The Great Vine Winery is an unbuilt concept by designer Michael Jantzen that reimagines a winery as a two-story structure resembling a growing grape vine. The proposal integrates tasting rooms, retail spaces, and offices within cylindrical volumes connected by sweeping curved forms that extend into shaded outdoor areas for wine tastings, picnics, and events. Skylights, perimeter glazing, and underfloor ventilation are incorporated throughout the design to maximize daylight, natural airflow, and uninterrupted views of the surrounding vineyard.
The concept also integrates sustainability features, including a curved solar array designed to generate electricity for the facility and rainwater harvesting systems that collect runoff for winery operations and landscape irrigation. Fabricated from lightweight colored concrete composite, the structure is envisioned as an expandable system that can grow by adding new vine-like branches as operational needs change.
Image Credit: Michael Jantzen
What's Driving This Trend
- Biomorphic Hospitality Design
- Architecture that mimics organic forms creates distinctive guest environments where brand identity, spatial experience, and destination appeal become inseparable.
- Expandable Venue Architecture
- Modular structures that can grow over time introduce flexibility for hospitality operators balancing phased investment, changing capacity needs, and evolving visitor programming.
- Self-sustaining Destination Spaces
- Integrated solar generation, rainwater harvesting, daylighting, and passive ventilation point to venue concepts where environmental systems become core experiential and operational assets.
Who This Affects Most
- Wine and Spirits
- Experiential winery design offers producers new ways to differentiate tasting rooms, deepen visitor engagement, and translate agricultural heritage into immersive brand storytelling.
- Architecture and Design
- Nature-inspired commercial concepts expand the role of buildings from functional containers into sculptural, adaptive systems that communicate purpose and place.
- Travel and Tourism
- Visually iconic, sustainability-forward venues strengthen rural destinations by turning production sites into attractions for events, leisure travel, and cultural discovery.
