Designed by Francesc Rifé Studio and located in the La Rioja region in Northern Spain, Tritium Winery combines the careful restoration of a 15th-century building with new spatial interventions to generate a powerful wine-making narrative.

Key features

Nestled between two narrow alleys in Cenicero, Spain, Tritium Winery is housed in a 15th-century building comprising an underground cellar. Francesc Rifé Studio carefully restored the historic basement floor while introducing a second cellar and several rooms with new functions like a reception and a multipurpose space for tastings, dinners and events. The design studio leveraged a dark-coloured material palette, which includes charred pine, black steel and stained oak, mirrored outside on the building’s street-facing façade. Inside, these material choices not only generate an enigmatic feel for the winery but also functionally support the conservation of wine.

Entering the winery through the dark timber entrance, the visitor is carefully guided through a sequence of spaces. A long corridor offers an extended pause before entering the main double-height hall. In this transitionary space, the wine production’s grape tanks are made visible using spaced-out timber slats in one of the walls. The stairs to the old cellar are encircled by new stairs leading up to the mezzanine. Its 36-m length is broken up using a lightweight metal framework and translucent glass surfaces. Lights animate the vaulted space, from the wine archive to the tasting area.

FRAME’s take

Hospitality businesses are under increasing pressure to offer their patrons new and exciting experiences, and the wine industry is no exception to this. While it may once have been common to visit multiple wineries in a day, people are now choosing to spend more time in fewer places, according to Vinepair, and this is demanding more purposeful and sensorially driven approaches from spatial designers. Francesc Rifé Studio’s conversion of the historic building does more than just functionally reprogramme the space – it underscores a narrative of artisanship for Tritium. The designer strategically reveals fragments of the existing building’s aged, worn surfaces using a contemporary material language. These spatial gestures, experienced one after the other, communicate the vineyard's position – one that draws on tradition while keeping up with the thirsts of avid winetasters today.