Clos Pegase Winery & Tasting Room

Quick Verdict

Clos Pegase sits on Dunaweal Lane in Calistoga at the northern end of the Napa Valley, and its address alone tells you something useful: you are at the quieter, less trafficked end of the valley, which makes booking here considerably easier than at the heavily marketed estates closer to Yountville or Oakville. If you have already done one Napa tasting and want to see what a different architectural register looks like alongside your Cabernet, Clos Pegase earns a visit. If you are on your first Napa trip and prioritising big-name recognition, start elsewhere and work your way north.

What You Are Actually Getting

The estate is as much an architecture and art experience as a wine one. The postmodern winery building, designed by Michael Graves and completed in 1987, is visually striking in a way that few Napa properties match: colonnaded facades, warm terracotta tones, and an on-site sculpture collection spread across the grounds. When you arrive, the visual impression lands before you pour a single glass. For a return visitor to Napa who has already worked through the standard cave tour and barrel-room format at other estates, Clos Pegase offers a genuinely different visual frame for the afternoon.

The tasting room is set within the Graves-designed complex, so the architecture is present throughout your visit rather than just in the approach. This matters more than it sounds: a lot of Napa tasting rooms look identical once you are seated at the counter. Here, the room itself is the differentiator.

Late-Afternoon and Evening Timing

Clos Pegase is a daytime venue. Napa wineries as a category close earlier than most visitors expect, and Calistoga's position at the valley's northern tip means you should plan your visit for mid-morning to early afternoon rather than treating it as an end-of-day stop. If you are building an evening around Calistoga, use the winery for an afternoon tasting and move dinner to one of the town's restaurants afterward. For a late-evening experience in Napa County, wineries are the wrong format entirely — see our full Napa County bars guide for options that run later.

Booking and Access

Booking difficulty here is easy by Napa standards. You are not competing with the waitlists that define spots like Opus One or Harlan. That accessibility makes Clos Pegase a reliable anchor for a Calistoga day, especially if the rest of your itinerary involves harder-to-book stops further south. Reservations are still advisable on weekends during peak harvest season (September through November), but this is not a venue where you need to plan weeks out under normal conditions.

For broader trip planning, see our full Napa County wineries guide, our full Napa County restaurants guide, our full Napa County hotels guide, and our full Napa County experiences guide. If you are comparing cocktail bar experiences further afield, Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu, Jewel of the South in New Orleans, and Julep in Houston represent the kind of evening-forward programming that Napa wineries simply do not offer.