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MANA GEMENT Cuvaison Estate Wines' Carneros tasting room is surrounded by vineyards and features indoor and outdoor tasting areas. Building for Visitors and Sustainability • Focus on sustainability including materials and layout, • Design for quality. In addition, "warehouse wineries" in urban settings are proliferating around the country as new wine companies seek to minimize costs and be close to customers. I Enhancing the visitor experience Wineries are different from most businesses. Gary Orr, president and director of design for Orr Design Office Inc., points out, "A winery is an industrial facility, but to the wine consumer it is a unique retail environment that represents the public face of the wine." 64 Wines & Vines JAnUARY 2012 n recent years, a number of trends have emerged in the design and construction of boutique wineries: • Emphasis on the visitor experience, View video in the Wines & Vines Digital Edition. Vintner Jeff O'Neill of Ram's Gate and winemaker Steve Rogstad of Cuvaison show winery designs. Winery designs emphasize retail, materials and wine quality By Paul Franson Combined with the appeal of direct sales, this means that many new wineries are designed more with an eye to potential retail customers than just efficient production. David James, the senior vice president U.S. mainland for Ledcor Construction of Napa, Calif., has seen an increasing emphasis on the visitor experience in the 16 years he's helped build wineries in the Napa Valley. In the current economic slowdown, much of the firm's work has been aimed at enhancing visitor experience at wineries rather than increasing production or building new production facilities. Perhaps no place better illustrates this than the dramatic new Ram's Gate Winery, the first winery visitors from San Francisco encounter as they head into the Sonoma and Napa valleys. Its designer, famed St. Helena, Calif., architect Howard Backen of