Matt Dees

Matt Dees’s work in wine is rooted in the kind of training that starts with land and stays there: the University of Vermont, then a first job at Shelburne Vineyard in Vermont, where the demands of vineyard and cellar would have required patience and close observation. From that base, the role of winemaker carried him to Staglin Family Vineyard in Napa, California, and then to Craggy Range Winery in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand.

The sequence matters less as a résumé than as a record of different places tested against the same set of skills: reading site, adjusting to climate, and making decisions that hold across regions. Today, Dees’s work is spread across JONATA, The Hilt, and The Paring, a rare overlap that points to both scope and confidence in his judgment. He has been winemaker of JONATA since 2004, winemaker of The Hilt since 2008, and winemaker of The Paring.

Taken together, those positions suggest a maker who works across properties without flattening them, staying responsive to each vineyard’s specific demands while keeping the technical side of the job in hand.