Art Among the Vines

Some of the world’s most unique site-specific works of art are part of private art collections associated with family vineyards.

From the diRosa Center for Contemporary Art and The Donum Estate in Northern California to Estancia Colomé in Argentina, which houses the world’s only museum of artwork by light and space artist James Turrell, the natural open spaces offered by vineyards and their settings provide for an ideal multi-sensory art experience. Through walking the land, seeing and breathing in parts of the production process, and tasting the wine cultivated by vintners across time and generations, the art tourist’s mind and body open to a heightened awareness of the senses.

On a recent trip to Italy, I visited the Castello di Ama winery in the Tuscany region. Lured by images of artwork by Jenny Holzer and Hiroshi Sugimoto, my travel companion and I signed up for a wine tour and tasting with the promise of seeing some of the winery’s art collections.

Aerial view of a small hilltop village surrounded by farmland, vineyards, and trees—Art Among the Vines—set against winding roads and rolling hills in the background.

Castello di Ama

Photo courtesy of Castello di Ama

While we knew that seeing installations and sculpture wouldn’t be the focus of the guided experience, it could provide access and proximity to the artworks on site. And we encountered them at various turns while touring the vineyard’s production areas, from handwritten haiku decorating the wall-mounted lids of barrels placed around the facility to a piece encountered in the near total darkness of the wine cellar.

Suspended from the ceiling of the wine vault are blown glass decanters in six different forms. The artist Chen Zhen designed the sculptural vessels to suggest the internal organs of the human body.

A large chandelier made of numerous clear glass pieces hangs from the ceiling above several wooden barrels in a dark room, creating an atmosphere reminiscent of Art Among the Vines.

Chen Zhen’s glass wine decanters in the shapes of six vital organs.

Photo courtesy of Castello di Ama

The experience of encountering art in a non-traditional art space like Castello di Ama requires both curiosity and an adventurous streak. Some artworks like Cristina Iglesias’ Towards the Ground or Daniel Buren’s Sulle Vigne: Punti di Visti are installed in plain sight within a courtyard and sweeping viewpoint, while interacting with the environments where they have been placed.

A square opening in red tiled flooring reveals water filled with numerous white leaves, blending natural forms with art among the vines.

Iglesias’ ‘Towards the Ground.’

Photo by Yeshe Lhamo

But Hiroshi Sugimoto’s sculpture Confession of Zero and Anish Kapoor’s αἷμα are both sited inside ancient chapels. A visitor must cross beyond the devotional threshold to peek beyond what’s obvious, to look behind a door, or go past an altar. And when you do, the aesthetic reward of finding the prize in your own curated art scavenger hunt feels immeasurable. Sugimoto’s delicately balanced koan evokes cave formations, while Kapoor’s luminous red void resembles nothing less than a fiery portal to the underworld.

A stone tomb stands against a tiled wall in a dimly lit room, with a bright red circle on the floor in the foreground—an evocative scene from Art Among the Vines.

‘αἷμα‘ by Anish Kapoor.

Photo courtesy of Castello di Ama

The crown jewel of the Castello di Ama collections should only be accessed with a guide. My travel companion and I were determined enough to go renegade and hike into the vineyards in search of the Jenny Holzer installation. But by this time, we’d established a deep respect for the land and an appreciation for our Italian hosts who stewarded it.

After wrapping up a large sale of wine to some tourists from Fresno, our guide and her co-worker offered to walk us down to the site. Giddy from the wine, I couldn’t quite believe what we smelled and saw. Holzer’s work is widely known for her use of technology—electronic signage and text, and video projections executed at a massive public scale that grabs a person’s attention.

Per Ama is a manmade pond surrounded by helichrysum, a fragrant aromatic shrub that’s a close relative to the sunflower family. The scent is used in perfumes and aromatic candles sold at the vineyard’s gift shop. But out in the open air, the plant transforms the environment before you even arrive at Holzer’s piece. The artist’s signature use of text appears in this art offering to the land through poems engraved onto stones. One is placed near the shore of the pond. The other is carefully hidden in the environment, within view of the water and near where wild mint flourishes.