15 signature European wineries, designed by great architects

Conceived on the one hand to respond to the client's need for suitable spaces for the production, storage and sale of wine and on the other as an iconic manifesto for the prestigious "Rioja Alavesa" brand, the winery is located in a context of irregular orography punctuated by vineyards. The clear and simple longitudinal layout is developed in elevations with powerful fronts clad on the north by prefabricated concrete panels, on the east and west by aluminium sheets, and on the south by cedar wood slats reminiscent of wine barrels. A sinusoidal roof of laminated wood beams and aluminium lends a dynamic and sculptural character to the architecture.

The complex sits on an estate of almost 300 hectares of land between hills and vineyards. The building is characterised by a central cylindrical volume sectioned by an inclined plane parallel to the hill, crossed by an imposing staircase and planted with greenery on the roof, and by two porticoed side buildings. The ground floor houses the barrique cellar, the areas for ageing, vinification, bottling and packaging, and the tasting areas; the first floor houses the crushing areas and the technological rooms. With its Prun stone cladding, the work evokes the image of a flower blooming in the heart of the Maremma.

A "new bottle for a historic wine": this is how the intervention commissioned to Zaha Hadid by one of the oldest and most renowned winegrowing families in the region was conceived to protect and enhance an old wooden exhibition pavilion originally transported to the Brussels International Wine Exhibition in 1910 and since then disused. The Iraqi architect has thus designed an enclosure with sinuous and enveloping shapes that seem to evoke a decanter, or a spaceship landed in the Rioja.

A purely functional building conceived to optimise the winery's wine production process but also to host conferences, concerts and events: this is Renzo Piano's vision for the winery in the heart of the Maremma, which revisits the traditional forms of Tuscan architecture in a contemporary key and with an industrial language. The complex consists of an open square, a glass pavilion housing administrative and commercial spaces, a tower towering above the building and from which light filters into the underground spaces, and a wine cellar characterised by a large underground hall, arranged like an amphitheatre, with a capacity of 2,500 oak barrels. Glass and terracotta embody the contamination between industrial and traditional processes in winemaking today.

"A strip of land raised to open a thin, long slit in the natural slope of the land (...): not a winery, but a large seagull's wing facing south that can enjoy a very special microclimate due to its proximity to the sea". This is how the architects describe their work, set in the Maremma landscape like a seagull's wing, in fact, or like the prow of a ship pointing towards the sea. The industrial building, perfectly integrated among the hills and covered with greenery and trees, with its sinuous forms seems to want to embrace the landscape, in a perfect synthesis of artifice and nature.

The complex located in one of Spain's most vibrant wine-producing areas is characterised by a three-lobed geometry functional to the different phases of the production process: processing, conservation and pouring, which take place in each of the buildings. The concrete structure clad in reddish-coloured cortén steel shingles is reminiscent of the bright, full-bodied colours of the wine.

The "Boutique Winery" dedicated to the production of AOC wines (from Douro to Port to Moscatel), divided into four floors, houses on the first level, almost completely underground, a storage area and services for personnel and warehouses; on the ground floor, the second storage area, dressing rooms and services; on the mezzanine floor, the reception and a tasting room; and on the upper level, an auditorium. The complex clad externally in slate, stone and cork retains an "artificially natural" character that blends well with the vineyards.

To connote the image of one of the largest wine cellars in Bordeaux, the architect designed a sinuous and enveloping volume in exposed concrete. The work takes the form of a majestic "wine atelier" of 5,500 square metres developed on two levels: the first floor houses 52 rough concrete tanks for maturing wine and a tasting room; the basement houses the production rooms. The building was designed according to sustainability criteria, thanks to the presence of a green terrace on the roof, the studied ventilation system and the mechanism for filtering and reintroducing rainwater.

In the Umbrian countryside, Arnaldo Pomodoro's "Carapace" is a work halfway between art and architecture: an "inhabited" sculpture in which artifice and nature blend admirably. The large dome covered in copper and etched with cracks that evoke the earth from which the construction springs encloses an interior with a twilight atmosphere as if inside the belly of a primordial animal, with a majestic structure of three-hinged arches made of laminated wood lattice girders and bright red furnishings that evoke the leaves of the vine.

Literally immersed in the soft hilly landscape of the Chianti region, the Antinori Winery is first and foremost a "geo-morphological" experiment: excavated up to 15 metres into the hillside, the complex of almost 45,000 square metres is for the most part hypogeal and almost invisible from the outside, except for the horizontal slits that follow the green terraces under which the productive and recreational areas are articulated. In the interiors, warm and natural materials such as terracotta, red pigmented concrete and cortén give the spaces a sacred and timeless aura as in a secular cathedral, where the rituals of an ancient rural world coexist with advanced industrial technologies.

The renovation of a pre-existing warehouse purchased by the client in the woods of the Medoc peninsula eschews mimetic and vernacular language in any way: the building takes the form of a monolithic white concrete block studded with LED light points that shine, signalling the iconic and unusual presence of the architecture in the rural landscape. The concrete is mixed with a self-cleaning agent that preserves the brightness of the façades and reduces maintenance costs. A shallow pool of water surrounding the structure reflects the image of the building and seems to make the mighty mass magically float.

A work of land art: this is how this winery - an extension of an existing stone barn in the centre of the estate - appears. It is inserted among the vineyards with an essential and abstract geometry: four vertical mirrored walls and a terrace/belvedere floating over the landscape. The east and west facades are made of concrete covered with a series of horizontal stainless steel staves polished and lacquered in a bright red, the colour of wine. The north façade features a large mirror that reflects the vines during the day and reveals the fermentation room at night. The roof is a thin horizontal plate, with the lower part covered with the same material as the façades.

The building nestled in the rolling hills of Bordeaux stands as an avant-garde structure to promote an internationally renowned wine. The building, with a circular layout, is characterised by a combination of two ramps: one outside to emphasise the perceptive relationship with the landscape and the other inside to lead the visitor through the different stages of the wine-making process. A gallery on the upper level, with tasting tables, wine bar and entertainment areas, offers a panoramic view of the adjacent vineyards. A wood-clad concrete outer shell envelops the spaces, while a 40-metre diameter wooden roof, composed of sloping beams and recycled terracotta tile cladding, opens into a 6-metre wide central oculus from which natural light filters in.

Situated in the middle of the Natural Park of Montevecchia and the Curone Valley, the structure sits on a hillside, rooted into the ground. A simple geometry defines the architecture, with a rigorous rectangular layout. On the lower level there are spaces for production and a cultural hall, on the upper level a square for events flanked by a glazed volume. The roof, pierced by a staircase and supported by slender columns – all in Corten steel – seems to float in the air and frame the vineyards and small rural settlements dotting the landscape. The work won the Italian Architecture Prize 2024.