Clos Pegase Winery
Biographies
Jan Shrem, Winery Founder and Proprietor
The Lure of Japan
A fateful vacation to Japan changed the course of Jan Shrem’s life. Born July 17, 1930, Shrem received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Utah in 1952. A few years later while pursuing a post-graduate degree in international law at the University of California Los Angeles and working as a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman until 1955, he traveled to Japan and fell in love with the country’s ancient culture and with a beautiful, young artist.
The Rise of a Successful Publisher and Art Collector
Determined to stay in Japan, Shrem formed a publishing company that grew to employ 2,000 people. While he was building his publishing company, he opened an art gallery and it was there he met his then-to-be-future-wife, Mitsuko (1934-2010). In 1968, Shrem sold his publishing company and the two moved to Europe, where they were married. There, the couple began a world-class personal art collection, first in Italy and later France, where Shrem formed another publishing company.
The Making of a Winemaker
In 1980, Shrem followed his other passion, wine, and enrolled at the University of Bordeaux. While studying enology, Shrem became fascinated with California’s nascent artisan viticultural movement. Armed with the Napa Valley address of the father of premium California winemaking, Andre Tchelistcheff, Shrem went to California to explore the potential of its winegrowing regions. His return to California was imminent.
The Creation of a Temple Where Art Meets Wine
Moving to San Francisco, the Shrems purchased a 50-acre vineyard in Calistoga in 1983. They then began their journey to create an unprecedented wine estate in Napa Valley, combining the couples’ love of art and architecture. Shrem hosted an architectural competition sponsored by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1984, in which 96 architects participated in the challenge to build both a “temple to wine” at the base of a Calistoga knoll and the Shrems’ home at its summit. The spectacular structures, created by contest winner Michael Graves and completed in 1987, have won international awards and generated great excitement in the world of wine and architecture. Today, Clos Pegase is a destination for art and wine lovers alike.
The Creation of an Art Collection
Inspired by the Venice Biennale, the Shrems built a collection of 20th century artwork. They understood that to become critical judges of quality art, they would need to travel extensively and be thorough in their assessment of any artist. The Shrems applied that same critical attention to detail to their passion for wine, first as they amassed a collection of wine-related antiquities and later as they built their wine estate, Clos Pegase.
The Traveling Vintner
Today, Shrem, who celebrated his 80th birthday in 2010, stays very busy. He travels across the country each year to host wine tastings and vintner dinners at universities, museums, restaurants and private clubs, which include a special presentation he created, “Bacchus the Rascal, A Bacchanalian History of Wine Seen through 4,000 Years of Art.” This multi-media presentation highlights many fascinating aspects of the worlds of wine and art; it has been called educational, entertaining, vibrant and humorous, and has been presented hundreds of times at universities, museums, the National Press Club in Washington and the top clubs of the nation, being re-invited to repeat numerous times including at the Club Managers Association of America’s annual conventions.
Richard Sowalsky, Winemaker
Richard Sowalsky has extensive winemaking experience and a diverse educational background that includes enology, medicine and the culinary arts. As winemaker for Clos Pegase, Sowalsky relies on all of this to create estate wines of the highest quality.
Sowalsky’s previous winemaking position was at Tetra and Expression Wine, brands of Hill & Wollack Wine Estates. Prior to his tenure with Hill & Wollack, he spent two years as the winemaker at William Hill Estate and six years at Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville as associate winemaker for the Bordeaux varieties. Before joining Mondavi, Sowalsky was a research enologist for Robert Mondavi’s Woodbridge Winery in Lodi, production assistant at Handley Cellars in Philo, California, and harvest assistant at Truchard Vineyards in Napa.
With a vision of winemaking as a journey involving many potential paths from grape to glass, Sowalsky assumes the role of trailblazer — delineating the ideal path from start to finish. “My approach to winegrowing begins as an intensive learning process in the vineyard; then, I adapt all of my winemaking to realize the full potential of each site in the finished wine,” Sowalsky states.
Sowalsky’s education includes attending Temple University Fox School of Business and Management, the Viticulture and Enology program at University of California at Davis, University of Maryland School of Medicine, California Culinary Academy and Amherst College. When not making wine or walking rows of vines, Sowalsky enjoys scuba diving, world travel, hiking and reading.
