The cathedrals of wine are well known: a group of Catalan Art Nouveau wineries built during the first third of the 20th century, most of them designed by the architect Cèsar Martinell from Valls; first-rate industrial architecture, cutting-edge at the time, built in small rural towns in the Tarragona region.
Without wishing to detract from these works, but with a desire to open our eyes to more recent ones, this itinerary offers a contemporary counterpoint to a visit to the “cathedrals” to explore some examples of wine architecture built between the last third of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century in the Priorat and Penedès regions. While the wine cathedrals form a coherent whole —as we have said, they are almost all by the same architect and from the same period— the contemporary wineries we propose are a much more heterogeneous group, both in terms of architects and styles.
In Alt Penedès, we mainly find clearly postmodern buildings commissioned by the major contemporary cava producers. We begin in Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, where, opposite the Art Nouveau Codorniu wineries designed by Puig i Cadafalch, are those of Josep Maria Raventós i Blanc, designed by Bach-Mora Arquitectes in the 1980s. Not far away, in Espiells, we find the Mercè Rossell i Domènech School of Viticulture and Oenology, by the same architects and from the same period; and, in the same town, the Espiells winery of Juvé & Camps, another large complex of surprisingly unknown authorship. Closer to Vilafranca are the Chandon cellars —now known as ‘Elyssia by Freixenet’ —by Carlos Díaz and Òscar Tusquets. And finally, the underground winery of Can Ràfols dels Caus, in Avinyonet del Penedès, designed by Italian architect Paolo Deganello at the beginning of the new millennium.
Halfway between the two regions, we can stop in the city of Tarragona to visit the URV’s Faculty of Chemistry and Oenology, designed by Artigues & Sanabria Arquitectes, and take the opportunity to see other buildings on the same university campus.
In the Priorat D.O. region, overlooking the rugged terrain of Priorat, we find the expressionist, industrial-looking roofs of the Mas Igneus winery by Soldevila Soldevila Soldevila Arquitectes and the Ferrer-Bobet winery by Espinet/Ubach, both dating from the mid-2000s. Also designed by Miquel Espinet is the Torres al Lloar winery. And to round off the route, the Clos Pachem winery by H Arquitectes, a large building grafted into the centre of the village of Gratallops.
