Team
Matt Dees
Partner
Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Matt found his calling when, as a Soil Science major, he planted a vineyard on the shores of Lake Champlain (long story). Lucky for all of us, he moved from dirt to winemaking.
Matt spent his first years in the trade jetting back and forth between New Zealand (Craggy Range) and Napa Valley (Staglin), where his background in soil led first to an interest – and later, to a passion – for things like tannin, acid balance, structure and texture.
A preternaturally talented winemaker, Matt is a sucker for a challenge. Throughout his career, he’s built a habit – and a record – of extracting extraordinary results from sites that could only be considered challenging – certainly the case at Mt. Carmel Vineyard. His philosophy is simple: “The vineyard calls the shots. We just (try to) listen and get the heck out of the way.”
Michael Palmer
Partner
Raised in Los Angeles, Michael’s roots are in Marin County and the Russian River area. A post-college harvest in Rioja and some additional grape stomping in Nuits Saint Georges were all it took to convince Michael that winemaking was it – a plan he put into action upon moving to Santa Barbara over twenty years ago.
To finance his efforts, for over a decade, as Senior Vice President for a 90 year-old, industry-leading, global brand communications company, Michael focused on developing and managing innovative and compelling branding programs for a client list that included 85 of Fortune’s top 100 companies.
In 2011, after a late-Spring frost nearly destroyed the vineyard, Michael, Matt and Ron discussed the possibility of farming Mt. Carmel, with the hope of bringing the damaged vineyard back to its former glory, and ultimately building Mt. Carmel’s first-ever estate program. The result is Mail Road Wines.
When Michael is not busy developing, producing and marketing award-winning dairy products (Michael and his wife, Eva own Santa Barbara’s McConnell’s Fine Ice Creams – he can be found at the winery, waxing on endlessly about things like structure and tannin, and generally annoying his partner, Matt.
Ron Piazza
Partner
The Sta. Rita Hills AVA was more than a decade from its founding when Ron Piazza and his wife, Nancy, planted what was to be a small, family vineyard within sight of the region’s founding Sanford & Benedict vineyard.
Ron’s search for an appropriate – and affordable – parcel in the proven vineyard sites South of the river had proved fruitless, until he became aware of a group of cloistered, Carmelite nuns and their plan to build a monastery on a remote parcel of grassland above the cliffs immediately North of the Santa Ynez River. The nuns desire to keep a percentage of the property as an agricultural preserve dovetailed perfectly with Ron’s desire for a vineyard.
Within a short, few years, Mt. Carmel Vineyard was supplying some of the finest pinot noir and chardonnay fruit in the state to a small group of Santa Barbara’s most esteemed winemakers.
Almost thirty years later, along with their Southern California restaurant group, Ron and Nancy remain the long-time proprietors of Mt. Carmel Vineyard and founding partners of Mail Road Wines.
Ruben Solorzano
Vineyard Manager
The youngest of 11 children, born into a farming family in Guadalajara, Mexico, Ruben is well-known in wine growing circles for his preternatural instinctual approach to farming, so much so that he’s long bore the nickname ‘The Grape Whisperer”.
In the early 1980’s, Ruben emigrated to Santa Barbara County, where he hoped to continue his family’s long tradition of tending the land. Three decades later, as co-owner of the Central Coast’s premier vineyard management company, Coastal Vineyard Care, Ruben is celebrated in the industry for his attention to detail and his intuitive approach to coaxing world class fruit from some of the most challenging sites the industry knows.
