Santa Barbara County’s Ampelos Vineyard Sold 

One of the region’s most celebrated biodynamic vineyards is changing hands, as Peter and Rebecca Work have sold Ampelos Vineyard in the Sta. Rita Hills, which they established in 1999.  

The buyers are Chiara Shannon, a sommelier and sustainable wine advocate known on social media as @theyogisommelier, and her husband, Joe Brent, a trial attorney who founded the law firm Brent & Fiol LLP.

The 82-acre ranch off of Mail Road and Highway 246, which includes the 25-acre vineyard, was first listed on the market in 2020 for $6.5 million, though the terms of this deal were not disclosed. The sale does not include the wine brand Ampelos Cellars, which the Works will continue to produce, largely with grapes that they will buy from Ampelos Vineyard.

I’ve known the Works personally for almost 20 years now, and Peter was one of my mentors when it came to understanding vineyards and winemaking as a journalist in the mid-2000s. Their saga of succeeding in corporate America before a close call with 9/11 convinced them to go all in on their vineyard is still compelling today. 

They quickly embraced biodynamics at a time when Santa Barbara County’s only other proponent of the farming style was Beckmen Vineyards. They went even further, as Ampelos became the first vineyard in the United States simultaneously certified as organic, biodynamic, and sustainable in 2009. 

After co-producing a short film about Ampelos and writing some initial articles, I started a tiny winemaking project with a friend at Ampelos, with Peter as our professor from 2012 through 2019. While the Works and this place will forever serve as an integral chapter of my own career, they will more importantly always be known for playing a special role in the story of how sustainability has become a foundation of Santa Barbara wine. 

I plan to visit with Joe and Chiara before writing an article about them. But I did meet Chiara once at a dinner hosted for me by Los Angeles winemakers in the back room of Augustine Wine Bar in Sherman Oaks back in 2022. My immediate impression is that they are well-suited to carry forward the mission of Ampelos, as they already know wine and care about doing things the right way, like getting certified as a regenerative property by the end of 2025. Such alignment is not always the case when vineyards change hands. I look forward to hearing their story soon. 

To get more insight on this sale, and what it will mean for the Works, Ampelos Cellars, and their legacy in Santa Barbara County, I asked Peter a few questions. Here’s what he had to say. 

It’s been 25 years! How do you feel about passing the torch on your legacy? 

Rebecca and I came into the valley from an amazing corporate world career with crazy dreams about growing grapes and making wines — with dogs and horses running through the ranch and sunset wine glasses in hand. We took the property from raw yet promising soils to be the first certified organic, biodynamic, and sustainable vineyard in the U.S. We are so darn proud of our journey, and for the last five years, we have been contemplating how we can ensure the continuance of this life project of ours.  

When we first got introduced to Chiara and Joe as potential buyers, we ended up spending seven hours together talking about wines, farming, philosophies, passion … and enjoyed a few very local wines as well. We learned that they had everything our Ampelos Vineyard needed to ensure a successful continuity. Working together with Joe and Chiara, we will ensure the future of the vineyard. Joe and I now meet every Monday morning to plan farming tasks.

How did they find you? 

Chiara has been in the wine industry for many years. As a wine buyer, she started tasting and supporting our wines a long time ago. She and Joe had been looking for property in the area and found out that our vineyard was on the market early this year. She immediately got interested and, through our real estate agent, we got introduced. As we have been together many times this year, we are so well aligned in our beliefs in good, conscious farming based on sustainable, organic, biodynamic, and regenerative principles. We call it SOBR.

What is going to happen with Ampelos the brand? 

Chiara and Joe have purchased our land in Sta. Rita Hills with vineyards and houses. They will continue operating the Ampelos Vineyard farming and selling grapes. Rebecca and I will continue with Ampelos Cellars, making wines as we have for the last 20-plus years. Going forward, we will source most of the grapes from Ampelos Vineyard to ensure the continuity in the brand.

What do you hope people remember about your contributions to the Santa Barbara wine industry?

First of all, that it is possible to take raw land and turn it into a premier vineyard — dare to dream, as Rebecca and I have done over the last decades. That you can farm here in Sta. Rita Hills with the best principles (SOBR). That biodynamics actually works — and works really well!

So where are you gonna live now?

As we started planning for the future, we realized that considering we will continue to make wine, we still needed a place in the valley. Having gone to Los Alamos since Clark Staub opened Flatbread in the early 2000s, we fell in love with the town and started looking around.  We have purchased an acre in town that we are developing a house on. We now consider ourselves L.A. locals.