Sunstone Winery

Cellar discipline returned to Santa Ynez

The cellar work comes first for Brittany Rice, winemaker at Sunstone Winery in Santa Ynez, where the bench is stone, barrel, grape and time. Rice began here on the Cellar Crew from 1999–2003, after training at California Culinary Academy, then moved into the winemaker role from 2003–2010. The sequence gives the place its proper order: first the repetitive work of the cellar, then the decisions that shape a wine before it reaches the glass.

Her path has not stayed inside one discipline. Rice has worked as a private chef and owner of Rustik Chef since 2003, as private chef of Rustik Chef & Rustik Farm Co. LLC since 2010, and as company owner of MILLESIME CELLARS since 2012. Baking and pastry entered the line as well, through Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts in 2019. She returned to Sunstone as director of winemaking from 2019–2025, bringing kitchen timing back into cellar judgment. The hands learn sequence in more than one room.

Organic fruit and cellar patience

Sunstone works in the Santa Ynez Valley with an organic production philosophy and a small scale. The portfolio named for the place runs through Syrah, Viognier, Grenache, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, with still red and still white wines at the center of the program. Rice’s own language around farming is practical rather than decorative: “We are constantly experimenting with different methods to achieve a natural balance in the vineyard, which can be severely disrupted by the ‘quick-fix’ employment of herbicides or pesticides.”

That sentence matters because it keeps the method close to consequence. In the vineyard, the decision not to flatten the system with shortcuts belongs to the same family of work as cellar restraint. Rice’s signature wines include Le Jardin Viognier, a useful clue to how this place holds white wine inside a site better known by many drinkers for red grapes.

Stone caves and lavender courtyards

The room at Sunstone is built to slow the visitor down without turning the work theatrical. Provençal French-style architecture sets the estate in pale stone, with lavender courtyards, vineyard views and barrel-aging caves that keep the cellar physically present. The atmosphere is quiet, scenic and intimate; the tasting room leans on flights rather than spectacle, and the picnic grounds keep the vineyard in view while the wine is being read.

For a winery, that matters. The cellar, the courtyard and the tasting room are not separate moods so much as different distances from the same work. Cool cave tastings put the barrel program within reach. Outside, lavender carries across the stone and the vineyard line holds the eye. Rice’s next measure here remains the patient one: keep reading balance in the vines, then bring it back to Le Jardin Viognier.