Creating a fully-functional vineyard is a major project, and we’re delighted to announce that a key piece of the puzzle fell into place today. We have now purchased a small, actually rather insignificant, patch of arable land. It connects another area of high-lying ground with the rest of our land. From up there, we have a fantastic view of our vineyards and Marçà, the closest village. We bought this bit of land in November 2018 for the amazingly beautiful vista and thought we’d have it as a picnic spot where we can enjoy our wines with good friends.
And we still intend to do that, but the project has since grown. We’ve decided it is the perfect place to build a winery. To apply for planning permission, all the sites we own have to be joined together. And now they are, thanks to this little piece of land. This project will take two or three years to complete. It has to be designed and planed, permission to build has to be granted, then it has to be financed and built…. We’re not in a hurry. We’re currently renting space at “Cellers Sant Rafel” where we have our own equipment and this arrangement works very well.
We have visited four highly reputed architecture firms in Barcelona, and the one we have chosen is www.batlleiroig.com . Batlleiroig is a full-service architectural practice with about 100 employees. It handles the complete process in-house, from design, planning and implementation of the project to the finished building. It is important for us that the building is integrated with its surroundings and vice versa. By that we mean that the natural environment is brought into and connected with the building. This is called “biophilia”, which means a love of nature. Batlleiroig has considerable expertise and is working at the cutting edge of developments in this field.
The winery will be designed with a focus on the visitor and the “wine experience”. After visiting Bell Cros, it should be our wines and the experience that visitors remember, not the building. The purpose of the building is to support and enhance these experiences. Batlleiroig understood directly what we were looking for and that the appearance of the building is not the main focus. Not all that easy to understand perhaps for an architecture firm that wants to create fabulous and fancy buildings.
