Bell-Lloc Winery

The winery lies among vineyards and woods on the edge of a small coastal town. Wine needs darkness, stable temperatures and quiet, so the Spanish design team took the cellars into the ground and kept the building almost invisible in the landscape.

Visitors enter by a descending passage lined with strips of weathering steel. The plates are spaced so that thin slots of daylight cut through the dark, drawing lines on the walls and floor. As the path goes deeper the light fades and the air cools.

Below ground, the barrel rooms and tasting spaces are dim halls of rusted steel and earth. Openings at chosen points frame the vineyard and the trees, reminding visitors of the land the wine comes from. Above, only a few steel edges show among the vines.