We are hoping to build something up on our property in the near future (we have been saying that for a few years now) so I thought that I would spend this down time researching how a Farm Winery can be laid out.
The design criteria for a farm winery differs from that of an industrial winery so when I came upon these two studies done in the Emilia-Romagna Region of Italy, focused on wineries, which are likely to be farms mainly processing their own grapes it piqued my curiosity and interest.
- 2011 article written by Tassinari, et. al titled The Built Environment of Farm Wineries an Analysis Methodology for Defining Meta-Design Requirements
- 2014 article by Torreggiani, et. al titled "Farm winery layout design: Size analysis of base spatial units in an Italian study area"
In the first article, the authors were seeking to define the meta-design requirements of a small farm winery, with their goal being to translate the functional needs of the investigated production processes into a preliminary design solution.
The functional needs that the authors identified were the following:
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1. grapes receipt (covered area)
2. wine-making, further subdivided into must production sector and wine tanks storage sector
3. additives and adjuvants storage
4. workers’toilet
5. dressingroom
6. showers
7. bottling
8. bottlesstorage
9. aging
10. commercialization
11. guests’ toilet
12. tasting
In the 2014 article, the authors continued their research and gathered data from sampling 131 farm wineries, with annual average production capacities up to 5000 hl/year (approimately 55,000 cases).
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Although the definition of a Farm Winery in Emilia-Romagna is much larger than what we will be in full production (2,000 cases) there are lessons that can be learned from this study since it is much easier to work from an existing concept than to generate one's own.
In small wineries, the production lines are characterized by high flexibility, given the necessity to switch between different wine-making techniques.
Such flexibility is mainly achieved through movable equipment, highly adaptable plans, and the ability of each worker to perform different operations.
When all the data was gathered, the authors carried out a proximity analysis of the different spatial units of the sampled wineries, based on the Systematic Layout Planning approach which has been acknowledged as one of the most frequently used methodology for plant layout design.
- Spatial units 1, 2A, and 2B represent the heart of the winemaking process
- Spatial units 3, 4+6, 5, 11, and 12 have an overall low variability and show no significant correlation with production capacity
- Spatial units 3 (additives and adjuvants storage), 4+6 (workers' toilet, including showers), and 5 (dressing room) will vary when the production capacity and number and of employees (family unit, fixed or occasional workers) rise above the maximum values of the production sector under study
- Sizes of spatial units 11 (guests' toilet) and 12 (tasting) are mainly influenced by the various business, commercialization, and marketing choices
The authors provided a beginning layout, emphasizing the tasks that needed to be proximal to each other. This should be a good beginning and template for us to work off of. I will update the blog with the ideas that we come up with.
References:
1. Patrizia Tassinari, Sergio Galassi, Stefano Benni, Daniele Torreggiani,
The Built Environment of Farm Wineries an Analysis Methodology for Defining Meta-Design Requirements,
J. of Ag. Eng. - Riv. di Ing. Agr., (2011), 2, 25-31.
2. Daniele Torreggiani, Stefano Benni, Ana García, Francisco Ayuga, Patrizia Tassinari,
Farm winery layout design: Size analysis of base spatial units in an Italian study area, Transactions of the ASABE, 2014, 57, 625-633, 10.13031/trans.57.10267.
