South elevation of Monte Creek Winery near Kamloops, with the production building stepped into the hillside beneath vineyard rows.

Monte Creek Ranch Winery

Landform Architecture

The Monte Creek Ranch Winery is a wine production space that promotes the winery’s sustainability principles by using its site's natural topography to embrace the principle of gravity-fed winemaking.

Concept sketch for Monte Creek Winery near Kamloops showing the production building stepped into the hillside for gravity-fed winemaking, with the crush pad above fermentation, barrel storage, bottling and loading.

Located on a steep hillside in Monte Creek, just east of Kamloops, the design incorporates a stepped profile to give operational access at each internal level. Highly visible from the South Thompson River and TransCanada Highway, the building’s scale and proportion were carefully considered to be visible for passers-by, but not to detract from the primary existing wine-tasting experience.

Monte Creek Winery extending along the hillside beside the Trans-Canada Highway and South Thompson River.

The building uses precast concrete side walls and an internal steel structure to organise the layout into three levels.  The top level includes an expansive covered crush pad with offices and laboratories. The second level is the ‘ferment hall’ where grape juice is processed into wine.  The third and lowest level includes the bottling line, case storage, barrel storage, and loading. Earth sheltering is utilised to maintain and mediate temperature in the barrel storage room. Fresh air is drawn through 150-foot-long ‘earth tubes’ to further temper the building’s air supply, cooling the air in the summer, and warming it in the winter. Natural lighting strategies create a more comfortable indoor environment and decrease electrical lighting loads throughout the year. Given these sustainability strategies, the building can operate passively (without actively heating or cooling it) throughout most of the year.

Environmental section through Monte Creek Winery showing the stepped production levels, earth-sheltered barrel room, natural ventilation, daylighting, solar array and earth-tube air intake.
Monte Creek Winery fermentation hall with stainless steel tanks, processing equipment and a forklift beneath the high steel-framed roof.
Earth-sheltered barrel room at Monte Creek Winery, with rows of oak barrels stacked on steel racks along a central aisle.
Monte Creek Winery fermentation hall viewed from above, with stainless steel tanks arranged beneath the high clerestory-lit roof.
Elevated view across the Monte Creek Winery production floor, with stainless steel tanks, processing areas and daylight entering through the upper glazing.