Site Search

Get Luxury News by Email

Live the Good Life

Categories more

Sections

Other

Napa Valley's Vice Versa Announces Groundbreaking New Winery and Caves in Calistoga Late Summer 2022

Be the first to review this item!

#wine #wines #vineyard #winery
Published
09/30/2022 by

Vice Versa Wines founder Patrice Breton today announced that Vice Versa, the luxury Napa Cabernet Sauvignon-focused brand he founded in 2003, will break ground on a new winery and cave at his recently acquired estate vineyard in Calistoga in late Summer 2022. Breton tapped San Francisco-based architect Olle Lundberg of Lundberg Design to design the 10,000-square-foot cave and winery. The winery and cave, which boast three private hospitality spaces, have a planned completion date of Summer 2024. Lundberg has also designed the caves for Screaming Eagle, Ramey Wine Cellars and Hourglass Winery.

The winery building will have a singular aspiration - to act as a gateway to the surrounding soil and vineyards. Lundberg hopes the winery will express the direct connection between the land, the grapes, the cave, and the winery.  The ground floor of the winery will serve as the production facility, and the second floor will be reserved for hospitality spaces for private tastings.  

"Think of the building as a traditional long gable barn, split in half, and the two volumes pulled apart and offset, twisting the roof and the connecting deck between, so that the result opens to the sky, the hillside beyond, and the cave underneath, stated Lundberg.

The construction utilizes three dominant wall surfaces - Corten, a weathering steel that seals as it rusts, Kalwall, an insulated translucent panel system, and glass. The upper hospitality level has 360-degree views from the fully glazed exterior walls. The covered crush pad is in the center of the winery's ground floor, with a second-level entertainment deck overlooking the production area.  The crush pad opens up to the hillside behind, with the vines cascading down the hillside, the tableau framed by the structure above.

Patrice Breton commented, "Olle's designs are pure, modern, organic, and holistic. I wanted an avant-garde, timeless, unique, and efficient design with clean lines, a structure that merged seamlessly into the surrounding vineyard, and a fireproof building.  Olle's idea of choosing Corten steel for the superstructure was pure genius, as the building will age well and be impossible to burn down. It will be a true architectural masterpiece that will stand the test of time."

The vineyard is home to beautiful, 25-year-old vines — primarily Cabernet Sauvignon — that grow at 500 ft. elevation on rocky white tufa soils and benefit from a cool marine breeze in the afternoon. Set in the Chalk Hill Gap area, the microclimate is eight-twelve degrees cooler in the afternoon on average than in other parts of Calistoga, resulting in wines with freshness, beautiful purity, minerality, and seductive richness.

Winemakers Philippe Melka and Maayan Koschitzky of the renowned winemaking consultancy Atelier Melka have crafted Vice Versa's wines since 2015. Since the brand's inception in 2003, Vice Versa has been growing from strength to strength and today has secured its place as one of Napa's elite wineries, with multiple 98-100-point scores from top wine critics.

Comments