Nancy Pelosi's House

San Francisco’s congresswoman since 1987 and the first woman to be Speaker of the House, a job she held from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023. This is her Napa Valley weekend place.

Architect Beverly Willis, who designed the San Francisco Ballet Building, built this as her own country place in 1983. She set the house, guesthouse, and pool on the highest knoll, in the manner of a Palladian villa.

Willis turned the front cottage into a gatehouse and the big barn into a 3-paddock horse stable. Napa County’s parcel record now shows 2 residences here, one dated 1958 and one added in 2006.

Nancy and Paul Pelosi bought the farm, then called River Run, from Willis in 1990. It is still on her House financial disclosure as a home and vineyard earning grape-sales income, and the crop is Cabernet Sauvignon.

In 2005 the Pelosis won county approval for a 5,000-gallon winery with a small wine cave, 5 employees, and tastings for 10 people a week. A neighbor warned that the lane runs a foot deep in floods.

In 2014 Paul went before the county planning commission to fight a 30,000-gallon winery proposed next door at Silverado Trail, mailing neighbors about traffic. He got a 2-week delay, not the month he wanted.

The lane crosses the Napa River on a 1913 stone bridge, 2 arches of 43 feet each, cut stone laid in courses. It is on the National Register, and steelhead got a rebuilt passage under it in 2011.