Ashes & Diamonds

With midcentury modern architecture and vinyl on the turntable, Ashes & Diamonds is not your typical Napa winery. Yet for Kashy Khaledi, the son of Darioush Khaledi (the man behind Darioush Winery), the new digs make perfect sense. The younger Khaledi cut his teeth for the past decade in the music business, with a job at Capitol Records. In 2016, when he decided to make the leap back into the family business of wine, he knew he was going to do things differently. To oversee the design of the winery, he enlisted celebrated Los Angeles architect Barbara Bestor, who conceived of the building’s zigzag roofline, sunshine-yellow doors, and an eclectic interior of Saarinen chairs and North African rugs. To design the bottles’ labels, Khaledi hired Brian Roettinger, who famously designed the album cover for Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail. Other moves, such as bringing on Steve Matthiasson and Diana Snowden Seysses as consulting winemakers to recreate the authentic experience of Napa wine from the 1960s, were bold, too. Tastings (some of which include food pairings) are held in the lounge, at the tasting bar, or on an expansive outdoor patio overlooking the vineyards. The “A&D Experience” features an elaborate five-course meal.