September 12

lecture series
"FROM THE MUSES TO ARÍNZANO. WINERIES IN TIERRA ESTELLA".

The wineries of today. Synthesis and catalyst of the wine culture.
Examples in Tierra Estella

Jesús Marino Pascual
Architect

It is curious that the Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro organizes these conferences focused on wineries, specifically the wineries of Tierra Estella.

I believe that it is not a question of talking about the agri-food sector, about an agricultural product, which we could do, nor do I believe that these conference are oriented towards the countryside, its products and marketing. It is the Chair of Art and Heritage! And it has chosen for today this place: Señorío de Arínzano. Yesterday, Arellano (Rome) and tomorrow, Baron de Ley, a winery whose origin is a 16th century Benedictine convent and its winery. And today we are here, in an architectural and landscape complex of the first order.

Why does the Chair of Heritage and Art focus on wineries? An agri-food industry and an agri-food business like so many others?

Let's take a look at the space we are in and the landscape that surrounds us. Doesn't this look like a factory? What has been in the minds of its creators? Surely respect and consideration for the place, for what is produced here and also for us, the visitors.

What is happening is that we are facing an activity that transcends the productive routine because of its cultural transcendence. We live in a society impregnated by the wine culture, with a constant presence since ancient times in our daily life, in our festivities, in our gastronomy, in mythology, in religion, in literature, in the arts.

But in addition to all this, winemaking is an activity linked to the territory and cannot be relocated. It is complex and mysterious. When the harvest is over, a long winemaking process begins that takes time, years, and has required the development of methods, tools and techniques, machinery and important scientific contributions. It is an activity that determines the territory and its landscape. And when a culture is imprinted on a territory, a landscape with a strong singularity appears, the driving force appears and consequently tourism, a cultural tourism: today called Enotourism. The visitor has appeared and we must attend to him.

I will try to put you in the context of what has happened to bring about this new tourism in such a short period of time.

A few years ago we did not know this word: "wine tourism". I have had the opportunity to experience this evolution very directly throughout my professional life: the modernisation and refurbishment of the Haro Oenological Station (1899) in the 1980s; the Vivanco Museum (project in the 1990s); and large wineries in the 21st century. As well as the Centro de la Cultura del Rioja (C.C.R.).

A few years earlier (1976) an event that could be called "revolutionary" had taken place in Paris, the so-called "Judgment of Paris": a blind tasting of Californian and French wines. The former, from almost amateur winemakers, and the latter from the most revered wines of the Bordeaux and Burgundy regions. The Californians were the winners. The famous Paris tasting had a far-reaching impact.

1985 MOMA S.F. organizes a competition for the architectural creation of the Clos Pegase winery. It was won by the renowned American architect Michael Graves. A different way of making and understanding the winery begins to sound: the winery object of visit. We visited it in 2004, with the consequent disappointment, nothing to do with the order and functional rigor of our wineries.

But the real successful and transcendent event came in 1997. Pedro Vivanco, one of the most important winemakers in La Rioja and the greatest collector of aspects and events related to the world of wine, commissioned us to design the Museum of Wine Culture which was to house the Foundation. At that time there were no similar references, not even in France, to the intentions of its founder. It was inaugurated in 2004. The goal was to reach 40,000 visitors a year, but the first year it received 140,000 and a few years later it was recognized by UNESCO.

Vivanco Museum.

Its collections are spectacular, ranging from antiquity to the present day. From the ampelographic collection with an endless number of vine varieties to machinery, tools, vessels, commerce, cinema, and one of the best collections of art related to wine, etc. Its success led to a revolution. Its visit is a must.

This success of the Vivanco Museum opened our eyes to the world of wine. It showed that "wine", that the vast culture that has been generated around the elaboration of wine, has a great attraction and that it has impregnated all our western culture and, in addition, it gathers many singularities. A new interest appears, not only for wine as a gastronomic product, but for everything that surrounds its long elaboration. The long journey from the vineyard to the glass, the mystery of its qualities, and all the wisdom contained in that great quality.

But that great quality has to do with the conditions of the vineyard, with the climate and the most suitable vine varieties, with the place and the land where it is planted and grown, with the conditions of the winery and the care and appropriate winemaking system. Not just any place can host a good vineyard, and not just any place can produce a good wine; and from here arises that singularity of which we spoke at the beginning, "the tractive singularity", the one that generates tourism: a territory, always different, adorned and impressed by a way of exploiting it that offers us changing images depending on the time of the year.

