Matt Dees

Signature

The work is framed by attention to site: "Understanding a property through another organism that happens to just grow out of the soil is remarkable." In Dees’s hands, that means reading land through what it grows and treating wine as an instrument for that reading. "At the age of 19 I knew that I wanted to make wine for the rest of my life," Dees says, and the line fits a career built around repetition, observation, and place.

Recognition/etc The strongest markers of recognition in this career are the appointments themselves: the University of Vermont, JONATA in Ballard Canyon from 2004, The Hilt in Sta. Rita Hills from 2008, and The Paring in California. In a trade where long tenure matters, Matt Dees’s record shows a steady run of responsibility across Santa Barbara County and beyond.