In my opinion SFTP is a better way to go. Hey, it's got the word "secure" in the name, it must be better :)
SFTP uses ssh to do file transfers (as distinct from FTPS, which is FTP + TLS, basically). What that means is that if you can ssh to the target machine, you can almost always SFTP to it, as it uses the same auth mechanisms, so no having to install and configure different server daemons at all (i.e. no pureftpd or vsftpd). As long as your permissions are set correctly for /var/www - which is probably a matter of sudo chmod g+w /var/www; sudo usermod -g $USER -G www-data $USER - you should be able to use SFTP immediately.
Most client software nowadays will do SFTP pretty happily, and you can also use scp from a shell on the dev server to copy stuff across (scp -R will copy entire folders across, and is very handy). You can even go another step and automate logins with public keys, meaning no more typing passwords :)