Some Hills Have Eyes, This One Has A Wine Cellar

Bobby Barker

Regardless of the specifics of the setup, wine cellars are always a pretty huge flex. I mean, for starters, you have to actually own enough wine to fill up a respectable portion of the wall space. Then you have to have a property big enough to where you can afford to surrender an entire room and devote that space solely to housing a collection of inanimate objects which aren’t exactly essential to your daily existence. I guess it makes sense then, that if you’re going to go to the trouble of designing and building a wine cellar, you may as well make it as ridiculously impressive as possible, right?

It appears that that’s exactly what a Texas ranch owner has done in commissioning Texas-based architecture firm Clayton Korte to design and built this awesome ‘wine cave’, a wine cellar stealthily built into a countryside hill.

Clayton Korte took on the project after the land-owners had already dug out 5 metre tall, 21 metre deep tunnel into the hill. Lead architect Brian Korte compared the installation process to putting “a ship in a bottle”. Clayton Korte used its own 3D-scanning and mapping technology in analysing the empty tunnel to determine the specs of the cellar. “The components of the wood insert are deliberately kept away from the existing cave walls so that the room remains adaptable,” Brian Korte adds.

Sections of the cave’s interior are left exposed, contrasting the shiny timber walls with the grey limestone, serving as a constant reminder to guests that yes, you are sitting inside a literal cave. The entrance contains a ‘walls of windows’ next to the door to allow for natural light to fills the room and boulders extracted from the hill have been repurposed as part of a pathway that leads to entrance. The cellar contains shelf space for over 4,000 wine bottles and including a bar, toilet and even its own tasting lounge.