A winery hidden among the vineyards of the Tuscan landscape

Gabriele Pinca, founder of Ubik Architecture, has designed the new Il Quinto winery in the hills near Magliano, a small town in Tuscany’s Grosseto province. Designed to blend with the landscape and built across the site to avoid any sense of grandiosity, this is architecture that reveals itself in stages.

Following a close study of the location, the structure was positioned in such a way as to maximize its integration into its setting while minimizing the amount of excavation needed. And the volume fits into the existing road network, reconnecting various routes at different levels, and avoiding the construction of new roads in the awareness that in terms of landscape, these elements can have greater impact than buildings.

The inspiration for the design was the shapes of the surrounding countryside. And visitors clearly see this in the changing meanings of the metal strips that adorn the winery, as they transform from road to wall, wall to roof, until they merge again with the property’s road network.

 

A winery hidden among the vineyards

When visitors arrive on the estate, they’re surrounded by the greenery of the landscape with its views to the Argentario Promontory. What looks like just another hill is actually the entrance to the winery. The façade is stone (sourced from the excavation work for the building) combined with weathering steel elements and therefore incorporates the colors of the surrounding countryside. This design decision reflects a focus on sustainability that goes beyond technical details, to include the use and reuse of local materials and construction traditions.

As visitors walk through the vineyard, they catch glimpses of the façade as it apparently follows the rows of grapevines. The green roofs provide sufficient planting depth for local shrubs and to create a roof of flowers.

 

Wood, stone, and exposed concrete interiors

 

Passing through the entrance, visitors arrive in a reception and tasting room with large windows that open onto the landscape. The lines are clear and clean, aimed at enhancing the textures and grain of the timber, stone, and exposed concrete used.

From here, a staircase with a stone wall leads to the lower level, where there is a barrel cellar with concrete walls and red resin flooring. The staircase brings a light to this space that changes throughout the day to create shifting moods. From here, a metal staircase leads to the bottom level, taking visitors from the picturesque barrel cellar to the more industrial looking vat cellar. Like the spaces above them, these rooms have concrete walls and ceilings, and red resin flooring. The steel of the vats and the large windows create a work area that loses none of the estate’s charm and maintains a constant connection with the landscape outside.

Circulation in the estate is designed to leave the levels of the vat cellar, the barrel cellar, and the outdoor areas easy to manage and usable during picking and processing, with the grapes delivered through hatches.