Cantina Rovio

Location: Rovio, Mendrisiotto, Switzerland
Year: 2020
Type: Winery
Area: 1,250 m²
Client: A family winery
Status: Completed 2020

A glass-gabled hall with a timber roof structure on a stone base, against a wooded hill

A tasting hall for a family winery, set on the stone base of the old press house above the cellar their great-grandfather dug into the hill.

Materials

Local stone, reused
Spruce trusses
Low-iron glass
Board-marked concrete

The family wanted a room to receive visitors that would not compete with the vineyard. We built it on the walls of the old press house: one gabled hall in glass and timber, so the hill stays in view from every table.

Below, the brick vault is as it was. A new cellar runs deeper into the hill behind it, its ceiling carried by a field of concrete columns that open out like funnels at the top.

A barrel cellar under a ceiling held up by rows of funnel-shaped columns, lit from above — Fig. 02The new cellar under the vineyard

Forty-two columns carry the vineyard above. Each one widens at the top to spread the load into the slab, and the light along it.

Rows of barrels stacked under funnel-shaped columns, the cellar running into the distance — Fig. 03Barrels under the column heads · Column head, cast in place

A long brick-vaulted cellar with large barrels on both sides, lit along the floor — Fig. 04The old brick vault, kept as it was

A dark passage between stone piers leading to a lit metal gate and bottle racks — Fig. 05The gate to the family's bottle store