Follow Refugio Road into the hills above Santa Ynez and the air changes. French lavender and rosemary drift up from the courtyards, a fountain ticks somewhere out of sight, and the hillside opens into stone caves cut straight into the earth. Sunstone does not feel like California. It feels like a long afternoon in Provence, and that is exactly what one family set out to build.

One family, one piece of land

In 1989 the Rice family left Santa Barbara for a quiet 52-acre ranch on the terraces above the Santa Ynez River. Fred and Linda Rice, with their children Bion, Ashley, and Brittany, chose the site for its south-facing slope, its sandy, rocky soil, and a microclimate of foggy mornings and cool, breezy evenings. When they planted in 1990, they made a decision almost no one in the county was making at the time: to farm it organically, with no herbicides, pesticides, or synthetic fungicides. It is now believed to be the oldest continuously organic vineyard in Santa Barbara County.

The tasting room came from a stroke of bad luck. The original building was a horse barn, crushed when an oak tree came down in a storm of heavy rain and wind. Fred, a builder by trade, turned the wreckage into something extraordinary, and Sunstone opened its doors in 1994. “When our family planted the Sunstone vineyard in 1990, we knew that good wine started with caring for the land,” Fred Rice has said, and three decades on the family still farms by that creed.

Linda Rice, the visionary behind the estate’s soul, passed away in 2010, leaving the place she dreamed up as her legacy. In 2019 the Cabugos family joined as new owners, followed by the Price family in 2021, with Djamila Cabugos now serving as CEO. Two Rice family members remain at the heart of it: Fred on the board, and Brittany Rice as Director of Winemaking. It is, still, a family winery in the truest sense.

Photo courtesy of Sunstone Winery

A French chateau on a California hill

The estate’s devotion to Provence is not set dressing. When Fred and Linda began building their private residence, the Sunstone Villa, on the hill above the winery in 1999, Linda and the children took a trip through the French countryside, made a wrong turn down a country lane, and stumbled on the remains of demolished chateaus. Linda called Fred and told him to stop building their planned Spanish Colonial home and catch the next flight: they were building a French chateau instead.

What followed bordered on obsession. Over the next several years, forty-five shipping containers, each weighing 40,000 pounds, arrived on the Santa Ynez hilltop carrying salvaged French history: limestone and hand-formed roof tiles, hand-hewn pine beams from a lavender factory that burned in Avignon, a prison-cell door from Normandy made during Napoleon’s reign, a 3,000-year-old limestone kitchen sink. Fred even brought a French mason across the Atlantic to lay the stonework by hand.

To walk through Sunstone is to walk through pieces of history, set down stone by stone on a hill in California.

Organic farming, marine shale, and a long ripening

Everything in the glass starts in the dirt, and Sunstone’s dirt is unusual. The vineyard sits in the warmer, Region II heart of the Santa Ynez Valley, where summer days and nights can swing 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Mild winters push the vines to start early, and cool, foggy evenings hold the harvest late, stretching the ripening window so the grapes build an uncommon intensity of flavor without losing their freshness.

Beneath the vines lies near-vertical Monterey shale, the compressed record of a valley that has been under the Pacific several times over the last 150,000 years. Closer to the surface, the Santa Ynez River laid down lean sand, gravel, and loam that drain hard and make the vines work. Those are the sun-dappled stones the winery is named for, gathered from the riverbed and set into the walls of the caves. General Manager Neil Redmond likes to send guests out to the picnic grounds with a glass, because, as he puts it, tasting the wine here is tasting the terroir of the place that made it.

The wines: Bordeaux and Rhone, estate grown

Sunstone built its name on Bordeaux and Rhone varieties, the grapes the warm eastern Santa Ynez Valley ripens best. The estate planting of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Mourvedre, and Viognier feeds two distinct sides of the cellar. On the Rhone side, the Viognier and a singular, peppery Syrah have both earned 90-plus points from Wine Enthusiast. On the Bordeaux side, the flagship is Eros, a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Cabernet Sauvignon that took Best of Class at the Los Angeles County Fair and its own 90-plus rating. In 2021 alone, ten Sunstone wines scored 90 or better from Wine Enthusiast and Wine and Spirits. You will not find any of them in a store. Sunstone sells only direct, so the bottle you carry home is one you tasted at the source.

What to drink it with

These are wines built for the table, and the estate’s own picnic grounds are the hint. Pour the Eros Bordeaux blend alongside a rack of lamb or a well-marbled ribeye: the wine’s firm tannin latches onto the fat and protein, and both the meat and the wine come out rounder and more generous for it. The Syrah is made for smoke and char, so reach for Santa Maria style tri-tip or grilled lamb, where the wine’s black pepper and dark fruit meet the fire head on. The Viognier asks for a gentler partner; it is aromatic and full but low in acidity, so it shines next to roast chicken with herbs, pork loin, or stone fruit and a soft cheese, and it would rather you skip the sharp vinaigrette that would leave it flat. And a chilled rose on a blanket in the picnic grounds, with olives and charcuterie, may be the most honest pairing of all.

Plan your visit

Sunstone sits about 35 minutes north of Santa Barbara, just off Refugio Road in Santa Ynez. The tasting room pours daily, and beyond the courtyards you will find the stone barrel-aging caves, expansive picnic grounds, a kitchen with a wood-burning oven, and a calendar of winemaker dinners and events. Club Sunstone members get the members-only lounge, La Cav, and the winery’s beloved annual Grape Stomp. Private tastings, vineyard tours, and the Montecito Wine Lounge round out the ways to experience the estate.

Frequently asked questions