Located in Blenheim, Marlborough Vintners Winery is a contract wine-making facility providing wine-making services which utilise cutting-edge technology with an emphasis on sustainable practices.

Completed December 2022, the new building provides space for a cellar-door experience for eight to 10 vineyards, restaurant, brewery, tap room, laboratories, and offices along with private dining and conference facilities. The building needed to reflect the industrial and mechanical processes associated with the commercial wine-making, and link these back to the earth that is its source.

Use of natural materials and sustainable design principles were emphasised throughout the design, with low carbon, mass-timber used extensively throughout. Prefabricated using Potius™ engineered roof, walls and flooring panels, and TimberLab LVL portals, the building was largely made off-site as pre-assembled modules and craned into place. Temperature is regulated through thermal gain and underfloor heating of the concrete slab, and cross ventilation and overhangs for shading in hotter months.

The palette of industrial and natural materials is continued for the interior; the large, open restaurant features Himalayan cedar panelling from timber felled on the owner’s property, tables are from live-edge flitches of gum, and sheet boarding is painted with paint incorporating iron filings which produces a rusted earth effect.

Outside, the landscaping references the surrounding land, with curves formed in corten steel referencing the braided rivers that have run through the area in the past.