Ex-Dodgers CEO McCourt asking $15.5M for starchitect-designed Napa estate

Former Los Angeles Dodgers CEO Jamie McCourt, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to France and Monaco, is asking $15.5 million for a 22-acre Napa Valley estate that she bought eight years earlier for about $11 million.

The hillside property at 40 Auberge Road in Rutherford, adjacent to the five-star Auberge du Soleil resort, was designed by Johnson Fain’s Scott Johnson, whose other works include San Francisco’s Rincon Center and Napa Valley’s Opus One winery. Stanley Saitowitz won an AIA design award for its guest house, Curbed SF reported when McCourt bought the estate.

40 Auberge Road in Rutherford (Ginger Martin)

It has a one-story, 3,500-square-foot main house with two bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths, a 1,200-square-foot guest home with two bedrooms and two baths, and 3.5 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes on the Rutherford Bench, a three-mile stretch that’s considered “some of the best vineyard property” in the region, Sotheby’s International Realty’s Ginger Martin, the listing agent, said in an interview.

McCourt, who also founded a venture capital firm and had planned to produce wine and split her time between Napa and LA, is selling because she no longer uses the property, according to Martin, who listed it on Monday.

40 Auberge Road in Rutherford (Ginger Martin)

“It’s a glorious, wonderful estate next door to one of the best hotels in Napa Valley,” said Martin, who is among the top 1 percent of Sotheby’s agents worldwide and lives with her husband in Napa/Sonoma Wine Country, where they own a winery.

Previous owner Robert Lieff, who built the main home and guest house from 1998 to 2001, initially listed it for $17 million in 2012 before cutting the price to almost $15 million and later to $12.5 million, the Wall Street Journal and Curbed SF reported in 2013.

McCourt commissioned a complete renovation of the main house shortly after buying it for $11.3 million in 2013, according to the Redfin listing. It overlooks a 70-foot lap pool and Napa Valley and has a great room with a kitchen, an office and a media room. The property also has an outdoor barbecue, a fireplace and a covered courtyard, according to Redfin.

Martin is staying busy in Napa. In December, she brokered the sale of a St. Helena home with three bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths on 2.5 acres of Cabernet vines for $10.5 million and is representing the owner of another property in the city whose main and guest houses are about the same size as McCourt’s, she said. That five-acre vineyard estate at 950 Mee Lane is under contract for its asking price of $10.8 million.

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Correction: The final paragraph of this story has been updated to include a more recent St. Helena home sale Martin described during an interview.