PODCASTS > Arcat Detailed Podcast Episode

97: Insulated Metal Panels | Fulldraw Vineyard

59m 52s | 2024 May 31

In this episode, Cherise is joined by Brian Korte, FAIA, Principal, and Camden Greenlee, AIA, Associate from the San Antonio office of Clayton Korte, also with an office in Austin, Texas. They discuss the Fulldraw Vineyard in Paso Robles, CA.

In 2015, Connor and Rebecca McMahon embarked on a journey to craft a winery complex that mirrored their personalities and aspirations. Teaming up with Clayton Korte, renowned for their winery design, they envisioned a space that exuded familiarity, exclusivity, comfort, and sophistication.

The 12,620-square-foot winery complex consists of three buildings: a 6,972-square-foot fermentation and barrel-aging building, a 2,170-square-foot case good storage area, and a second phase hospitality building that should be complete by 2026.

Photo Credit: Likeness Studio

Firm Narrative – Clayton Korte:

Clayton Korte is an architecture and interiors firm with offices in Austin and San Antonio, Texas. The firm aims to exalt the human experience at the intersection of architecture, interiors, authenticity, and craft. With professional services including master planning and concept design, the firm has active projects stretching coast to coast.

Since 1983, the firm built its reputation on adaptive reuse projects while steadily expanding its capacity to deliver more complex, innovative projects in various market sectors. Today, Clayton Korte’s portfolio is balanced with a mix of residential and commercial projects including restaurants, hotels, public projects, and ranch and vineyard-related work. Principals Paul Clayton and Brian Korte lead the firm along with three partners and a talented staff of thirty architects, interior designers, and creatives.

Brian Korte, FAIA, Principal, Clayton Korte

A native Texan, Brian Korte leads the San Antonio office and the firm’s residential, ranch, and vineyard related projects currently in California, Hawaii, and Texas. With a passion for authenticity, richness and well-crafted materials, Brian’s work champions the honesty of modernism with a commitment to practical yet artful solutions. Each project maintains a focus on the convergence of distilled design, regional ecology, ingenuity, and resilience that allows the structures to step back in favor of the surrounding natural landscape.

Since 2017, the firm has been recognized with more than 50 AIA and allied awards for design excellence. Throughout his career, Brian’s work has been recognized with national, state, and local AIA design awards, and additional awards from related industries. Most notably, Saxum Vineyard Equipment Barn and Hill Country Wine Cave both received AIA Small Projects Awards in 2019 and 2022 respectively; Armstrong Oil and Gas in Denver, Colorado received the 2011 AIA Institute Honor Award for Interior Architecture. Clayton Korte projects led by Brian have been published nationally and internationally, including the Hill Country Wine Cave landing on the cover of Interior Design magazine’s September 2020 issue and on the cover of the book Hidden Architecture.

In February 2020, Korte was elevated to The College of Fellows of The American Institute of Architects, an honor awarded to only three percent of all AIA members that acknowledges personal achievements, architectural excellence and those architects who have made a significant contribution to architecture and society on a national level.

Brian has served as a juror for the AIA Small Projects Design Awards, Architizer A+ Awards, Residential Architect Design Awards, Your Modern Cottage Design Awards, Iconic Design Awards, etc.

Camden Greenlee, AIA, Associate, Clayton Korte

Cam grew up on a farm in northern Illinois, west of Chicago.

After receiving his master’s degree in architecture at the University of Illinois in 2010, he taught undergraduate design courses as an adjunct professor for four years at his alma mater, which honed his understanding of the value of teamwork and design dialogue. Following his teaching experience, