Odette Estate Winery | Signum Architecture

Firm： Signum Architecture

Type： Industrial › Winery

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2014

DESIGN INTENT

Odette Estate is the third property in the Napa Valley for the Plumpjack Group. The land in the Stag’s Leap district produces wines that are soft and feminine, in direct contrast to the masculine qualities of the group’s Howell Mountain property. Our challenge was to create a production winery that personified these feminine qualities, while achieving a high level of sustainability on a limited budget.

DESIGN SOLUTION

The Plumpjack Group named Odette after pivotal female characters in the works of Shakespeare and Proust, and the swan princess in Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake. Early in the design process, we began calling them the “three ladies.” Starting with a sketch of an evening gown, that concept evolved into the swaying female shapes that symbolize Odette - in the logo, on the winery screens, in the pattern on the concrete of the crush pad, in the curve of the winery roofline and, most recently, in three statues set within the vineyards. The sinuous curves of nearly every architectural element reflect that feminine inspiration.

We set the production winery into a notch in the hillside behind the existing winery, topping the the curved structure with a living roof and 2,500 square feet of solar panels. Three repurposed shipping containers serve as offices and labs within the open air space behind the screen. Staggered and painted orange, they are weather-tight and efficient. The winery production facility was certified LEED Gold by the USGBC in 2017.

The biggest challenge in the design process was the winery’s western exposure. We devised a perforated screen, layered with the flowing shapes of the three ladies. Though small, the winery is fully visible from the Silverado Trail. The defining symbol for the winery has became the property’s most iconic image: a screen illuminated at night with the undulating forms of the three Odettes.