26 Nov Please The Palate Wine of the Week: Dunites Wine Co 2024 Albariño, San Luis Obispo Coast

When Tyler Eck, owner of Dunites Wine Co., told me about the most memorable wine he had ever tasted, he recalled a Rhône wine he once shared with his father over dinner. What stayed with him was how the wine evolved and how each sip seemed to offer something new. I thought about this as I tasted his 2024 Albariño. Each sip revealed something fresh, something unexpected, something alive. That sense of evolution in the glass is exactly why the Dunites Wine Co. 2024 Albariño, San Luis Obispo Coast is the Please The Palate Wine of the Week.

About Dunites

Tyler grew up in the breezy coast of Santa Barbara. While studying art and geography at UC Santa Barbara, he often visited his aunt and uncle in Los Olivos. These visits led to wine tasting and, eventually, a career change. He left environmental consulting, returned to school to study viticulture and enology in New Zealand, and then spent years hopping hemispheres between Martinborough, Tasmania, the Northern Rhône, and Sonoma. He returned to Santa Barbara, California and six months later he met Rachel, who was working for another winery in San Luis Obispo.

Rachel’s love for viticulture began at Cal Poly SLO, drawn in by the unpredictability of farming and the creativity it required. She worked in vineyard management and as a pest control advisor, farming complex coastal sites and embracing the full dirt-to-grape lifecycle.

Tyler and Rachel married and settled on the SLO Coast and in 2015, they launched Dunites Wine Co. Tyler was first drawn to the San Luis Obispo Coast years before the AVA existed, when he noticed the uniqueness of the vineyards near the county line. These cool-climate grapes were often being blended away. He saw potential and chose to focus on the area’s marine-driven character, long before it became widely recognized.

Today, Rachel farms leased vineyard sites just minutes from the Pacific Ocean, where wind, fog, sand, shale, and uplifted seafloor soils define the wines. Tyler guides the winemaking with a focus on purity and restraint: native-yeast fermentations, neutral oak, minimal sulfur, little to no filtration, and thoughtful whole-cluster use in red wines. Everything is low intervention. Everything is meant to speak honestly of place.

The name Dunites pays homage to the bohemian community of artists, mystics, nudists, and free-thinkers who lived among the Oceano dunes in the 1930s. That same spirit – experimental, curious, unconventional – informs the wines. They source from organic vineyards along the SLO Coast and work with just five grape varieties: Chardonnay, Albariño, Pinot Noir, Grenache, and Syrah.

About Albariño

Albariño, believed to be as much as a thousand years old, originated in Galicia in northwestern Spain and was likely brought to France by monks in the 12th century. The variety arrived in the United States in the mid- to late 1990s, when winemaker Alan Kinne imported thousands of cuttings from Spain.

Today, Albariño continues to rise in popularity for its balance and versatility, living somewhere between Sauvignon Blanc’s vibrancy and Chardonnay’s texture.

For Dunites, Albariño is one of their five core varieties and one of only two white wines they produce. Its naturally high acidity is essential to their coastal style. Tyler has worked with Albariño from three different vineyards, each with its own character, but the 2024 bottling comes from Marfarm Vineyard, an organically farmed site shaped by ocean influence.

Tasting Notes

The 2024 vintage was challenging, with low yields and bursts of heat during harvest, resulting in concentrated yet bright, energetic wines. Tyler treats the wine with little intervention but with seriousness. The wine was barrel fermented in large format 500-liter neutral barrels and went through malolactic fermentation. The wine offers aromas of stone fruits, jasmine flowers, and salty minerality with bright acidity and a textured finish.

Food Pairing

The acidity in the wine makes it able to pair with dishes with cream sauces or with BBQ oysters. I paired it with crab cakes, a sauté of cabbage, asparagus, and mushrooms, and air-fried potatoes. The acidity and freshness of the wine cut through the richness of the crab cakes while the texture of the wine was able to match the same rich flavors.

Where To Purchase

The 2024 Albariño retails for $35 and can be purchased directly from Dunites Wine Co.

Meet The Winemaker

Meet Tyler Eck and get to know him in 30 questions on the Wine Soundtrack USA podcast.