dead. In fact, it was primed for revival.
Indeed, in recent years, winemakers have started championing the charms of a well-made Chenin Blanc: brilliant acidity, medium body and distinct varietal flavors of crisp orchard fruits. Chenin Blanc is now resurgent as a wine for those who appreciate finesse, structure and personality in their whites.
Now you know why the 2024 “Pit of Chaos” Chenin Blanc means so much to us, and why it’s a wine worth seeking out.