2024 Winery Design Award: Clif Family Winery & Farm by Becky Carter

Author:

“While there’s often a reliance on function, here we were trying to intuitively impart a sense of the experience,” says Becky Carter of the private tasting room and office her firm created for the Clif Family Winery and Farm in St. Helena.

In the tasting room, Lawson-Fenning’s Isherwood sofa and a pair of Andreu World’s Nub lounge chairs cluster in front of a fireplace clad in Fireclay’s glossy Evergreen tiles. In the background, Bocci’s Armature light hangs over a table from Jacob May.
Photography by Joe Kramm.

The long building’s mid-century proportions provided the jumping-off point. “That period’s warmth felt essential to a space that would encourage visitors to relax and enjoy the wines,” says the Studio Becky Carter founder. Alongside a focus on the environment, nature, community, sustainability and health, that approachability is intrinsic to the Clif ethos, whether the product is wine or its well-known energy bar. The sextet of principles informed every design choice, from the deadstock denim that covers the kitchen nook’s banquettes—“like the jeans you might wear to go hiking,” Carter points out—to the colorful used climbing ropes that wrap the base of the conference room’s table, to a color palette drawn from the views.

The floor of the kitchen area is covered in a playful custom checkerboard of Armstrong Flooring tiles. The plywood banquettes are wrapped in Hyde Park’s laundered denim. Photography by Joe Kramm.

They’re also integral to her firm’s values. “I’m always considering how we can operate with longevity in mind, creating spaces that feel timeless but contemporary by taking historical cues and running them through a modern lens, then filtering them through the desires and mindset of the client to create something unique and personal,” she shares. We’ll drink to that.

The bathroom is dominated by a screen print created from a photograph taken by CLIF BAR founders Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford during a trip to Italy. The pendant lights are by SkLO, a Healdsburg-based company. Photography by Joe Kramm.