The Donum Estate brings together wine, art and nature

The Carneros wine region, which straddles Sonoma and Napa counties with its rolling, vine-textured hills and cool breezes meandering in from San Pablo Bay, boasts some of California’s best wineries. But only one welcomes you at the top of its driveway with the serene, spectral presence of a 20-foot-tall alabaster head of a young girl, “Sanna,” crafted by famed Spanish artist Jaume Plensa.

The Donum Estate, whose grounds showcase more than 60 monumental sculptures by the likes of Plensa, Louise Bourgeois, Ai Weiwei, Yayoi Kusama, Keith Haring, Doug Aitken, Robert Indian and Anselm Kiefer, to name a few, contains what is thought to be the largest private sculpture collection of any winery in the world. Some are boldly visible. Others are hidden in groves of trees or camouflaged within thick grasses. All of them can be visited by simply making a reservation.

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

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 acquired by Danish entrepreneur Allan Warburg and three partners in 2008. By 2011, Warburg and his wife, Chinese-born art collector Mei Warburg, assumed full control of the site and began what would become an ambitious experiment/passion project.

The couple, whose primary residence is in Hong Kong, declined to be interviewed, but they always wanted art at Donum. The organization’s Chief Executive Angelica de Vere Mabray notes that the idea of transforming the estate — which specializes in single-vineyard Pinot Noir and Chardonnay — took shape slowly. “Art was added intuitively, based on where it felt right in the landscape. Over time, that spontaneity evolved into something more intentional,” she says.

The first piece the Warburgs installed — Zhan Wang’s “Artificial Rock No. 126” — is a tall, stainless-steel replica of a craggy scholar’s rock from China, reflecting Mei’s early interest in contemporary Chinese art. From there they added one or two pieces a year from around the world, that rate speeding up dramatically as their interest grew, and the vision became clearer. Since De Vere Mabray’s arrival in 2019, the estate has added more than 30 works and refined its art program to focus increasingly on site-specific commissions.

Nearly three dozen artists have designed works that respond directly to the estate’s conditions. Completed in 2022, Olafur Eliasson’s Vertical Panorama Pavilion (created with architect Sebastian Behmann — their design firm is called Studio Other Spaces) is a circular structure topped with a conical glass canopy composed of 832 vividly colored panels, each reflecting a different environmental attribute of the region—soil conditions, sunlight, temperature, wind, humidity and the vegetative palette of the surrounding landscape. Nearby, Yang Bao’s “Hyperspace,” a gold, mirrored pyramid accompanied by gleaming shards, nestled in a former lavender field, shimmers amid thyme, gingko, California poppies and native grasses, accompanied by haunting, and constantly mutating, music.

Yang Bao’s “Hyperspace.”

(The Donum Estate)

“The artists walk the property and choose their location based on how they want the piece to live in the land,” says De Vere Mabray.

Probably the most popular (and most Instagrammed) piece on the property is Richard Hudson’s “Love Me,” a heart-shaped, oversize sculpture clad in exaggeratedly curved mirrored steel set atop a faraway hill. The property’s most recent addition (installed this year), accessed via a winding path traversing thick grasses, is Sanford Biggers’ “Oracle” (2021), which fuses African and European masks, busts and figures. Aitken’s “Sonic Mountain (Sonoma)” is embedded 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 tuned to catch the wind and produce a soft harmony.

Richard Hudson’s “Love Me.”

(Robert Berg / The Donum Estate)

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

“It’s about letting the art breathe and feel like it’s always belonged here,” says Gretchen Whittier, a partner at Arterra.

That shifting setting creates often surprising variations in sensation and perspective, enabled by diverse vegetation, hills, a long pond, deep groves and, of course, thick rows of vines. “There’s a moment when you turn a corner and suddenly there’s this monumental work,” says De Vere Mabray.

Visits are by appointment only, and experiences are personalized. For $250, guests can traverse the 200-acre estate on a guided all-terrain vehicle, followed by wines and small plates. For $100, they can enjoy a wine tasting and guided art tour on foot. (With canapés, it’s $150.) A self-guided art tour priced at $50 allows you to experience the collection without a wine tasting. Donum’s handout literature and website provide labeled maps and thorough descriptions of each artwork.

Angelica de Vere Mabray is the chief executive of the Donum Estate, located in the Carneros wine region nestled between Napa and Sonoma counties.

(Greg Gorman Photography)

Donum, says De Vere Mabray, tries its best to avoid the preciousness and insider vibe of many museums and art parks. Since this is a hospitality space first, she notes, “you’re not being told how long to look or how to feel.”

“The art is serious, but it’s also approachable. You can walk right up to it, touch it, sit beneath it. It’s part of the land,” says Whittier.

The estate’s minimalist welcome space and tasting rooms, a complex known as the Donum Home (as well as the production facility, housed on the footprint of the estate’s former dairy barn), recede into the landscape, taking on the simple, abstracted shapes of agricultural buildings. Both were designed by Bay Area architect Matt Hollis.

Despite its millions of dollars’ worth of art, Donum is fundamentally a working vineyard and farm. Half of its 200 acres are planted for grapes and the rest are dedicated to gardens, orchards and farmland (Donum maintains additional vineyards in Russian River, Anderson Valley and the Sonoma Coast). Donkeys, including a couple, Clyde and Opal, patrol the vineyards to fend off coyotes, while chickens and sheep rotate through the rows, and hawks and owls are nurtured to deter rodents. Donum is one of the few wineries in California to be regenerative organic certified — which means its employees pay close attention to soil health and having a wide variety of healthy plants and animals.

Sculptor Jaume Plensa’s “Sanna,” 2015.

(The Donum Estate)

The Warburgs continue to select every piece, says De Vere Mabray, based primarily on instinct. The process makes the collection feel a little inconsistent — particularly the pieces that are not site-specific — but also personal and quirkily surprising.

Donum is not the only winery in the region to include contemporary art. In Napa, Hess Persson Estates displays works by several blue-chip artists in its gallery. Hall Wines in St. Helena curates art installations near its architect-designed tasting spaces. Santa Rosa’s Paradise Ridge Winery features sculptural works in its gardens. And St. Helena’s Louis M. Martini commissions contemporary works inspired by winemaking in its tasting room.

But these places more or less treat their artworks as accents to the wine-tasting experience. At Donum, the wine, art and landscape feel calibrated together; they exist on more equal footing.

“Our mission is to weave art harmoniously throughout the landscape,” summed up the Warburgs, in an email.

Adds Reif, our tour guide: “Out here, it’s just you, the vines, the sky and the art. Nothing’s between you and the feeling.”