Dear Collectors, it is with great honor that we share a little from last week’s journal.

Justin visited the Artesa Estate in Napa Valley, California. And it was a blast.

A Little Background

Jean-Charles Boisset is a French vintner from Vougeot, a small village in Burgundy surrounded by some of the most historic vineyards in the world. His family lived above their cellars, within sight of the Château du Clos de Vougeot and the vineyards that have defined Burgundy for centuries.

His parents entered the wine business in the early 1960s, and Jean-Charles has since expanded the family’s legacy considerably. Today, Boisset Collection brings together estates and wineries across Burgundy, Beaujolais, the Rhône Valley, the South of France, the Russian River Valley, and Napa Valley, California.

Artesa Vineyards & Winery is the newest addition to his collection.

The estate began in 1991 under Raventós Codorníu, the historic Spanish wine family whose roots reach back to the sixteenth century. Originally established as Codorníu Napa, the property was created to bring generations of European winemaking experience into the landscape of Los Carneros. The name Artesa followed several years later as the estate expanded beyond sparkling wine.

In 2026, Jean-Charles acquired Artesa Vineyards & Winery with a vision for its next chapter.

Art, architecture, landscape, food, music, hospitality, and apothecary are becoming increasingly intertwined with the experience of the estate. Which is why we are especially honored that Justin was personally invited to participate in the beginning of this new chapter for Artesa and JCB.

On October 2, the estate welcomed a private gathering of art and wine connoisseurs to celebrate that vision.

Our Favorite Part

The architecture of the estate is extraordinary.

Designed by Barcelona architect Domingo Triay, the winery was built into the hillside in a way that makes the landscape feel inseparable from the structure itself. Terraces, walkways, pools, and low modernist forms move with the contours of the land.

Accustomed to the flat coastal landscape of Northwest Florida, surrounded by water on both sides, the heterogeneity of Napa’s terrain invigorates the mind as the eye moves constantly between mountains, ridges, vineyards, water, and changes in elevation.

For an artist, that kind of shift in landscape is a welcome form of renewal. A different geography changes proportion, light, distance, and color. It gives the eye something unfamiliar to articulate.
At the center of the evening was a monumental bronze sculpture by Marcel Martí, installed in the reflecting pool around which the gathering took place.

Martí was an Argentine-born Catalan sculptor whose work moved increasingly toward abstraction over the course of his career. The sculpture at Artesa was created for the estate in 1991 and remains one of its most commanding elements.

The blue-green patina of the bronze is reminiscent of the oxidized copper of the Statue of Liberty. It feels almost like a sign of sorts: to be reminded of a monument once gifted by the French in celebration of alliance, friendship, and freedom, while standing before another on American land now owned by a French vintner determined to breathe new life into the estate—stewarding it to gather artists, patrons, and cultural allies, cultivate taste, celebrate life, and preserve artistic freedom.

A New Era

Artesa, Justin Gaffrey’s depiction of Marcel Martí’s sculpture set against the vineyards of Napa Valley, brings his exaggerated impasto into a new landscape. The sculpture rises through the composition as both subject and axis, while rows of vines follow the contours of the hills behind it. Shifts in green distinguish pines, shrubs, and vines, punctuated by ochre soil, rust, and crimson flora.

The vineyards also introduce a new mark into Justin’s vocabulary. Their repeated furrows were made with a grout trowel, a tool he began experimenting with while installing tile in his Santa Fe home. Its notched edge creates structured, parallel ridges unlike the marks of a palette knife or brush.

The difference in handling is especially visible here: the trowel brings order to the vineyard rows, while Martí’s bronze form is rebuilt through looser, heavier passages of palette-knife impasto. The result is a conversation between cultivation and gesture, repetition and irregularity, landscape and sculpture. In that sense, Artesa is as much about the estate as it is about the object at its center.

The evening celebrated the estate, the future of the arts in Napa Valley, and Justin’s work.

Going to California, we didn’t quite know what to expect. We received an incredibly warm welcome from everyone at the estate and their guests. Jean-Charles was charming and, overall, one heck of a host. He and Justin shared great moments discussing wine, art, and Justin Gaffrey's future in the California market.

What began as a trip to Napa developed into a promising future for JCB Wines and Justin Gaffrey Gallery. We are excited to share more about Justin’s fine art evolution, and Jean-Charles Boisset’s continued patronage of the arts. We look forward to sharing more about this exciting relationship with you.