The Wine Is Great … but Would You Want to Live There?
Modern winery architecture has been inspired by Hellenic temples and medieval castles, but a new breed takes its cue from the simple, iconic farmhouse
Posted: Dec 6, 2012 12:30pm ET
I first met
vintner Achille Boroli four years ago in New York, where I was as impressed
with photos of his family's modern winery, designed by his architect brother
Guido, as I was his Barolo Villero 2001. The Boroli tasting room and cellar in
Castiglione Falletto is a thoroughly modern, three-level barn-inspired facility
with sharp lines, shadowbox windows and, most striking, vertical clapboard
siding composed of repurposed oak barrel staves that make the winery appear to
shimmer and undulate in the Piedmont sun.
Boroli was back
in New York this past October, hosting a small dinner to showcase three of his
Barolos at Lincoln restaurant, a fitting architectural setting for a winery
passionate about design. The restaurant is nestled beneath the Tisch
Illumination Lawn, a hyperbolic paraboloid (think saddle-shaped) park framed by
glass fins that serves as Lincoln's roof. Lincoln's Brazilian wood plank
ceiling mimics the park's contours. Boroli and Lincoln served as reminders
that, as with wine, there's more outstanding and accessible architecture today
than ever before.
There is, for
me, a romanticism to the concept of the winery as multi-use architecture—at
their best, designwise, wineries are habitable factories, structures that serve
the demands of both efficient production and engaging aesthetics befitting
hospitality. If I sound starry eyed, I am not ashamed in admitting to George
Costanzian fantasies of architectural grandeur—"You know I always wanted
to pretend that I was an architect ... Nothing is higher than architect!"
I never shared
George's aspiration to claim an addition to the Guggenheim, though. I
prefer Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian homes to his spiraling off-white nautilus
on 5th Avenue, much as I favor architect Howard Backen's Harlan farmhouse to
Frank Gehry's iridescent Marqués de Riscal.
I'd be remiss
without first recognizing the Old World archetypes—the 17th- and 18th-century
châteaus of Bordeaux, Italy's castellos, Spain's bodegas and Germany's
weinguts—which served as blueprints for the New World's modern classics, many
of which you'll find in Napa (check out the slideshow below for a few of the
best examples of Napa's 19th-century icons), but my affinity leans toward the
forward-looking designs.
I marvel at
Gehry's Marqués de Riscal and Casa Lapostolle's Clos Apalta, designed by
Roberto Benavente. Much like Clos Apalta, architects Bórmida & Yanzón's O.
Fournier winery majestically rises from its Mendoza vineyard like an alien spacecraft.
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron transformed brutalist gabions into the arresting
Dominus Estate in Napa. Zaha Hadid's wine pavilion for Rioja's R. Lopez De Heredia is
a mesmerizing matryoshka doll integrating ultramodern steel, glass and
composite wood with original design elements from 1886 and 1910.
Even in the Old
World's most tradition-bound regions, modern wineries like Boroli's have found
a place. Piedmont's Ceretto offers the Acino, a grape-shaped oval bubble that
juts from a hillside overlooking the vineyard, the Cube, a frameless tilting
glass box, and the brightly painted Sol LeWitt and David Tremlett Chapel in
Brunate. In Bordeaux, Christian de Portzamparc designed Château Cheval-Blanc's new
chai, a stealth gray turtle shell atop the St.-Emilion plateau.
But for all the wonder these modern marvels inspire, I often ask myself,
"Would I want to live there?" In the case of Marqués de Riscal's
titanium orchid or Clos Apalta's UFO skeleton, beautiful as they are, the
answer is no. (And no, I haven't been invited to move in at either.)
The long-anticipated Gehry project at Napa's Hall winery, originally
scheduled to open in 2010, has been abandoned according to the winery, a victim
of the unstable economy coupled with community concerns about its sore-thumb
potential. It's perhaps also reflective of an architectural trend toward highly
sophisticated but more subtle wineries that actually look like they belong in
an agricultural community. Architect Howard Backen's wineries set the standard
among them. I talked to Backen last week about his approach to designing
understated, inviting yet nevertheless jaw-droppingly beautiful hillside
farmhouse wineries.
Backen, whose
credits include Bond, Futo, Harlan, Paul Hobbs, MacMurray Ranch, Ovid and many,
many more, insists that he doesn't have a "style," per se. He listens
to the vintners and the geography, and takes his inspiration from rural
agricultural buildings, namely barns. Backen looks to "architecture
without architects—carpenter-built [buildings] … with a little bit of industrial
thrown in."
Barring putting
a label to his oeuvre, certain elements regularly appear in Backen's projects:
landscape integration, peaked monitor roofs, corrugated metal, board-and-batten
siding, exposed rafters, indigenous fieldstone and his signature barn-style
sliding pocket doors. They come together in remarkably livable-looking production
facilities.
Is the recent
dearth of new over-the-top McChateaus a result of economic conservatism, or an
indication that American tastes are trending toward more modest, refined
architecture? Backen couldn't say, but believes, "It's a good thing."
Backen
is now working on Tim Mondavi's Continuum winery, among others. He's especially
excited about plans for a new winery for Bill Harlan on the Oakville Crossing;
Harlan isn't ready to discuss the infant project yet, but chances are good that
it'll look like some place I'd like to live.
Click on the thumbnails below for a slideshow featuring many of the wineries mentioned in this blog.
Loved Cheval Blanc's new space. A working museum, very pretty, functional, maybe a little too clean (it is new) and I think it would be great to live there.
www.alfonsocevola.com