Business & Management

 

Innovations in Construction

January 2008
 
by Paul Franson
 
 
Innovations in Construction
In Napa's Stags Leap District, Quixote winery conserves energy and reduces water run-off with a sod roof planted with trees and shrubs to blend into its surroundings.
 
    HIGHLIGHTS
     

     
  • Innovative winemakers combine old ideas with new technology to create efficient and eco-friendly new facilities.
     
  • Gravity feed, subterranean construction and use of natural light can produce superior wines using fewer resources.
     
  • Solar and co-generated power contribute significant savings; thoughtful design saves on labor.
Every new winery built seems to include a few innovations, but many are actually ideas from the past. More and more, vintners and winemakers realize that some of the old-time ideas were excellent, though most are updating them with new technology and twists. It's not just in California, either, but all over the country and the world that wineries are re-thinking how they operate, not only to improve their wines, but to save energy and operate efficiently with minimal staff. Interestingly, it seems owners and winemakers with technical backgrounds are especially likely to adopt these practices.

Let gravity do the work

More and more wineries are letting gravity do some of their work for them. A major motivation is to stop pumping grapes, for although manufacturers are producing gentler pumps, many winemakers would prefer to have the grapes treated even more gently.

Few wineries could be built on the model of old wineries, such as Hedgeside Winery being restored in St. Helena, Calif., by Leslie Rudd. There, carts (towed by mules) dumped grapes in the top level crusher/destemmer from a hillside road above the winery. They flowed into fermenting vats below, then farther down to barrel storage.

If you don't have a suitable hillside site, there are alternatives: One is to use only partial gravity flow, perhaps only between two levels.

A common compromise is simply to use tall forklifts to raise the grape bins above the presses, as is done at Clos LaChance Winery in San Martin, Calif. Some wineries go further to exploit gravity. Vineyard 29 in St. Helena and Palmaz Winery in Napa use elevators.

Innovations in Construction
At Lange Twins Winery, trucks can drive up a ramped overpass to easily deposit grapes into the crusher/destemmer.
 
At Palmaz, the top level of the winery contains a tunnel that allows forklifts to bring fruit to the destemmer, which is positioned over a giant carousel holding many tanks. This allows the winery to drop the destemmed grapes directly into the fermentation vats.

Palmaz is filled with clever touches, such as incorporating piping in the handrails between levels, avoiding the need to run hoses up and down stairs and ladders. Its barrel storage is shaped like a wagon wheel for minimal distances between tanks and barrels, and the arms slope downward to help exhaust carbon dioxide. It has a mechanical exhaust system, but it's never gone on.

At other wineries such as Opus One in Napa's Oakville, a floor above the fermentation tanks contains holes through which crushed grapes can flow from a portable destemmer.

One of the most interesting applications of gravity feed, however, is at the innovative Lange Twins Winery in Lodi, Calif. A ramp--actually an overpass--allows trucks to easily deposit grapes into the crusher/destemmer.

Randy Lange says the winery originally planned to use an earthen ramp, but discovered that compacted dirt was very expensive. Instead, he hired a former highway engineer and built a bridge over nothing. However, they plumbed the space with utilities and laid a concrete floor, and intend to build side walls and turn it into a barrel storage facility. "Considering building costs, the bridge-ramp wasn't too expensive when you subtract the potential cost of a barrel room," Lange says.

Innovations in Construction
Built into a hillside for natural insulation, WillaKenzie's cold storage area holds grapes for flexibility during crush.
 
Let the environment work for you

Many wineries are built to take advantage of natural environmental controls, from caves and basements to placement and thick walls, and partially burying the building where caves are not practical. "A lot of wineries are trying to get semi-buried," says architect Jon Lail of St. Helena, who has designed many wineries including Castello di Amorosa and the Hall Winery production facility now under construction. "More people are paying attention to the greening of America."

Some vintners are motivated by a desire to minimize the impact on the environment, some to minimize energy use (and costs), but others admit that it's something that appeals to customers.

Caves for barrel storage are the most obvious use of the environment, and it seems that everyone who can is building a cave. Even those with unsuitable locations and soils are finding ways to do so, from cut-and-cover cellars in flat, sandy soil, to caves dug beneath the winery (as at Rudd Winery in Oakville), to blasting caves out of granite where boring isn't practical.

The arguments for barrel storage underground instead of using mechanical refrigeration are well known: constant, ideal temperature and humidity without the need for conventional heating or cooling systems (or their cost). Caves can also be cheaper to build than conventional buildings in some cases, and they avoid some permit issues in some places like Napa County that restrict buildings but have little say over the digging (if not use) of caves.

Most of the caves are used primarily for barrel storage, but some contain whole wineries. Most notable are the spectacular Palmaz and Jarvis wineries in Napa.

Other underground wineries are more utilitarian, like Staglin Winery in Oakville. It was placed underground largely to placate neighbors who objected to a winery building at the site. Waugh Cellars in Napa is also being constructed totally underground.

Having the winery underground also helps maintain a desirable and cool temperature, but it means that offices must be heated. And refrigeration and heating are still required for some processes.

Sometimes it's not a whole cave, but just the roof. The Kendall-Jackson barrel-storage facility in Oakville is covered with soil planted in grass, as is quirky Quixote Winery in Stags Leap District. The sod roof on Quixote winery is planted with trees and shrubs as an extension of the surrounding countryside. Winery spokesperson Pam Hunter says, "It serves to conserve energy and reduce run-off."

Mentioned above is the ramp at Lange Twins Winery, which covers the potential barrel room with thick concrete, a similar concept.

