Pieropan Winery

By Elisa Grossi - 4 April 2022

The countryside around Verona in northeast Italy is a landscape of rolling hills, woodland, fields, orchards and vineyards. It is also home to the Pieropan family’s winemaking estate, which from its beginnings in 1880 made Soave wines famous worldwide. Surrounded by terraced vineyards, the company’s new 60,000 m³ winery slots into one of these slopes, its huge new cellar now entirely underground. This discreet, unobtrusive volume is emblematic of Leonildo Pieropan’s practical approach to environmental safeguard and their determination to ensure their production plant is increasingly an integral part of the landscape that makes their livelihood possible. In the 1970s, Leonildo Pieropan was a pioneer of organic viticulture based on respect for the environment and biodiversity geared to balancing human industriousness with the demands of nature. Opting for quality over quantity, the winery’s longstanding management approach combines innovative drive and respect for tradition. Today, the company is run by Leonildo’s son and wife and this awareness of their client’s commitment guided architecture practice A.c.M.e. studio in the design of the new winery. The project combines total opposites: contemporary forms and traditional materials that combine to generate operational efficiency, pleasing esthetics and a facility that blends effortlessly with its surroundings. As architect Moreno Zurlo, one of the firm’s Associates notes: “There is no wine without landscape, nor – in this area – is there landscape without vineyards”.

The underground winery rises on the slopes of a wide natural amphitheater. The building emerges out of one of the slopes, a long, low 200 m-façade replacing a naturally curving shelf of land. The whole facility of some 10,000 sq. m is on one level, facilitating materials handling and workflows between the different production areas. The new plant marks a...