Wood and metal showpieces

The materials wood, metal, concrete and pottery are used in the wine industry for more than to age wine. Renowned architects build the most beautiful wineries out of them. And what about glass? WINELIFE guides you through this other form of winemaking in a number of episodes.
Text: Marjolein Schuman

Wood and metal showpieces

The industrial revolution has changed a lot in the wine landscape. Sure, there are still old chateaus everywhere amid the vines. In earlier times, they could also make do with the wine cellar carved into the cool rock or clay below, where the temperature automatically remained constant. After all, a winery has to be functional above all else. With modern temperature regulation techniques, in addition to the caves de vin also chais are built, above-ground wine cellars for fermenting the grapes and maturing the wine.

We were the first

In the so-called new wine world, the grapevines across the oceans, where there is naturally less old construction, people were the first to invest in megalomaniac building projects that changed the landscape. For storage and export logistics, the big producers needed a lot of space, and image also played a part. Architecture became an increasingly important part of the marketing tool. Think of New Zealand and Napa Valley in the United States. The building for HALL Winery, which top architect Frank Gehry designed in 2003, should have been the most ambitious addition to the Napa landscape at the time, where showcase wineries had sprouted like vines after the construction of Clos Pegase Winery, designed by Michael Graves in 1984 and built in 1987. 

Further reading? You will find more information in WINELIFE Magazine, issue 85. You can order this here. 

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