The owner and chief winemaker of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Warren Winiarski, was looking for a construction savvy architecture firm to provide design services for alterations and additions to the main winery building. He hired Interactive Resources and thus began a professional relationship that would involve several design projects at the winery over the course of nearly seven years.  The Cave Entry and Shade Structure are two such projects to come out of this relationship.

The Cave Entry project arose out of the need to provide a grand entrance promenade at the gateway to a complex of manmade caverns stretching deep into the hillside. The caverns serve as a natural cold storage facility for thousands of oak barrels, containing aging wine, as well as a series of subterranean rooms for entertaining guests and clients. Stag’s Leap called upon us to work with renowned Spanish eco-architect Javier Barba to design and execute a grand, yet contextually sensitive entrance to their cave system. They stressed that they wanted a solution that integrated with both the landscape and the existing main winery building, and one that would be intriguing to visitors touring the world renowned winery.