Sonoma on a perfect June evening: The sun’s still strong but the vineyards are freshened by a delicious breeze. On a gentle slope, a circle of chairs surrounds a monolithic sculpture, 25-ft tall, gleaming deep black in this half-wild, light-saturated landscape. This is Sanford Biggers’s Oracle, a seated figure with a vast and brooding head, hooded eyes and an unreadable expression.
We’re at Donum Estate, a winery and sculpture garden in the Carneros AVA (American Viticultural Area), an hour north of San Francisco, for the blessing of this dramatic work. The artist is here with his band Moon Medecin, a collective of musicians and performance artists, and Biggers leads a rhythmic chant as they circle the sculpture; they give way to a Buddhist abbot, Nyoze Kwong, who performs a ceremony at Oracle’s feet.
Oracle is just the latest acquisition of owners Allan and Mei Warburg. The Hong Kong-based couple — Allan Warburg lived in China for 25 years and made his fortune in fashion — have spent years building their collection, which now numbers more than 60, spread over the 200- acre estate. There are giant pieces by some of the world’s most renowned artists — from Ai Weiwei to Antony Gormley, Keith Haring, Tracey Emin, Yayoi Kusama and many others. Louise Bourgeois’s Crouching Spider, in a specially built shed, is one remarkable example. Picasso’s Woman With a Bun in an Armchair is on the wall behind it.
The fine wine world has always rubbed shoulders with high art — at least since Philippe de Rothschild commissioned his first Mouton artist label in 1945. Champagne house Louis Roederer is a major patron of the arts; Champagne Krug is deeply involved in music; Super Tuscan producer Ornellaia asks an artist to design its labels for its Vendemmia d’Artista series annually (its latest commission is by Cameroonian Pascale Marthine Tayou, who has a large work at Donum). Bodega Colomé in the Calchaquí Valley in Argentina — one of the world’s highest wineries — has a permanent exhibition of light installations by American artist James Turrell. Indeed, it’s unusual for a blue-chip wine producer not to have close ties with art.
But Donum is at the forefront of something a little different: a burgeoning number of winery sculpture gardens — from Château La Coste in Provence, for which silver-haired tycoon Paddy McKillen has commissioned works by everyone from Tracey Emin to Michael Stipe and Bob Dylan; and Castello di Ama in Tuscany (Louise Bourgeois, Roni Horn, Anish Kapoor, Lee Ufan among others).
Warburg has spoken extensively about how and why he collects. An important consideration (as it is with McKillen) is the personal connection. Most of the works at Donum are commissioned for the site (although Warburg acquired Oracle) and the artist will spend days at the estate. But more important still is the work’s relation to the land. Sometimes this is explicit, as with Doug Aitken’s Sonic Mountain (Sonoma), whose stainless steel pipes are designed to create a symphony from the constant winds that blow through Carneros. Always, location is key. The sculpture is expected to become a part of the landscape. “Once the works are placed, they are on their own to coexist with and within nature,” Warburg says. It’s very like the vineyards’ relation with the land.
Sonoma County is a huge, diverse wine region, stretching more than 100 miles from just north of San Francisco Bay, hugging the Pacific coast and extending far inland. There are 19 separate AVAs, a mosaic of different terroirs that even seasoned California hands find complicated — Napa, with its Médoc-like appellation system, is a piece of cake by comparison. But Sonoma’s diversity is its strength. There’s a world of difference, for example, between the fresh, mineral Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs of the Pacific-cooled West Sonoma Coast (one of the most recent AVAs, registered in 2022), and those of the warmer, inland Russian River Valley.
There’s an unspoiled beauty to much of Sonoma. From the vantage point of a helicopter flight up the coast and over the Mayacamas Mountains into Napa, the difference between the two regions is notable. Napa’s valley floor is a patchwork of vineyards neat as an American quilt, while Sonoma is rugged — a medley of vineyard, dairy farm and pasture, meadows gorgeous with wildflowers, split-rail fences lining dusty roads winding through old-fashioned hamlets (there’s always a smart deli or bakery).
