From the sublime to the ridiculous in winery architecture

Before I became a professional scientist, I considered becoming an architect. I have lots of books on the subject, from my teen years, and a few odd designs of my own. The architecture of buildings associated with vineyards is therefore of special interest to me, including wineries and their restaurants.

I am a bit of a classicist, myself, preferring the 1800s styles to more recent stuff. Indeed, what is called Modern Architecture is rightly maligned by many commentators, because it places great emphasis on buildings looking functional, irrespective of whether those buildings are actually functional in any practical sense. This is called the functional aesthetic, dating back all of 100 years now, and eschews any connection between humans and their actual environment.

However, I grew up in Sydney when they were building the Opera House, so I got used to modern design along the way. This structure is supposed to have been inspired by the sails of the boats on Sydney Harbour. However, the original architect’s sketch had to be heavily modified, in order to make the building actually stay up; and inside things are not good at all (see my discussion of The acoustics of the Sydney Opera House). It is a classic case of the functional aesthetic at its worst.

In the wine world, many organizations have tried to make contributions to architectural novelty, but not always with artistic success, in my opinion. I believe that architects call it “eye-catching architecture”; but, to me, the eye does not always wish to linger. Obviously, I am not going to review all possible architectural styles here, but merely look at some that I like and dislike, and most of which I have seen, at least from the outside (click on the images to expand them). What I wish to discuss here is whether any of these buildings is worth looking at, rather than whether they are functional.

Spain has long been a hotbed of innovative architectural design, and so we can expect the Spanish to have their fair share of interesting winery buildings. Let’s start with one that follows the Opera House in using its environment for inspiration. The roofline of Bodegas Ysios (Rioja) nicely reflects the hills that form the backdrop as you approach for your tasting. The form matches the environment, just as it does in Sydney.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for Bodegas Protos (Ribera del Duero), which looks like a set of quonset huts, or a bad airport terminal.

What I find particularly distressing here is that this building is at the foot of the hill on which stands the 15th century Castello di Peñafiel. This houses the local wine museum (Museo Provincial del Vino), which also conducts tastings of the local wines. Why couldn’t the architect have used this for inspiration, instead?

Just as bad is Codorníu, the oldest wine-making company is Spain. Their winery was clearly based on an old railway terminus, but without any of the architectural elegance often associated with the steam age. Cava production deserves better.

More amusingly, in a different Spanish-speaking part of the world, the Clos Apalta Lapostolle Winery (Colchagua Valley, Chile) looks like it was modeled on a dinosaur skeleton. For heaven's sake, why?

For comparison, we can move on to Germany, and look at Schloss Johanisberg (Rheingau), which has been making wine for 900 years. This is just the way an old-established winery should be, with all of its historical elegance perfectly preserved.

Nearby, Schloss Vollrads is pretty good, too (although its name is pretty inexcusable, even in German). The tasting room is at the bottom of the tower, set in a small lake.

As an aside, Schloss Johannisberg is actually part of the giant Henkell Freixenet group (although very few of their many brands mention this fact on their web sites). Recently, this company announced that Katnook Estate (in Coonawarra, Australia) would be one of the flagships of its portfolio of iconic international wineries. The current winery is almost as Australian as it gets — it is but one step up from the standard corrugated-iron shed you will find elsewhere.

Actually, most modern Australian wineries tend to look like a railway terminus, with a verandah stuck on the front for the customers. It is always a dead give-away when, in spite of lots of pictures, nowhere on the web site does a company show the outside of their winery. This one is from Shaw and Smith, of the Adelaide Hills — you can see what I mean.

One interesting architectural problem is to combine historical buildings with a modern winery, hotel or restaurant, when it is not practical to convert the historical buildings themselves. This business of trying to combine modern and historical buildings is one that is fraught with danger for architects. If they get it wrong, then we no longer need to talk about “the good, the bad, and the ugly” because the bad and the ugly become the same thing.

One successful approach is simply to separate the buildings in space. For example, the Barone Ricasoli (Chianti) winery and tasting room are boring, and are placed at the bottom of the hill, near the main road, while the hilltop Castello di Brolio is pretty neat (and you can wander around the garden, if you ring the bell).

Another approach is to try constructing something that matches the older buildings as best you can. This has been done reasonably well, for example, at Château Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande (Bordeaux). The winery is in the buildings to the left and right of the 19th century chateau, and built from the same stone, with the maturation cellar underneath the forecourt that connects the three buildings.

On the other hand, if you want to see how to make a complete mess of it, then you need go only a few kilometers south, to Château Cheval Blanc. Here, the winery and cellar building has no architectural connection whatsoever to the adjacent 19th century chateau, looking more like a beached whale, instead. The owners describe the cellar building as “a simple design that seems out of time”, but to me its seems very much out of place, as well. Couldn’t they have put it somewhere else?

