Peake Ranch runs on a simple idea: work in concert with nature, and let rigor do the rest. Owners John and Gillian Wagner built the winery on a 105-acre ranch in the eastern Sta. Rita Hills, then surrounded themselves with serious science, including a UC Davis viticulturist who spent three decades studying vines and a Bordeaux-trained wine chemist consulting from Burgundy. The wines, drawn from three distinct estate vineyards, are some of the most thoughtfully farmed in the county.

Science in service of the vine

John Wagner grew up working his family lemon and avocado orchards in Ventura County, earned bachelor and master degrees in physics from UCLA, built a career in finance, and never stopped wanting to get back to the land. When he and his English-born wife Gillian fell for Santa Barbara wine country, they bought Peake Ranch, built a winery and a small house on it, and John went and earned a UC Davis winemaking certificate to do it properly.

The team around them is the tell. Viticulturist Mike Anderson spent more than thirty years as a researcher and educator at UC Davis and managed the university legendary Oakville Station before joining Peake Ranch in 2017, after John took his viticulture class. Consulting enologist Dr. Maria Nikolantonaki, raised in Crete and trained in Bordeaux, teaches wine chemistry at the University of Burgundy. This is a winery that treats farming as a discipline.

Three estates, three climates

Peake Ranch makes wine from three estate vineyards, each a different expression of Santa Barbara cool edges. The home vineyard, Peake Ranch, sits on the eastern end of the Sta. Rita Hills on Santa Rosa Road, 105 acres with 50 planted to Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Syrah, and Grenache. A protective saddle in the land makes it slightly warmer and tempers the fierce Pacific winds that define the appellation.

Five miles north, John Sebastiano Vineyard is the wild one, 120 acres at higher elevation with raw, extreme exposure. The team likes to say it is not one vineyard but ten, a puzzle of slopes and aspects they are happily obsessed with solving. And out west, Sierra Madre Vineyard in the Santa Maria Valley catches the coolest ocean air of all, ripening Chardonnay slowly and late, using every last day of the season.

The wines

From those sites come Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Syrah, and Grenache made with attention to detail and a light hand. The Pinots carry the red-fruited lift and structure the Sta. Rita Hills is famous for. The Chardonnay, much of it from cool Sierra Madre, balances richness against bright acidity. The Rhone wines, including a Grenache-based blend, show what the warmer saddle of the home ranch can do. Across the range, the throughline is freshness, the signature of grapes grown where cold ocean air never really lets go.

At the table

Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir is a dream with food because its high acidity and supple tannin make room for the plate. Pour the Peake Ranch Pinot with duck, roast chicken, salmon, or a mushroom tart, where the wine acid cuts richness and its savory side echoes the dish.

The Chardonnay is the move for anything in butter or cream: lobster, scallops, a roast chicken with crisp skin, a wedge of aged cheese. If it has seen oak, lean into congruent richness, matching the wine weight to the dish. The Syrah and Grenache want char and spice, so think grilled lamb, peppered steak, or sausages off the fire, where the wine dark fruit and pepper meet the smoke head-on. A little salt on any of these plates will round the wine and lift its fruit, which is the cheapest upgrade in wine and food there is.

Peake Ranch: common questions