Donum Estate is set in the lovely rolling hills of Carneros, the southernmost region that straddles both Sonoma and Napa. It’s a few miles north of San Pablo Bay, whose sea frets and fresh breezes cool the vineyards (you’ll need a sweater after sundown even in mid-summer). This is prime Pinot Noir and Chardonnay country, and for the last dozen years, Donum has been concentrating on creating single-vineyard wines from these two varieties, building a collection of vineyards throughout Sonoma, from Bodega Bay a couple of miles from the Pacific, to Russian River Valley and Anderson Valley in the north.
It’s a fascinating portfolio of wines; the multiplicity of terroirs allow head winemaker Dan Fishman to create expressions that range from the opulence of the Savoy Vineyard Chardonnay (Anderson Valley) to the Chablis-like focus of the Carneros Estate Chardonnay, 100 miles to the south, or the lovely texture of Carneros Pinot Noir Rosé, with its fine dry finish washed with juice. Fishman makes 21 Pinot Noirs and seven Chardonnays (there are more than 30 wines in all). Many come from small parcels: Savoy, acquired in 2023, produces three expressions of Pinot: Hendy Knoll, Pinole and Perrygulch. Savoy, acquired in 2023, produces two expressions of Pinot. “There are so many different soils in the vineyard I found it difficult to blend, so we separated it into two.” This is precision winemaking.
Fishman is committed to the purity of the land. The entire estate, comprising five vineyards in four different AVAs, is wholly owned by Donum. This means that there can be a “hyper-focus” on farming, as Fishman puts it. When he joined as a cellar hand in 2007, he says, it was a conventional process, with regular use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Things couldn’t be more different today, with all five vineyards Regenerative Organic Certified. Put simply, regenerative farming is a stage on from organic. “It’s a matter of flipping your thinking from trying to take from the land, to working with it,” Fishman says. “We put more back each year than we take out.” Crucially, the focus has shifted from the winery to the vineyard to the soil. Tony Chapman, the youthful senior director of winegrowing, says the “core principles are to minimize soil disturbance and to maximize crop diversity.” They reduce tillage, use minimal tractor passes, bring in sheep to graze in winter and brew biodynamic compost tea, a semi-mystical preparation of fermented cow dung and herbs.
Donum’s production facility
Circle of Animals Zodiac Heads by Ai Weiweis
Crouching Spider by Louise Bourgeois
They could be enlightened farmers from one of Thomas Hardy’s more bucolic novels, rather than the heads of a sophisticated 21st-century viticultural operation. But that’s all to the good. There is something compellingly unmediated about Donum: You feel that yes, this is the way farming always used to be done. It makes perfect sense. Less tractor work means less compacted soils so more water retention. Sheep grazing means natural fertilizer.
As climate chaos brings more heat waves (and more frosts) and more pest pressure, the plants are put under increasing strain. “We allow the vine to naturally build its defenses,” Fishman says. The payoff? Better wine. As the vines adapt to new conditions, they have to work harder; their roots are healthier and go deeper in search of nutrients. As a result, “We’re finding the fruit is more concentrated in flavor,” Fishman says. “Fermentations are more natural, and there’s a sense of energy in the finished wine, an energy that captures the spirit of the land.”
The late Warren Winiarski of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars in Napa had a nice definition of terroir: “The three Gs — the ground, the grape, and the guy or gal.” It recognizes the prime role humans play in wine (and implicitly makes nonsense of the once-fashionable doctrine of ‘non-interventionism’). At Donum, there is a fourth arm to this holy trinity: art. How important are the sculptures to the wine? If there were no art, would Fishman’s job be different? “I’ve thought about this a lot,” he tells me. “For me, a great wine has energy; it makes you pay attention. In the same way, a great artist puts his or her life energy into the work. Those artworks, and all of us existing around them, seeing them every day — they must have some effect. I agree with Allan when he says that the park is greater than the sum of its parts.”
The blessing of Oracle comes to an end, and the group disperses, glasses in hand, to explore the estate: sculptures on every rise, vineyards, woodland and golden-brown meadows stretch to the horizon. The great bronze statue, patient, implacable, sits and surveys its domain. It might have been there since the very dawn of time.
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