Rocca di Frassinello chose Renzo Piano, just as Renzo Piano, in turn, chose Rocca di Frassinello. The motivation is rooted in the longstanding friendship that binds the famous architect to Paolo Panerai, as well as in the family legacy of a father who was a wine producer, particularly of Dolcetto. Renzo Piano has designed a cellar essential in terms of its shape and conceived not to serve as a monument to the customer or to the wine, but rather to enhance the functionality of what it represents: remaining a place where productive work unfolds – work of a specific, ritual, almost sacral nature – yet at the same time humble. Typically, wineries are characterised by a progressive and horizontal development of the premises to follow the production cycle: from the vat cellar to the barrel room and finishing up in the storehouse. Renzo Piano has revolutionised this concept of space, posing the question of what really is the heart of a wine cellar. There, where the wine ages, remaining in barrels or bottles, where its quality improves. The answer: the barrel room set in a central underground position, making it possible to naturally maintain a stable humidity and temperature. An imposing 40 by 40 square metre space, with an enormous floor slab that stands without being supported by any columns. All around, like a 20-metre frame, the distribution of all aspects of the production cycle unfolds. The steel tanks are distributed on two sides of the area and above each one stands a chute that opens onto the roof above. The roof of the barrique in fact serves a dual purpose as the large work area created above – the churchyard as Renzo Piano calls it – while from those chutes come down the grapes carried in crates, which before descending without the stress of pumps are carefully selected on special work benches. All other production functions are distributed along the other two sides: bottling, storage, warehousing and logistics.

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