FOOD cargoshippingtimes 10/30/2025 0 Comments

Donam Estate brings wine, art and nature together

The Carneros wine region, which straddles Sonoma and Napa counties with its rolling, vineyard-textured hills and cool winds from San Pablo Bay, has some of California’s best wineries. But only one greets you at the top of her driveway with the serene and luminous presence of a 20-foot-tall alabaster head of a young girl, “Sana,” created by renowned Spanish artist Jaime Plensa.

The Dunham Estate, whose grounds display more than 60 monumental sculptures by the likes of Plensa, Louise Bourgeois, Ivy, Yves Kusama, Keith Haring, Doug Aitken, Robert Endin and Anselm Kiefer, to name a few, includes what is believed to be the largest private collection of any kind in the world. Some of them are seen with courage. Others are hiding in the trees or hiding in the thick grass. All of these can be viewed simply by making a reservation.

“People are always like, ‘Why haven’t I heard of this before?'” said tour guide Alexandra Reif as she led me and a friend along a narrow path near the winery’s entrance.

Donum—Latin for “gift”—didn’t begin as an art nirvana. First a dairy farm and then part of the historic Buena Vista Winery, the property was purchased in 2008 by Danish businessman Alan Warburg and three partners. In 2011, Warburg and his wife, Chinese-born art collector Mei Warburg, took full control of the site and began what has become an ambitious experiment/passion project.

May and Alan Warburg are the owners and visionaries behind Dunum Real Estate.

The couple, whose primary residence is in Hong Kong, declined to be interviewed, but they have always wanted art in Donam. Angelica de Vere Mabrey, the organization’s executive director, noted that the idea to transform the estate — which specializes in single-vineyard Pinot Noir and Chardonnay — took shape slowly. “The art was added consciously, based on what felt right in the landscape. Over time, it evolved into something interesting,” he says.

The first piece that Warburg installed—Zhan Wang’s “Synthetic Stone No. 126″—is a tall, stainless steel replica of a craggy scholar’s stone from China, reflecting May’s early interest in contemporary Chinese art. From there they added one or two pieces a year from around the world, the rate accelerating dramatically as their interest grew, and the vision became clear. Since De Vere Mabray’s arrival in 2019, the estate has added more than 30 works and revamped its art program to increasingly focus on site-specific commissions.

Nearly three dozen artists have designed works that directly respond to the context of the estate. Completed in 2022, Olafur Eliasson’s Vertical Panorama Pavilion (created by architect Sebastian Bahmann – their design firm called Studio Elsewhere) is a circular structure topped with a conical glass canopy containing 832 brightly colored panels, each reflecting a different environment, sunlight and temperature. A panel of surrounding landscape plants. Nearby, Yang Bao’s “Hyperspace,” a golden, reflective pyramid nestled in a former field of lavender with lush greenery, shimmers among thyme, gingko, California poppies, and native grasses, hauntingly, and constantly accompanied by music.

“Artists go to the property and choose their location based on how they want the piece to live on the land,” says DeVere Mabry.

Perhaps the most famous (and most Instagrammed) piece on the property is Richard Hudson’s “Love Me,” a heart-shaped, large sculpture encased in exaggeratedly curved reflective steel on top of a distant hill. The most recent addition to the property (installed this year), through a winding path that winds through lush grass, is Sanford Beggar’s “Oracle” (2021), which fuses African and European masks, fragments and figures. Aitken’s “Sonic Mountain (Sonoma)” is nestled in a deep eucalyptus grove at the far end of the property. It consists of 365 stainless steel chimes, suspended from a circular canopy, each designed to catch the wind and produce soft harmony.

Local landscape architecture firm Arterra, which came to “Hyperspace” in 2022, continues to work with the artists, owners and Donum’s vineyard team to follow the lead of the existing landscape.

“It’s about breathing art and making it feel like it’s always been here,” says Gretchen Whittier, associate at Arterra.

This changing setting often creates surprising variations in feel and look, enabled by diverse vegetation, hills, a long pond, deep trees and, of course, rows of vines. “There’s a moment when you turn a corner and suddenly there’s this monumental work,” says DeVere Mabry.

Visits are by appointment only, and experiences are private. For $250, guests can tour the 200-acre property on a guided all-terrain vehicle, followed by wine and small plates. For $100, they can enjoy a wine tasting and guided art tour on foot. (With canapés, it’s $150.) A $50 self-guided art tour lets you experience the collection without a wine tasting. The Dunum manuscript literature and website provide labeled maps and full descriptions of each artwork.

Angelica de Vere Mabry is the CEO of Donum Estates, located in the Carneros wine region located between Napa and Sonoma counties.

(Greg Gorman Photography)

Donum, says de Vere Mabrey, tries to avoid the expensive and interior atmosphere of many museums and art parks. Since it’s a place of hospitality first, she notes, “You’re not told how long to look or how to feel.”

“Art is serious, but it’s also approachable. You can walk right in, touch it, sit under it. It’s part of the land,” Whittier says.

The estate’s minimal welcome space and tasting room, a complex known as Donum House (as well as production facilities set on the grounds of the estate’s former dairy barn), take on the landscape, taking on the simple, abstracted forms of agricultural buildings. Both were designed by Bay Area architect Matt Hollis.

Despite the millions of dollars worth of art, Dunum is fundamentally a working vineyard and farm. Half of these 200 acres are planted to grapes, and the rest is devoted to orchards, gardens and farmland (Dunam maintains additional vineyards in Russian River, Anderson Valley and Sonoma Beach). Donkeys, including one pair, Clyde and Opal, patrol the vineyards to ward off coyotes, while chickens and sheep roam the rows, and hawks and owls are trained to ward off rodents. Donum is one of the few wineries in California that is certified organically grown—meaning the staff pays close attention to the health of the soil and the wide variety of healthy plants and animals.

Warburg continues to choose each piece, DeVere Mabrey says, primarily based on instinct. This process makes the collection feel somewhat disjointed—especially the pieces that aren’t site-specific—but also personal and wonderfully surprising.

Donum isn’t the only winery in the region that incorporates contemporary art. In Napa, Hess Person Properties exhibits the works of several blue-chip artists in a gallery. Hallways in St. Helena is building an art installation near its architect-designed check-in spaces. Santa Rosa’s Paradise Ridge Winery features sculptures in its gardens. And St. Helena Louis M. Martini’s contemporary works are inspired by winemaking in his tasting room.

But these places more or less treat their artwork as an accent to the wine tasting experience. At Donum, wine, art and landscape feel intertwined; They exist on an equal footing.

“Our mission is to weave art harmoniously throughout the landscape,” Warburg summarized in an email.

“There’s just you, the vines, the sky and the art. There’s nothing between you and the feeling,” adds our tour guide, Ref.

https://www.latimes.com/