The most important wine producers have tried in recent years to introduce their brands to a wider public, not only through advertising their products directly but also through unique architecture designed by internationally known architects.

This is the case of the Dominus Winnery in the Napa Valley, California designed by Herzog & de Meuron, Bodegas Ysios, the work of Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry’s Bodegas Marques de Riscal, both in La Rioja, Spain.

These projects which have had a great deal of impact in the media, often go beyond the traditional use of the winery and offers the visitor new places to stay and enjoy recreational facilities.  

As tourist icons they become the emblem of the winery which then uses its new architectural image to spread the good name of its wines.

At present consumers associate the culture and enjoyment of wine with an agreeable experience for their senses, which goes well beyond the quality of the product.

From this perspective, the Landscape, Architecture & Wine competition is an attempt to get the contestants to reflect on these projects and to seek possible alternatives that promote a particular winery and improve the image of its brand.

We include here an extract from the speech given by D. Javier Arizcuren, an architect from La Rioja, at the II International Wine & Landscape Conference held in Italy in 2009. 

In his speech Arizcuren explained the relationship between architecture and wine and examined in depth the synergy between wineries and landscape. In his opinion “wineries built in harmony with the landscape, far from colonizing the territory on which they are built, manage to strengthen their brand image by integrating successfully into their natural surroundings.

Fort he architect from La Rioja, “The future of new wineries will be base on their relationship with the landscape and will incorporate the Knowledge gained from traditional constructions combined with new techniques of eco-design”.

"The proliferation of unusual and expensive wineries will not be able to continue indefinitely because there are not many companies capable of dealing with such elevated cost; in addition the uniqueness of these buildings diminishes as the numbers of spectaculars wineries increased”, he stated.

He, therefore, argued that “the future of the architecture of wineries lies in creating sustainable building and processes that will favor the marketing of wine”.