The World's Coolest Wineries

"These alluring properties around the globe sit at the intersection of architecture and viniculture"

By Jared Paul Stern

Twenty-five beautifully designed wineries by contemporary architects from around the globe form the basis of one of the season’s chicest new books—Wineries of the World: Architecture and Viniculture by Oscar Riera Ojeda and Victor Deupi. Impeccably published by Rizzoli, the wineries on display in the book run the gamut from state-of-the-art structures in Napa Valley and an Italian winery estate in the hills of Tuscany that marries technology with tradition, to an Australian enterprise “at the cutting edge of organic viniculture,” all examples of the “finest taste in both wine and design.”

Rather than “repeat established, even ancient traditions cultivated over centuries throughout Europe,” Rizzoli notes, “the contemporary architecture of wine has become a modern celebration of place, reflecting the topography of the landscape in which a winery is situated, the agricultural heritage, and at times the regional vernacular.” As Deupi, who teaches architectural history, theory and design at the University of Miami School of Architecture puts it, “Architecture and wine have been intimately connected since the very earliest societies serendipitously discovered that the fermentation of grapes was in fact a gift of the gods.”

As for the modern winery, “there are few building types today that are so universally cherished and loved,” he notes. “Typically found throughout the world where pastoral Arcadian landscapes allow for the cultivation of grapes or vine-growing, there are as many differences in the premises that accommodate the simple art of winemaking as there are in the regional, climatic, and topographical conditions that encourage the planting of vineyards.”