Wow this is a wonderfull bottle of wine, Joe Canals for 35.00 I would give it a 98. Compare it to Stags Leap Fay. We drank the 2003 to celebrate the purcase of the Martinsound Martech MSS-10 in to the Palm Studio gear. It was only a dream that I would ever own or use one of these wonderfull preamps. You can check out the sound at www.victortarassov.com and click music and hear the song "ThankYou" the Martech MSS-10 was used on that.
Estate of the Art
Can a winery elevate the craft of winemaking to a fine art? Of course it can. Can a winery dedicate itself as a temple to works of fine art? Why not? But can a winery that does one also achieve the other? Good question. Now, if you were to put that question to Bacchus, god of wine, mischief-maker and generally acknowledged originator of the practice of horsing around, we know just where he'd send you: straight to the horse's mouth.
And not just any horse. He'd send you to Pegasus, the winged horse of ancient myth whose hooves brushed against the earth, unleashing the sacred spring of the muses. Lucky earth. That spring gave life to grapevines, and the wine that flowed from them inspired poetry and art in all who drank it.
In that spirit, a couple of millennia later, we set out to create a place where the wellspring of wine and the muses of art could live together -- a sort of temple to wine and art. Not a museum or a sacred shrine way up in the clouds, but a haven here on earth. The kind of place we know Bacchus would approve of, where art and vines seem to spring from the same fertile soil, where smiling is encouraged, and pleasure and serendipity are all around you.
And in tribute to those fateful hoofbeats that started it all, we called that place Clos Pegase. Clos being the French word for an enclosed vineyard -- an estate winery, where every wine is made from that vineyard's own grapes. Which is what we are. And Pegase being the French word for "Pegasus." Which sounded nicer with clos.
Can wine and art come together to create an experience as lofty as Olympus and as lusty as the rascal Bacchus? We think so. Here's our story.
A Temple Among the Vines
By the mid-1980s, it became clear that Jan's new wine estate would need an anchor -- a building to serve as its base of operations. But Jan was thinking bigger than a mere roof and walls. He envisioned a place designed to showcase his extensive art collection in a way that made it accessible to everyone; a focal point that could match the majesty of the rocky knoll that rises above the valley from the center of the vineyard; a place of celebration, education and pleasure; and a visible, visit-able symbol of his winemaking philosophy.
Working with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Jan sponsored an architects' competition. From a field of 96 entrants, the judges selected renowned Princeton architect, Michael Graves. He was commissioned to build a "temple to wine and art" at the base of the knoll and a home for Jan and Mitsuko at its summit, with sweeping views of the Napa Valley below. Within the knoll itself, 20,000 feet of aging caves would be excavated, including the breathtaking Cave Theater, a dramatic setting for celebrations, presentations and special events.
Construction was completed in 1987. The spectacular structures Graves created -- and the surrounding sculpture garden that includes some of the world's greatest twentieth-century works of art -- have won international awards and generated great excitement in the wine industry. The national press has been generous in its praise as well, describing Clos Pegase as "a place of pilgrimage" and "America's first monument to wine and art."
And, just as Jan had hoped, the stately symmetry of the building reflects his own winemaking ethos. "In architecture, as in our wines," he says "I believe we have achieved balance, harmony and symmetry in the classical Greek sense, avoiding the baroque concepts of high oak, high alcohol and high extract to create food-friendly wines of quiet elegance. These are the hallmarks of what has come to be known as the 'Clos Pegase style.'"
The Clos Pegase Style. It's there as you walk through the grounds. It's there in the cool stillness of the caves. You find it when you round a corner in the vineyard and come face to face with a sculpture that's both beautiful and as disarmingly irreverent as Bacchus himself. And it's there on our label, in Jan's favorite painting from his collection. There, depicted by the great 19th-Century French artist Odilon Redon, is the winged horse, Pegasus, his front hooves rearing toward the heavens, his back hooves firmly planted right here on earth.
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