From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
The journey to Estancia Colomé is taken by only the most devoted and possessed oenophiles: embarking from Salta, the capital of Argentina’s northern province, visitors must drive for five hours on what is mostly a gravel road that runs through the country from north to south. The route winds along nerve-wracking cliffs, descends into the fertile Calchaquí Valley and stretches across scarlet plateaus punctuated by 400-year-old giant cardón cacti. Finally, it crosses a river and navigates a landscape of wild shrubs and tuber forest, strewn across a moonscape of Jurassic rock formations. Forget oenotourism; this could be a NASA expedition.
Visitors land at a winery that incorporates some of the highest vineyards on Earth; at just over 3,111m above sea level, the Altura Máxima is the highest Malbec reserve-producing vineyard in the world. It is also at this extremity where the Swiss art collector and vintner Donald Hess in 2009 built the first and only museum dedicated to the American artist James Turrell. The 1,700-square-foot space displays five decades’ worth of Turrell’s work, through nine rooms, culminating in one of the largest of his ‘Skyspace’ works, which exposes visitors to the Andean sky – sun-drenched in the day and celestially saturated at night.
View of the James Turrell Museum in Colomé. Photo: Florian Holzherr
North-western Argentina is an imposing natural wonder, changing from salt flats to rainbow-colored mineral deposits in the Quebrada de Humahuaca, and forests of cacti stretching as far as the eye can see. The winery, built in 1831, traces its origins to Jesuit vineyards replanted by Nicolás Severo de Isasmendi, the last Spanish governor of Salta, and his daughter, Doña Ascensión. Born onsite in 1817, Ascensión led the winery formidably, introducing Cabernet varietals (Blanc, Franc, Sauvignon) and documenting every viticultural development. Today, vines in the oldest plot, Santa Jakoba, now between 90 and 150 years old, still produce luscious, low-yield grapes. Hess prohibited replanting; weakened roots were strengthened by grafting new cuttings, resulting in a plot of sculpted, sinewy vines. These accidental hybrids have metamorphosed and melded over the decades, evading classification by oenologists. The winemakers harness this unidentifiable quality in their limited-edition Misterioso wine. Colomé’s wines also include the premium Malbec Reserve, sourced from the highest vineyards, an award-winning Tannat with a deep purple hue and a Torrontés, made from Argentina’s national grape, which offers unmistakeable medicinal and herbal aromas
The vineyard’s arid geology aligns with Turrell’s fascination with craters and meteorites. This elevated setting is also the perfect setting in which to explore the artist’s relationship with light and how it affects his viewers’ sense of perception. At this altitude, sunlight itself becomes his artistic material. His immersive artworks are designed like scientific experiments in a laboratory: one variable is manipulated, another is measured and the rest remain constant to produce and observe different outcomes. Viewers step into the works, squinting and stumbling, uncertain where to turn in the darkness. Then, their retinas are flooded with what appears artificial but is, of course, natural light reverberating at varying intensities. This interplay between art and science mirrors the winemaker’s craft, where choices around fermentation, maceration and ageing require both precision and inventiveness to transform grapes into wine.
Installation view of Unseen Blue (2002), a Skyspace work by James Turrell at the Museo James Turrell, Colomé. Photo: Florian Holzherr; © James Turrell
Turrell’s museum at Colomé surveys his major works: his Projection pieces, Shanta light sculptures, and the ethereal Ganzfelds. They are almost impossible to photograph because their effect is one that only works in the flesh. Visitors are guaranteed to emerge enlightened.
Unlike encountering a Turrell in an urban museum, gallery or even a private house collection, at this extreme altitude, the surroundings seem to magnify his artworks. The visitor is alone, grappling with the heavy silence. In Turrell’s largest Skyspace work, from 2011, reverberating ambient noise intensifies to the point that it elicits in the viewer imaginary sounds – what cognitive scientists would call sonic illusions, or tricks the brain produces to adapt to an extreme absence of stimuli in an unknown environment. There is no phone signal or Wi-Fi here; no queue of visitors outside waiting to fill the next slot. There is nothing in one’s mind to hurry or move on, because once you’re up in Estancia Colomé, you surrender everything to artistic appreciation.
In the vineyard and winery, Turrell’s immersive work reflects the tension and discomfort these extreme conditions can produce. Sunlight is life-giving but can also be destructive, burning and damaging in extremity. The winemaker’s task, too, is to balance the extreme forces of nature and science and make it an art.
From the March 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.