A wine estate on Keuka Lake: private teaching and public touring

Abstract

This thesis proposes a large wine estate on the shores of one of New York’s Finger Lakes. The estate’s prominent location on Bluff Point demands an architecture that reinforces the vineyard’s highly visible regional presence. Not only a winery, this estate includes a teaching center for viticulture, allowing continual vineyard experimentation. The public is encouraged to tour the estate, and is courted with a restaurant and tasting facility.

Over a five year period, 50 acres of vineyards on the 200 acre property would be phased in, producing 10,000 cases yearly. Further expansion is anticipated in ten years.

The traditional rituals of the wine harvest provide the ideas behind the architecture of the estate. The project explores transformations as a way to honor these traditions, extending outward on the site to redefine the vineyard as massive terraces. Inside the winery, the transformation of grapes to wine is sequenced from one level to another, allowing the architecture to reinforce the theme of procession that already is established on the site.