Ashes & Diamonds Winery
Former music exec Kashy Khaledi riffs on mid-century Californian style to make old school cool for a new generation of Napa wine lovers,
IN A PAST life, Kashy Khaledi made a career of bringing together creative personalities to bridge culture and corporate strategy for Universal Music Group, Google and Mazda.
In his first foray into the wine business, Khaledi has combined mid-century Californian architecture and design with retro winemaking to create Ashes & Diamonds, a Napa winery very much of the moment.
“Wine is alive and real. I would rather worry about Pierce’s Disease than piracy,” he quips. “Also, there’s nothing more depressing than a creative executive over 40.”
While the architecture of many Californian wineries pays homage to the owners’ winemaking inspirations — Chateau Montelena looks like it’s been transported straight from Bordeaux; Tuscan-castle-inspired Castello di Amorosa offers tastings of Pinot Grigio and Spumante del Castello — Ashes & Diamonds’ two modular, modern white structures seem to simultaneously emulate the rolling hills of the agricultural setting and leap out from the space age of the 1950s.
Accessed by a sunshine-yellow door, the rectangular hospitality building is crowned by a zigzag custom perforated corrugated canopy that creates dynamic shade and an interplay of light and shadow over the course of the day.
Just behind, the most striking feature of the taller production building are circular windows set into the first floor, which is shaped like a cobra head and extends out over an enclosed VIP tasting-and-events room and the breezeway on the ground floor.
La-based architect Barbara Bestor, who has also designed Beats by Dre Headquarters, Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea and Palm Springs Hotel, says Khaledi asked her to create a serious production facility with capacity for 10,000 cases of wine per year, as well as spaces that felt like a comfortable
living room that recalled the mid-century home-turnedmuseum Eames House in Pacific Palisades. Says Bestor: “While there are nods to Albert Frey in the portholes and Donald Wexler’s folded plate roofs of the mid-century Palm Springs postcard fantasy, we aimed for a lighter and more current take to fit the industrial nature of wine production and more residential scale of the hospitality.”
The effect is something that feels both vintage and new, reflective of the wines being produced: A portfolio of seven light-handed, minimalist intervention styles that exemplify a Burgundian approach to Bordeaux varietals. Two are estate-grown on the Oak Knoll vineyard on which the winery campus sits: Its flagship Grand Vin 2014, an elegant, savoury blend of estate-grown Cabernet and Malbec, and Vin de Table 2014, crafted with Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Chef Emma Sears has developed a grill- and vegetable-focused culinary programme, which ranges from quick bar and light-lunch tastings, to accompaniments for private member tastings that feature tours and barrel sampling.
It’s a realisation of a lifelong dream for Khaledi, who is no stranger to the Napa Valley — his father owns the eponymous winery Darioush — but had never jibed with the region’s signature bold, heavily extracted reds, preferring instead more elegant European wines and natural selections.
It wasn’t until he happened upon some older vintages from Napa’s pioneering 1960s and 1970s — Inglenook’s mid-century production under John Daniels Jr; and winemaker Bob Travers’ production for Mayacamas between 1968 and 2012 — and realised the Napa terroir could produce more restrained, lower alcohol wines with great ageing potential.
When the opportunity arose to buy a property that had been under vine since the 1980s in one of Napa’s most eminent regions, Khaledi jumped at the opportunity to create a new winery. It would be a complete departure from the Napa Valley tasting experience, and offered a holistic interplay between local agriculture, wine and architecture. “I wanted anything other than more oversized Tommy Bahama shirts, flip-flops and charcuterie boards,” says Khaledi.
Ashes and Diamonds also pays lip service to his myriad artistic influences. Khaledi knew Bestor from his first-ever job at the Beastie Boys’ record label and fanzine Grand Royal, where she was resident architect. He says he admires her work’s “unwavering spirit of possibility and streak of rebellion”.
The name Ashes & Diamonds is taken from Khaledi’s favourite movie — a Polish film anchored by life’s crossroads and the decisions we made. It reflects how every decision made during the winemaking process leads to the contents of a bottle, which changes as it ages. The poem printed on each cork, which begins, “So often, are you as a blazing torch with flames…” is by 19th-century Polish poet Cyprian Norwid, featured in the film as graffiti artwork too.
The winery’s striking monochrome labels were designed by Brian Roettinger, who is best known for art directing album covers such as Jay Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail, as well as Mark Ronson’s Top 10 album, Uptown Special.
And behind the scenes, even its viniculture has a collaborative, band-like mentality. Rather than hire one winemaker, Khaledi signed two, giving both equal props for their oenology cred and taste in music. Steve Matthiasson, whose classic restrained approach to winemaking won him Winemaker of the Year by Food & Wine magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle, enjoys skateboarding and punk rock by Minutemen and Dead Kennedys. When she’s not managing the vineyards or scrubbing tanks, Diana Snowden Seysses — alum of Robert Mondavi Winery, Ramey Wine Cellars and Domaine Dujac in Burgundy — gets her groove on with A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul.
Walking around the property, it looks like he’s succeeded in creating a new vibe for the region. Dapper day trippers from San Francisco lounge in pockets in the outdoor grassy area; inside, floorto-ceiling windows flung wide along the hospitality building’s facade, more family groups and young couples sit and sip at a
custom terrazzo bar and around eclectic furnishings — a Jean Prouvé desk repurposed as a communal table, cork stools by Jasper Morrison, a vintage mid-century Cees Braakman sideboard and scattered North African rugs — giving the tasting room the feel of a common room. “The mid-century era isn’t a gimmick for us. It was an era of lightness, optimism and possibility,” he explains.
Even though Ashes & Diamonds is still on its first release, its hip reputation has spread. You can find it on the wine lists of America’s most eminent restaurants: Spago and Jon & Vinny’s in LA; State Bird Provisions and Petit Crenn in San Francisco, and The Nomad in New York City.
How does Khaledi feel about his latest creative project? “Now more than ever, as we’re mentally mutilated by an overabundance of information and ‘ breaking news’, I find solace in the notion of disconnecting to go outside and meet people in analogue. Something along those lines.”