A similar example, from Australia, was the original inspiration for writing this blog post. I have written before about the Seppeltsfield winery (in the Barossa Valley), which was the first winery I ever visited. The buildings all come from the 1800s, at which you arrive via a 5 km driving avenue of more than 2,000 Canary Island Date Palms.

Well, in their wisdom, the new owners have decided to build (at great expense) a new hotel and restaurant nearby. To me, it looks just like an alpine ski jump after an unfortunate earthquake. It may well become iconic, but, if so, it will be for all the wrong reasons. [Update: the locals are now going to court to have this development stopped. Second update: sadly, they failed.]

Trying to create iconic buildings is a hazard faced by many architects. Another Australian example is the restaurant building at the D’Arenburg winery, in McLaren Vale. It is, as you can see, based on a half-completed Rubik’s Cube, which inspiration seems to have nothing to do with wineries. It is now closed, after 2.5 years of operation.

However, to me, absolutely the worst example of winery-associated architecture is back in Spain, at the hotel of Bodegas Marqués de Riscal (Rioja). I am told that it is “architecturally cutting-edge”, but it is so clearly out of place that it hurts — it looks even worse in real life than it does in pictures.

Clearly, a child has screwed up some cellophane into balls to decorate their Christmas tree, and Frank Gehry (the alleged architect) then turned this idea into a building. He should hang his head in shame — the nearby 16th century church, Iglesia de San Andrés, seems to be doing so.

Let’s move on to more pleasant topics. Other wineries have, indeed, been inspired by older architecture, rather than trying to be aggressively modern, especially in North America.

For example, the Clos Pegase Winery (Napa Valley) claims to be “inspired by the agrarian buildings of southern Europe”. This appears to be so, although somewhat simplified from the originals.

A similarly inspired winery hails from New Zealand, at Highfield TerraVin (Marlborough).

Perhaps less successful is the Opus One Winery (Napa Valley), at least partly because of some clashing details of style, and the fact that it is half buried, which most traditional winery buildings are not. Indeed, one of the tenets of most architecture has been that we no longer live in caves, no matter how well-insulated they are.

Interestingly, the Mission Hill Winery, in British Columbia, does seem to have been based on a European abbey, one of the very few winery-related buildings to be that way. Some of the architects of the buildings mentioned above should have taken note.

However, it is not necessary for the New World to copy the Old World. Vernacular American architecture, for example, is just as valid a role model as anything else. The best-known North American example is probably the Robert Mondavi Winery (Napa Valley), which reflects the Spanish-mission adobe architecture of California.

In South America, there is the Bodega Catena Zapata (Mendoza), which recently topped the World’s Most Admired Wine Brands list for 2020. The building is, as you can see, inspired by the indigenous Mayan pyramids.

An interesting alternative is for a New World winery to be based on a foreign New World model. In New Zealand, the Mission Estate Winery (Hawke's Bay) looks just like a southern US plantation estate.

At the other extreme, there are more unfortunate examples of architectural inspiration. I am told that the Dominus Estate (Napa Valley) building is “a powerful but subtle composition that makes great architecture out of humble agricultural and industrial ingredients”. To me, it looks like the worst form of military installation — it needs only a barbed-wire fence to complete the illusion.

Mind you, it might be better than the Pacherhof Wine Cellar, in South Tyrol, northern Italy. This is definitely based on a World War II army bunker (the rest of the building is underground). I keep expecting Adolf and Eva to walk past at any moment. Worst of all, it is near a 12th-century abbey, Abbazia di Novacella, which would have been a much better architectural model.

If you are looking for an underground winery, then Cantine Antinori, in Tuscany, Italy, has the most ambitious one, with the roof of the final building being part of the vineyard. No mention is made of the quality of the resulting wine, however.

What they had to do to the hillside does not bear thinking about, however. Here is a construction photo. They excavated 14 hectares (35 acres) of the hillside, and then had to drive 17,000 piles into the unstable soil, in order to achieve this result.

I cannot, of course, end on a negative note. So, I will end with my favorite modern winery architecture. It does not yet, as far as I know, actually exist (it is still listed as a concept). This is for the Shilda Winery, of Kakheti, in the cradle of wine-making, the country of Georgia.

We do not need to be told what the inspiration was for this tasting room, as we can clearly see it for ourselves. To quote various sources around the web:

The 2.5 meter spacing of the vineyard is translated into the structural grid of the building and articulated through a series of curved beams. The form is a considered response to the environmental factors of the area and the qualities of the wine. The building uses the thermal mass of the soil to moderate the internal temperature, where the wine is stored, served and tasted.

This represents everything that I could hope for from a modern architect — architecture that is simple, functional and aesthetic. If I can’t have the classic stuff (and I usually can’t), then this is a very good substitute.