Designer Winery

Construction began Friday on an ultramodern Napa Valley winery designed by famed architect Frank Gehry.

Texas businessman Craig Hall and his wife, Kathryn Walt Hall, unveiled the latest designs for their $100 million winery to 300 guests, media and wine industry leaders, including Robert Mondavi, who attended in a wheelchair.

Craig Hall, a real estate developer, said he hopes their new winery south of St. Helena will fuse the old and the new, complementing the surrounding landscape the way Mondavi did with the 1966 construction of his iconic Oakville winery.

"We wanted to have our building fit into the nature that is unique and so beautiful here, and at the same time be timeless, as the Robert Mondavi Winery is timeless," Hall said.

The centerpiece of the project -- and flashpoint of controversy -- has always been the 10,000-square-foot glass visitors center covered by a crumpled, undulating wooden trellis designed to shade the building while evoking the vineyards and Mayacmas Mountains in the distance.

Margrit Mondavi, who also attended the ceremony, agreed the Halls' project would be seen as a milestone in the history of the Napa Valley in much the same way as the construction of her husband's winery, the first built following Prohibition.

"It's the opening of a new era, something that is splendid, that is going to make us all proud in our valley, in our state, nationwide and internationally," Margrit Mondavi said.

Tying building to land

A major element of the project is the restoration of the original 1885 winery that over the years came to be completely encased by storage buildings. New state-of-the-art winemaking facilities also are planned in two large warehouse spaces, one with a 40,000-square-foot rooftop solar array.

The Halls began planning their upgrades soon after purchasing the former Napa Valley Cooperative Winery in 2003. The property sits on 33 acres on Highway 29 just south of St. Helena.

Gehry said he was awestruck by the natural beauty of the area on his first visit to the site, and his first thought was, "I don't want to screw it up," he joked.

Many of the winery's neighbors initially worried Gehry would do just that.

His initial design was of a glass, steel and concrete structure without its current flowing, trellis-like canopy. That feature was added after neighbors complained the structure was otherworldly and ridiculously out-of-place in such a rural landscape.

"I told Kathryn Hall, 'This doesn't fit. There is nothing that ties this building to the land, to the natural materials, to the natural landscape, to the existing historical buildings,' " recalled Kelly Wheaton, who lives nearby and led a group opposing the original design.

Wheaton says she's pleased the Halls listened to their neighbors, and is hopeful -- but far from completely convinced -- the project will be a good fit for the neighborhood.

In response to neighbors' concerns, the Halls lowered the height of the visitors center, moved it farther from Highway 29, and agreed to limit the number of visitors to 500 a day, said Jeff Redding, the Halls' land-use consultant for the project.

"Inspired by the past"

Gehry said the addition of the trellis was to shade visitors inside the glass structure, as well as to integrate an agricultural element into the modern design.

"The important thing is to express the time in which it was built, not to copy something from the past, but to be inspired by the past," Gehry said. "For the trellis to become the building in effect is a surprise for us. We didn't start out to do that, but it did make sense as we went forward."

Many guests said they were impressed with the design.

"There's motion there, like the motion of the wind and the earth and the elements," said Gloria Kubitschek of Orinda, noting that she had recently returned from Barcelona, Spain, where she beheld another Gehry work called "The Whale."

Gehry is known for projects such as the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Experience Music Project in Seattle. His style, which employs geometric shapes and metal sheathing, won him a prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, the design world's equivalent of a Nobel.

Building in three phases

Other visitors Friday weren't terribly excited about the shape, which some said looked like a crumpled burlap sack.

"It looks a lot like a mushroom. I'm not sure that was the idea, though," said Chuck Youngson, a retired chemical engineer who lives in Napa County. "Maybe it'll grow on me."

The new winery will be built in three phases, allowing the Halls to continue making wine using the existing facilities and to operate their current tasting room until the new winery is complete.

Kathryn Hall said they hope to complete the project by 2010.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207

or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com.