Donum Estate’s Mei and Allan Warburg Open Up About Their Unique Approach to Collecting
In Sonoma valley, California, the winemakers tend to their art acquisitions as carefully as they do their vineyard
For art lovers, viewing sculptures set outdoors within a dramatic landscape is one of life’s greatest pleasures—just ask visitors to Storm King Art Center in New York and Benesse Art Site Naoshima, the famed “art islands” off the coast of Japan. Over the past few years, The Donum Estate winery in Sonoma, California, has been steadily and stealthily entering the big leagues with a well-curated collection of more than 60 works by the likes of Ai Weiwei, Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Emin, and Keith Haring spread across its bucolic 200-acre property. The latest acquisition, the monumental black figure Oracle (2021) by Sanford Biggers, went on view in June.
Mei and Allan Warburg, Donum’s owners, live primarily in Hong Kong, tending to their business, Bestseller Fashion Group China. Increasingly, however, their attention is on accumulating sculptures for their winery—but only ones that suit the topography of green vines and dune-colored California hills. “We prefer to commission site-specific artworks, which involves a good deal of planning and preparation,” says Mei. “Because of the significant energy that we invest in each work we acquire, we can only add works to the collection that are a thoughtful and necessary addition.”
In the late 1990s, Allan, who is from Denmark, was living in China and dipping his toe in the art market. “My taste is very different now,” he says. “I look back at some of that stuff I collected, and it should really stay in the warehouse.” He met Mei in 2000, and they evolved their holdings together as a couple, amassing a large assortment of paintings by Anselm Kiefer, Mark Tansey, Liu Xiaodong, and others.
The Warburgs never intended to be the makers of some very sought-after California wines, but Allan’s brother, a wine importer in Denmark, flagged the Donum listing. The vineyard is in Sonoma’s Carneros area, a cooler climate close to the San Pablo Bay, where Chardonnay and Pinot Noir thrive. What started as an investment of sorts—they closed the deal in 2011—became a true passion project.
At Donum, the couple have a division of labor that works for them. “I’m more the researcher, and I have a lot of ideas,” says Allan. “It’s good I have Mei to say no.” For the Biggers piece, Allan saw it online in 2021, when he was “on a two-week quarantine at a horrible hotel in Shanghai,” he says. Normally, for such a large wor—25 feet tall, seven tons—the Warburgs would prefer to commission it, but Oracle, with its merging of African and European traditions, spoke to Allan. The sculpture spoke to the rest of the family, too. When he dropped an image of the piece in the group chat with his wife and their two sons, it got lots of likes. Since it was not on the market, they had to wait a couple of years before they could snap it up.
More typical is the back-and-forth that comes from new, site-specific works. “We often become personal friends with the artist because of this process,” says Mei, pointing to such installations as Doug Aitken’s Sonic Mountain (Sonoma) (2019). Allan originally wanted Aitken to do a version of the mirror-clad Mirage house he had seen in Palm Springs, California. But Aitken came to the stunning Donum property, walked it for six hours, and decided he wanted to do a wind chime instead.
The work, which is tucked into a eucalyptus grove, is activated by the brisk winds of Carneros; its 365 chimes play chords that Aitken created with the help of a composer, adding an ethereal component to the art program. It could also be seen as a nod to viticulture in that wind helps growers fight pests, mildew, rot, and fungus.
Crafted in materials like stone, steel, and bronze, Donum’s outdoor artworks are difficult and expensive to maintain. “We’re in the middle of a bird sanctuary; the birds sit on our sculptures and do what they do,” says Allan with a laugh. But the collection isn’t about the balance sheet. “It makes no commercial sense at all to do this art program,” he states. “It took us many, many years just to break even with the winery. It’s a labor of love.”
While myriad vineyards all over the world have tried to highlight the art-wine connection with their own programs, the Warburgs are among the few to succeed at this level, even though at its core the underlying principle is the same as all the other vineyards with art programs. As Allan puts it, “If you have a glass of wine and then see incredible art in an amazing landscape, it becomes that much more impactful.”
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2025 Late Fall Issue under the headline “Premium Blend.” Subscribe to the magazine.