Winery Chateau Cheval Blanc
Cuvier with 52 vats, wine cellars, tasting room, workshops, packaging room, offices.
Chateau Cheval Blanc is owned by Bernard Arnault and Baron Albert Frere. They commissioned the architect to realize a new winery.
After extensive discussions with Pierre Lurton and the winemaker, Christian de Portzamparc decided to base the design on concrete vats, much appreciated at Cheval Blanc for winemaking.
Inspired by the landscape, he wanted to create a winery that would open up the view onto the beauty of this environment shaped by man. The winery seems to float on a hill in the heart of these centuries-old vineyards. A promontory extending from the château, emer¬ging from the earth, it raises its concrete sails towards the sky.
No line here is superfluous: everything contributes to perfecting the winemaking process, and it shows: the geometry of the curved sur¬faces and their muted white molded concrete, the unique atmosphere that derives from the natural light descending earthwards inside the vat house, between the contours of the great concrete vats.
Technology is treated as a necessity, not as an object of ostentation. There are 52 concrete vats with 9 different sizes corresponding to 47 plots. The walls of the barrel cellar use moucharaby to facilitate natural ventilation. The lighting is sober because it does not seek a decorative role.
Between the inside and outside, the winery is a place of transmutation and human interaction with nature. This is where exceptional wine is made among extremely demanding instruments with exacting skills to match.