Wine Proprietor Kashy Khaledi Introduces a Tasting Room for a New Generation of Wine Drinkers

Think punk music, skateboarding and baseball.

Arriving at Ashes & Diamonds in Napa Valley, you may feel like you’ve been served a refreshing palate cleanser. With its sleek, white modernist architecture and playful, young crowd, the winery and tasting room stands out from its Tuscan-inspired neighbors. It’s mastermind, Kashy Khaledi, emigrated from Iran with his family (his father owns nearby Darioush Winery) to Los Angeles, where he quickly assimilated to SoCal culture. As such, Ashes & Diamonds achieves a chill factor more aligned with his generation’s interests and infatuations, according to San Francisco blog 7×7.

“Through the gaze of all that is perpetually cool in California, Khaledi has been able to bring a fresh (slangfully speaking) winery experience to the valley, making Gen Xers and Millennials feel more comfortable with the culture of wine, a historically intimidating potable.

“Khaledi tapped L.A.’s mistress of midcentury modern style, Barbara Bestor, to design a campus that’s an impossibly Instagramable futuristic throwback (if you can imagine such an architectural oxymoron)—all straight lines and round portholes.

“Winemakers Steve Mathiasson and Diana Snowden Seysses are taking a stripped-down approach to the wine, using natural yeast and applying minimal intervention, trusting in the process—an M.O. for life that seems to resonate with Napa’s new generation of oenophiles.”

You can hear Khaledi discuss his vision for Ashes & Diamonds and the future of the wine industry here.