Wine cellars have been transformed over the years creating a series of parallel activities to the operation of the vineyard that now mark a challenge of developing a program that allows that these two activities are carried out at the same time.
Viñedo De Coté is located in Ezequiel Montes, Querétaro, Mexico and presented this challenge to Serrano Monjaraz Arquitectos to resolve the work and visit needs in a fantastic site of 8 ac. The program should accommodate the operation and also ensure that visitors could walk through the vineyards, the tank room, bottling room and cellar in the basement. The exclusive spaces for visitors are: a bistro for tasting and for buying wine and edibles, as well as a multipurpose room with a restaurant for events, all these in a total of 16,000 ft.
The concept was generated favoring the process of making wine in which gravity is very important and taking advantage of the forms and ground levels in the site. The grapes are sent up to the roof in a large ramp to remove the stems and be pressed then they go down by gravity to the steel tanks and finally are left in barrels for aging. Once this process is completed the bottling begins and commercialization both on-site, as in various outlets.
A 19 ft deep basement was done to avoid the use of refrigeration and humidity control systems, taking advantage of geothermal excavation and economizing the energy use. With the earth obtained from excavation of the basement thousands of earth block were produced to build a grid of columns in 16 x 16 ft organized according to the trace of the lines of the vines.
The surrounding wall was done using perforations achieved with the insertion of wine glasses —a vital element for wine enjoyment— that opens to the four compass points and mark the main access towards the general entrances, the vineyard, the lake garden and the ramp next to the figs and olives orchard. This rectangular volume ends with a wooden and steel vault that refers to the traditional seal of the wine bottles.
