Drive up off Foxen Canyon Road, past the ancient oaks and the olive trees, and the world goes quiet. The tasting happens on a hilltop, under the trees, with rows of vine falling away below you toward the hills. Demetria Estate is a family-owned, biodynamic producer of Rhone and Burgundian wines in the Santa Ynez Valley, named for a daughter and built on a Greek farmer’s dream of having a vineyard of his own.

The story

The story starts under Mount Olympus. John Zahoudanis grew up on a farm in Greece, in a childhood dotted with olives, citrus groves, and a small plot of grapes the family pressed into wine for themselves. He carried that memory across an ocean and a whole career, and it never left him. After years in Southern California, the dream he kept returning to was the same one he had grown up inside: a vineyard and a winery of his own, a place his family could work and gather and pour from.

In January 2006, John and his wife Sandra found it. They bought a 213-acre property of rolling hills above Foxen Canyon Road in Los Olivos from the well-respected Andrew Murray family, who had planted the hillside exclusively to Rhone varieties. John and Sandra named the estate Demetria, after their daughter, who in turn was named for Demeter, the Greek goddess of the harvest. It was a name that tied the whole project back to the soil and to the family, which is exactly where they wanted it.

John passed away in 2020, but the estate he started runs on in the family’s hands. His son Alexis Zahoudanis, who has lived and worked on the property full-time since 2009, leads it as a second-generation vintner. The winemaking and farming are in the hands of Ryan Roark, a Texan who found vineyard work during a summer in Angers, France, started his own small label in the Santa Ynez Valley in 2009, took over Demetria’s vineyards in 2019, added the winemaking in 2021, and stepped up to Director of Winemaking and Viticulture in 2025. The result is a winery that still feels like a family farm, just one that happens to make serious wine.

The place

Demetria sits in the Santa Ynez Valley, the warm inland heart of Santa Barbara County, on high hillside benches above Foxen Canyon. This is the part of the county where the fog thins and the afternoons turn golden and warm, the right ground for Rhone grapes that want sun on their shoulders. But Santa Barbara’s signature trick is still at work here. The mountain ranges run east to west, an unusual orientation that opens the valley like a funnel to the Pacific, so cool marine air slides inland overnight and drops the temperature hard after dark.

That daily swing, hot days and cold nights, is the engine of the place. The vines ripen fully in the sun, then hold onto their acid through the cool nights, so the wines come out ripe and generous without ever going flat or heavy. The 45 acres under vine climb the hillsides at elevation, where the slopes drain well and catch the light, and the wind off the coast keeps the canopy honest. It is terroir as a balancing act, warmth and coolness pulling against each other, and you taste the tension in the glass.

What they grow and make

Demetria works in two great traditions at once, the Rhone and Burgundy, and does both with conviction. The Rhone side is the soul of the estate, planted to the classic varieties: Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvedre for the reds, and Viognier, Roussanne, Marsanne, and Grenache Blanc for the whites. The red blends are styled after the wines of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, dark and spiced and built around fruit grown right here on the hill. The white Rhone blends are textured and aromatic, the kind of wine that smells like stone fruit and honeysuckle and drinks like a slow afternoon.

The flagship is Cuvee Constantine, a tribute red named for Constantine Alexis Zahoudanis, the name itself meaning steadfast. It is made from the best barrels of the vintage, a blend that has run around half Grenache with Syrah and Mourvedre filling out the rest, generous and structured and built to age. Alongside the Rhones, Demetria makes honest Burgundian bottlings too, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay along with Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc, varietal and clean and true to the cooler corners of Santa Barbara fruit. Between the two portfolios, a tasting here moves from bright whites through perfumed Pinot to the deep, peppery Rhone reds, which is a lot of range for one hillside.

Farming

Farming is not a footnote at Demetria, it is the whole point. From the start in 2006, John brought in Philippe Armenier, a renowned biodynamic consultant from the Rhone Valley who pioneered biodynamic farming on the West Coast, to guide the estate. Demetria became one of the first vineyards in all of Santa Barbara County to be farmed biodynamically, and it has stayed the course ever since.

Biodynamics treats the vineyard as a single living organism rather than a row crop to be propped up with chemistry. The team minimizes outside inputs and feeds the soil instead, building it up with organic compost and cover crops, a living mix of legumes, clover, daikon radish, and wildflowers sown between the rows to protect the topsoil, fix nitrogen, and keep the ground alive. The idea, the same one John grew up with under Mount Olympus, is simple and old: healthy ground makes healthy vines, and healthy vines make wine that tastes like somewhere. The estate has only deepened that commitment in recent years, an unusual thing to find at this scale and a real point of difference on the Foxen Canyon trail.

Visiting

Visiting Demetria does not feel like visiting a winery so much as being welcomed onto a working farm with a great view. Tastings are by reservation and happen up on the hilltop, on a patio set under old oaks with the vineyard and the hills spread out below. It is unhurried and unpretentious, the hospitality warm rather than polished. The estate does not serve food, but guests are welcome to bring a picnic and linger over the grounds, the olive trees, and the long Santa Ynez light. Reserve through the Tock platform, and for groups larger than eight, email the estate ahead of time.

Food pairing

These are wines built for a table set outdoors, which is exactly where you will be drinking them. Pour the Cuvee Constantine and the estate Rhone reds with lamb, the meat John’s homeland is built around: a rosemary and garlic roast leg, grilled lamb chops, or lamb skewers off the fire. The wine’s tannin binds to the protein and fat in the meat, softening the wine and cutting the richness of the lamb, so each makes the other taste better. Reach for the Syrah with anything charred and peppery, a grilled ribeye or smoked short ribs, where the wine’s own black-pepper spice bridges straight to the char. The white Rhone blends, all stone fruit and honeysuckle and texture, are a natural with roast chicken and lemon, grilled halibut, or a herby Greek salad heavy with feta and olive oil, the salt in the cheese rounding the wine and lifting its fruit. Save the Pinot Noir for seared duck or mushroom risotto, where its savory, earthy side reads as one flavor with the umami on the plate. If you want a precise match for a specific bottle and a specific dinner, our wine pairing generator will point you to the right plate.

To go deeper, explore the Santa Ynez Valley AVA whose warm days and cool nights give these wines their balance, browse the wider world of Santa Barbara wine, and read our guides to California Pinot Noir and California Chardonnay for the Burgundian side of what Demetria grows. When you are ready to plan a dinner around a bottle, the wine pairing generator does the matching for you.

Visitors short on time often start at the Funk Zone, the walkable warehouse district near the Santa Barbara waterfront where a large share of the county’s producers keep a tasting room.