Clos Pegase - Where Pegasus Takes Flight Again
- Aug 8
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 13
Adair Family Wines restores Michael Graves’ Napa Valley landmark to its original glory and ushers in a new chapter of art, architecture, and wine.
In Greek mythology, the winged horse Pegasus struck his hoof upon Mount Helicon and released the springs of the Muses. From that moment, it was said, wine and art were born together. Nearly two and a half millennia later, in a quiet corner of Calistoga, that same myth has found its voice again. After more than a year of silence, the doors of Clos Pegase have reopened and Napa Valley’s boldest monument to art and wine is once again welcoming the world.
Jan and Mitsuko Shrem founded Clos Pegase in 1984. Respected art dealers with the conviction that wine was itself an art form, the Shrems partnered with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to launch an international design competition. Ninety-six firms submitted visions. The jury chose Michael Graves, one of the twentieth century’s most influential postmodernists, who in 1987 completed a structure at once Mediterranean and modern – a temple of terracotta columns and clean geometry, framed by cypress alleys and sculpture gardens that feel lifted from a Roman villa. The New York Times called it “a place of pilgrimage.” House and Garden praised it for “raising two ancient arts — architecture and winemaking — to a height that resonates with echoes of the ages.”
Then, gradually, the ages caught up. When Adair Family Wines acquired Clos Pegase in 2024, Jay and Tammi Adair found a property showing its years. Pipes leaked behind Graves’ original columns. Painted surfaces blistered under the Calistoga sun. Bronze sculptures had dulled; tile floors had cracked; a winery that once seemed to float between myth and landscape was quietly returning to earth.
Rather than piecemeal the repairs, the Adairs made an audacious choice: close the estate entirely. Wine production was quietly relocated across the street to sister estate Girard, and Clos Pegase was handed over to a full restoration team. Working directly with the Michael Graves Architecture firm, the Adairs set out to return the winery to its founders’ original vision down to the exact shade of the exterior palette.
A year later, the result is a rebirth with a curator’s precision. The Founders’ tasting bar has been remodeled. The main tasting room has been fully renovated, opening onto expanded seating and a rotating program of exhibitions featuring local and emerging artists. The bronze Friendship Bench by Gillie and Marc – the Rabbitwoman and Dogman figures long beloved by visitors – has been carefully repaired and the courtyard gleams again around its restored 18th-century European palace fountain and the 19th-century Carrara marble Bacchus that once stood in a royal palace in Turin.
Deeper into the property, Graves’ most theatrical gesture endures: twenty thousand square feet of caves carved into the volcanic knoll behind the winery. One wing is devoted to barrel aging; the other opens into the Cave Theater, where intimate dinners, live performances, and member gatherings unfold beneath stone. In a quietly moving new addition, the area around the 17th-century fountain is being reshaped into a memorial garden for co-founder Mitsuko Shrem, surrounded by cherry trees chosen as a tribute to the beauty she brought to the valley.
The reopening also carries a toast to the future. Later this year, Clos Pegase will release its 2026 Artist Series, a new collection sourced from throughout the region, each label bearing original work by an emerging artist. It is a gesture entirely in keeping with the Shrems’ founding ethos: that a bottle of wine, like a canvas, should invite contemplation.
“Clos Pegase has always been more than a winery,” says Tammi Adair. “It is a monument to what wine, art, and architecture can achieve together. Our restoration brings it back to the fullness of that original vision, and we are honored to be its stewards for the next chapter.”
For those who arrive now – passing beneath the great columned portico, under its square of open sky – the feeling is of stepping back into a grand idea that nearly slipped away. A winery raised on myth, restored with reverence, and ready, once again, to take flight.
