The sun over the Paso Robles Highlands had that morning-after shimmer, the kind that peels reality into layers if you stare too long. I had wandered out to see what young Tomas Sinor was up to. Tomas being the offspring of Mike Sinor, who haunts these coastal hills like an old wine shaman. The kid poured me a glass of his 2024 Uncommon Earth Chenin Blanc. Pale. trembling. Alive in a way that suggested it had seen something it was not supposed to see. Yeah,I’m talking about Tomas here. The Chenin was good too -- cool in the glass. I took a sip. The world tilted a few degrees to the left. Then it kept turning but I felt that something had changed in the firmament of my soul.

Chenin Blanc has been drifting through history like an undiagnosed patient zero for a disease no one ever knew existed. Loire monks nurtured the variety while muttering their secret prayers. The wine tasted of stone walls and cold cellars and the sort of discipline that bruises the soul. Then Chenin fled to South Africa. took on a new name. Steen. And survived in harsh light and restless soil. California picked it up like a stray. then forgot about it when glamour grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay arrived and sucked all the air out of the room. All the while Chenin waited. Patient. adaptable. wearing the wrong papers but carrying the right instincts. “I’ll be back” was Chenin Blanc’s catchphrase long before it was brutally co-opted by The Terminator.

Tomas has somehow coaxed the grape into telling the truth and playing along with the wine industry again. The wine hits with orchard fruit. then slips sideways into chalk and salt and a shimmer of lanolin that feels like static crawling up the spine during a great acupuncture session. It is clean but dangerous. A controlled substance masquerading as a white wine. The finish does not fade so much as retreat into the brush to watch you. This Chenin feels like a survivor of an out-of-control military regime; it has decided to speak after decades underground. If you listen closely. it whispers about forgotten soils. old migrations. and the peculiar satisfaction of being found again by someone who understands the code.