Nor can the elaboration be carried out in any way. And here arises the concept of "quality" as an attribute that adorns and reinforces uniqueness. Under what conditions the grapes are obtained and under what conditions the wine is elaborated (fermentation, aging, aging, etc.) to achieve that great quality.

The winery is the catalyst that concentrates all the activities and, therefore, the winery has become a place of visit. The visitor has appeared as an important part of the program. It has been necessary to readjust and enrich the design of the winery, it has become more complex to show them the best way to do and seduce them.

In recent years, La Rioja has undergone a great transformation in the world of winemaking and its wineries, with new creations and also important adaptations to receive and guide visitors appropriately. However, I also appreciate this interest in Tierra Estella, but with very uneven results.

A new winery concept

Establishment in the natural environment or landscape

Landscape is nothing but an aesthetic appreciation of nature. It is imprinted in the imaginary, in the culture and history of a people, in the relationship with its living space. Therefore, the respect with which the implementation of the winery in the landscape environment must be approached is inexcusable. But, based on this respect, it is possible to bring new visions to the place, to the landscape of which it is to be a part, transforming it or pointing it out, enriching nature where perhaps the gaze was not placed. Their value and the landscape qualities of a territory depend on the emotions they awaken in our eyes.

ARÍNZANO is the best and most sensitive example.

Wineries of Arínzano.

The orography of this part of Navarra is so varied and so rich that it has been well interpreted in each of its topographical circumstances, such as TANDEM pointing out the landscape, AROA offering a spectacular panoramic view of the surroundings, or PAGO DE LARRAINZAR with its elegant discretion, allowing itself to be enveloped by a fierce nature that coexists with the humanized nature of its vineyards.

Advances in processing (reordering and design technical)

Contemporary winemakers insist on the proper and careful treatment in the winemaking processes and the natural handling in the successive pouring, pumping over and racking of the grapes and wine. The need to avoid mistreatment, pumping over and "stress" of the wine. As a consequence, we developed the spatial arrangement so that all operations can be carried out by pouring, avoiding the harvest pumps and those necessary for pumping over to the heads of the tanks, thus achieving a natural pouring. Also the thermal balance and the reduction of energy expense in the long periods of aging and aging.

In Tierra Estella, except for the technical effort to elevate the grapes without pumping in Arínzano and the appropriate layout and design of Tandem, I have not seen great progress. However, the basic and historical idea of placing the aging process underground and thus guaranteeing the reduction of energy consumption does seem to be established.

Tandem Winery.

Visitor and marketing (reordering and design sensory)

It is here where I appreciate a greater lack, with the exception of Irache, for telling and expressing its long historical route and the milestone it represents in the Camino de Santiago with its source of wine; or Baron de Ley with the restoration of the Convent, but without a direct connection with the winery and without any interest or need in its commercialization to open ways to wine tourism. The visitor's tour has to be fluid, natural and comfortable, and without interfering in the winery's activities. The aim is to link the visitor with the winery, with the quality of its wines, its ways of doing things, with its history and "its stories".

Bodegas Irache.

We must keep in mind the scenographic role that architecture always plays as a piece that is part of a landscape, as a landmark that we observe in that great scenography. Or as a spatial framework of our lives, when it develops in its interior and its spaces protect and envelop us.

The MOMA competition was intended to provide the winery with architectural value: in addition to being functional and well-built, it was also intended to provide the value of beauty.

We all aspire to beauty, but what do we consider beauty in architectural terms today? It is associated with good form, just measure, its proportions or aesthetic composition; but as the philosopher Javier Gomá says, it is at a higher level when the sentimental quality is given, when the formal concept of beauty is completed, it is then when the spell is produced, the rapture of our attention.

It is about reaching from knowledge and rationality that higher step: the impression of the senses, the sensory, the emotional. It is about generating spatial qualities as a consequence of coherence, of the resonance of light, of color, of the very quality of the materials and their textures. And this has to do with the infinity, the continuity, the intensity, the sincerity of the work and the color that every architectural form expects.

Good architecture is, in its upper Degree , if in addition to achieving perfect functionality and inexcusable constructive rigor and good old age, we manage to make it emotional. The more sincere and naked the better.