Long Meadow Ranch in St. Helena has a cave for barrel storage, but uses a large rammed dirt building for its production facilities for wine and also for olive oil. Proprietor Ted Hall says, "We built our winery out of rammed earth, and have been able to maintain temperature without conventional heating and cooling systems because of the thermal mass."

Napa's Laird Winery is partially underground. Architect Lail designed the building with 10 feet underground, as far as was practical with the high water table. Then he had the excavated soil piled against the sides. "It helps minimize the impact," he says.

It isn't even vital to build caves or rammed earth buildings to exploit nature. Architect Joe Chauncey of Boxwood Associates in Seattle, Wash., has designed many wineries to take advantage of their sites.

One example is new Waters Winery in Walla Walla, Wash. The winery is situated so that the barrel room is on the north, away from sunlight, and enclosed by walls up to 17 inches thick. Utility rooms on the west side of the barrel room provide additional separation from the sun. Chauncey tends to use concrete construction as it's durable, doesn't exude toxic gasses and has a high thermal mass; if he uses wood, it's often recycled redwood, and is carefully coated to protect against TCA contamination.

At Waters, the crushpad is on the east and sheltered by a large overhang that protects the workers from direct sunlight. The tanks are to the south, where they maintain the required temperature with little mechanical aid.

Chauncey also takes advantage of natural light, with large windows and an overhead monitor (vertical window in an elevated section of the roof) on the north side to admit plenty of sunlight. The architect says this allows the use of natural light up to 12 hours per day, and cuts lighting energy consumption from 1.5 watts per square foot to 0.5.

At the Col Solare winery he designed on Red Mountain, Chauncey incorporated a tower that not only suggests the co-owners' Tuscan origins, but can act as a passive chimney to remove hot air and serve as a thermal sink.

Of course, many wineries have installed photovoltaic cells (PVCs) to generate electricity; Lange Twins plans an array on an awning over its crushpad to shade the area and provide electricity without giving up ground. In many wineries, PVCs are placed on the roof, which also provides additional insulation of the building from the sun.

Vineyard 29 installed its own co-generation plant using natural gas; in addition to providing electricity, it recovers hot air to heat water to 200°F for sanitation and provides a "free" heating system for the building. Because it generates more hot water than needed, it also powers an adsorption chiller.

Like many other wineries, Lange Twins has installed a wastewater disposal and reuse system, using gravity feed and largely natural processes. It uses the treated water for irrigation.

Innovations in Construction
Twelve-foot wide catwalks provide safe and easy access to tanks at Lange Twins.
 
Improve quality and efficiency

Of course, winemaking is the reason for all this construction innovation, and winemakers are taking many clever approaches to make the process easier and more efficient.

Lange Twins Winery runs ozonated water from a built-in generator to every tank. Randy Lange also built a 12-foot wide catwalk for easy access to the tops of the tanks without having to balance on a 3-foot walk. This catwalk extends to the crush area and to the lab, so workers don't have to continuously climb up and down stairs and ladders. Supplies are also delivered to and stored at this level, so cellar rats need not carry chemicals up ladders. "It makes a big difference at the end of the day," Lange says.

At Oregon's WillaKenzie Winery, Bernard Lacroute, who co-founded Sun Microsystems, has built a huge cold-storage area, to hold grapes for flexibility when it's uncharacteristically warm. It lets him store picked grapes at the optimum temperature and humidity. He says cooler temperature improves aromatics and helps avoid bruised fruit and keep clusters intact. The 2,200-square-foot structure is built into a hillside, which provides some natural moderation.

CADE on Napa's Howell Mountain tucked the drainage trench back under or near the tanks, so forklifts don't have to drive over them all the time, pop the grates and get stuck.

Many wineries have also developed innovative ways to deal with time-consuming and backbreaking operations like punchdown in open-top fermenters. Clos LaChance is one of many that includes rails above the fermenters, so automated punchdown devices can simply roll between tanks.

As you look at innovations in wineries, it's amazing how many of them are old, sometimes long-discarded ideas. Applied with modern adaptations, they can often help winemakers make better wine more efficiently and at lower cost.

Plan for the future
 

 
Inn
ovations in Construction
Randy and Brad Lange
It may seem obvious, but one of the vital steps in building an innovative winery is planning for the future. Few have done it with as much care as Randall and Bradford Lange at Lange Twins Winery, recently completed in Lodi, Calif. It may be the most carefully conceived winery this writer has seen from Chile and California to the Republic of Georgia.

Randy Lange says the first thing they did was to ask for a permit for 40,000 tons--but to build over 20 years, even though they're only processing about 13,000 tons per year now.

This allowed them to put the needed infrastructure into place and add on without going through additional public hearings. Building permits will still be required as they expand, of course.

Randy admits that they planned for the next generation--five of his and Brad's children are already in the business--not for his own lifetime. The winery has built out about 20% of the building site.

Among the steps taken were to design a larger facility, including all the required water, power and wastewater lines and conduits, then laying over them a concrete pad for the whole future expansion.

This included, for example, bringing in 12,000-volt service to the site and converting the voltage down to use in the winery. They also installed huge 15-inch drains with separate lines for wastewater and storm drainage, all gravity-fed to a sump pond.

To smooth things during planning, Randy Lange spent half a day at county offices meeting with every applicable department and asked what they needed before completing their plans. "We got their buy-in before we put concrete on the ground," he says.

Lange, by the way, says he's just a farmer, not the engineer you might expect. "I like to be organized," he admits.

Lange says another key step in planning the winery was to meet with Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the local utility. They went over every step of the winery process, making many suggestions that resulted in dramatic savings in power use, such as variable-speed motors for pumps and compressors. PG&E also offered many incentives for implementation.

P.F.
 
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