HOLDVÖLGY

Making wine from a new perspective

The winery of HOLDVÖLGY represents the industrial methods and the complex technological background of wine making from a whole different perspective in its new building in a museum-like space. During the design process our priority was to avoid establishing an overwhelming, out-of-scale industrial construction that does not fit into the rural surroundings.

Located in Mád in the centre of the Tokaj-Hegyalja wine region which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The village has a charming atmosphere due to its narrow streets, tiny houses with tiled roofs and the omnipresent smell of wine. The small areaways leading into the cellars are the most characteristic elements of the townscape hiding an extensive ancient network of wine cellars beneath the streets. Terraced vine hills with buttresses dominate the landscape and incorporate the new winery like a piece of a mosaic: the main volumes are hidden within the hill leaving only a meandering stone retaining wall-like trace on the townscape.

Under a green roof a museum-like space opens where the high-tech equipment of grape processing are put on display.

Hiding and transparency, industrial function and purity of exhibition spaces – these seemingly controversial features are connected in the building the same way as tradition and technology together can form quality wines. The plot is located at that specific part of Mád where the historical village meets the vine hill and it took nearly 500 years to form a 2-km-long, multi-storey, labyrinthine cellar underneath. The new building of HOLDVÖLGY is neatly fitted into this very system. The most significant locus of the area is the meeting point of the cellar and the surface level where the actual wine processing takes place. Visitors are also welcome in this particular spot.

Meandering stone walls hide the building itself, fitting it naturally both into the rural landscape and into the built environment.

Passing through the winery visitors arrive from the green hillside, cross the pure white ‘exhibition spaces’ then enter the decrepit tunnels of the old cellar system. The whole wine making process can be witnessed through clear glass panels thereby expressing that the house has nothing to hide. The secret lies beneath: wine comes to life deep down, in the core of the hill.