Dieter Cronje arrived in Santa Barbara County from the wine country of Durbanville outside Cape Town, trained at one of South Africa's oldest agricultural colleges and honed further through harvests in Burgundy and Champagne. He came to California to make cool-climate Pinot Noir at Presqu'ile Winery, and he stayed to make something wilder on the side. Riding Monkey is the side, and it is the project where Cronje gets to play without a safety net.
Backstory
Dieter Cronje grew up in Durbanville's wine country near Cape Town, the son of a wine-loving father who encouraged him to study enology at Elsenburg Agricultural College -- an institution that has been training winemakers since 1894. Cronje deepened his knowledge through a Bordeaux exchange program and study periods in Burgundy and Champagne before landing in Santa Maria Valley, where he became the founding winemaker at Presqu'ile Winery and contributed to the original planting of its 73-acre estate vineyard. Riding Monkey began as a passion project operating out of Orcutt, a small community in Santa Barbara County, giving Cronje a space to make wines outside the parameters of his day job.
The Region
The Santa Maria Valley and the adjacent Alisos Canyon area in Santa Barbara County sit at a northern extension of the Santa Ynez Mountains, where the coast runs east-west and allows cool Pacific air to funnel directly inland. The result is one of California's coldest wine-growing climates -- long growing seasons, persistent fog, and temperatures that rarely spike -- ideal for varieties that need slow, even ripening to develop complexity without losing freshness.
Vineyards and Farming
Riding Monkey sources from organically farmed vineyards in the Alisos Canyon area and the broader Santa Maria Valley. The fruit comes from carefully selected sites that share Cronje's priorities: low yields, minimal intervention in the field, and varieties suited to the cool maritime conditions. He works with Cinsault, Chenin Blanc, Grenache, and other varieties that perform well in the region's extended ripening window.
Winemaking
Cronje's approach at Riding Monkey is direct-press whites, co-fermented blends, skin-contact fermentation, and aging in neutral French oak. Native yeasts drive fermentation without inoculation, and the wines are neither fined nor filtered. The philosophy is one he has articulated clearly: a good wine is grown, not made. The cellar's job is to get out of the way of what the vineyard already has to say.
The Wines
The Riding Monkey portfolio includes a Santa Ynez Valley Cinsault, a Mezcla Blanca white blend, a Grenache Rose, and a skin-fermented Chenin Blanc. Production is deliberately small -- the kind of micro-production that means each release sells out quickly. The tone is casual and the label is playful, but the wines are made with the precision of someone who spent years learning what precision actually requires.
