The Story Behind Clos Clavier
We were born in France. We grew up around wine the way most people grow up around food: it was just part of life, nothing precious about it. You opened a bottle because there were people at the table.
That sensibility traveled with us when we moved to the United States and eventually co-founded one of Silicon Valley's most active early-stage venture capital firms. The professional world changed. The instinct to find something exceptional before anyone else noticed did not.
Over thirty years, Jeff built a reputation among his colleagues and friends as the person you asked about wine. Not in a formal way. People just started paying attention to what he ordered, what he brought to dinner, and what he recommended. Over time they stopped asking for options and started saying:“Whatever Jeff drinks, I will have”. That kind of trust takes years to earn and it shapes everything about how Clos Clavier is run.
This project is not a side venture. It's the project we've been moving toward for a long time.
Finding the Right Winemaker
Finding the right winemaker mattered more to us than almost any other decision. We were looking for someone who thought about wine the way they do.
Like us, Peter has a global experience of wine. Like us he believes in the potential of the Walla Walla region: a match made in wine heaven.
His path to Walla Walla took him from Halifax to Vancouver, through enology studies in New Zealand, and across Washington State before he settled here in 2007 and launched his own label in 2019.
He approaches the winemaker's job with restraint, mostly staying out of the way to let the land do what it's going to do.
Peter sources from Walla Walla region's finest sites, farms closely with the growers he works with, and brings a precise, practiced hand to the blending. The wines he makes are not engineered. They develop on their own terms, and they show it.
The Brand
When we started our venture firm, we didn’t name it after us - the vision was to build something that would be bigger than us. After 22 years, Uncork has assembled one of the best teams in seed venture and has invested in 300+ early technology startups.
Clos Clavier is different: it’s us, and Peter. That’s it. It’s a passion project, the expression of a lifelong relationship with wines. Not another business. My first Palo Alto cellar was baptized Chateau Clavier by my kids on Father's Day early in the 2010’s. They had picked up on dad’s future direction. What an intimidating vision! In a stroke of genius, our good friend Gilles Nicault from Long Shadows renamed the project and, Clos Clavier, a more humble version of the dream, was born.
The names of our wines will sound familiar to our esteemed VC colleagues: they have all been picked in the vocab that we use every day: an homage to our lively conversations around wine and cheese. Good times!