Bodegas Julián Chivite
Arínzano, Spain
José Rafael Moneo

A wine complex blends vintage structures with modern ones

By David Cohn

© Roland Halbe

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

In 1989, Julián Chivite bought the SeZorío and its 740 acres to develop a new line of select red and white wines. The remarkable site included a compound with a medieval tower, an 18th-century mansion, and a Neoclassical chapel built in the 19th century. As architect, Rafael Moneo’s task was to design an industrial plant that could produce as many as 225,000 bottles of wine a year and fit the structure into this rich historic and natural setting. The building needed to accommodate the latest technical advances in winemaking while offering a warm welcome to visiting wine buffs and clients.

Moneo conceived of the building as a backdrop to the freestanding historic structures, embracing them on three sides. Its longest arm is set against a low escarpment that defines the riverside terrace on which the buildings stand. The walls are sandblasted concrete that matches the stony soil in texture and color and has the same kind of white pebbly aggregates. Moneo expects the walls to acquire a stonelike patina over time, while the copper roofs will oxidize, blending with the foliage of the holm oaks behind them. The three wings of the building organize the production process in a linear sequence, from the loading of grapes at one end of the structure to the shipping dock and wine-tasting room at the other, an arrangement that clearly structures visitors’ tours through the winery.

Procession is also important in Moneo’s plan for the site as a whole. From a monumental concrete entry portal beside the highway, which frames a view of the nearby Montejurra Mountain, a dirt road runs through the vineyards to the river, where a narrow concrete bridge crosses into the winery compound. Moneo demolished several nondescript agricultural buildings on the site to make way for the winery. But he also restored the chapel, rehabilitated the stone tower as a residence for the estate’s caretaker, and radically restructured the mansion as a four-room hotel for visitors, removing later additions and adding an outdoor pergola and a winter garden. The three structures (chapel, tower, and mansion) stand in a garden of newly planted grapevines.

In the winery, Moneo uses a series of architectural incidents to mark the stages of a visitor’s progress through the building. At the entry, the roof’s five parallel gables project over a walled court, forming a protective canopy to receive grapes from the fields. Forty 22,000-liter fermentation tanks dominate the large entry wing of the building, while beautiful solid-oak ceilings grab the visitor’s eye in the following wing. A small room for fermentation in casks, situated at the joint between the first two wings, features a nearly pyramidal roof that unfolds on its northern face to create a high clerestory window. Beyond this, in a 325-foot-long hall containing casks used for aging wine, long oak beams and steel tension rods radiate from short central concrete columns to support a pitched roof. This extravagant contrivance allowed the architect to thread a central raised catwalk between the beams, creating a magnificent promenade for visitors on their way to a skylighted bottling area and tasting room. The space is partially buried in the terrain, with a cellar for aging bottled wine situated below. The procession through the winery ends with a tasting room designed like an English great hall, complete with large fireplace and soaring timbered ceiling. A projecting window bay in the tasting room looks back over the winery compound and toward the entry.

See the May 2003 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
Bodegas Julián Chivite

Location:
Arínzano, Spain

Gross square footage:
110,000 sq ft.

Client:
Bodegas Julián Chivite/Julián Chivite Winery

Architect:
José Rafael Moneo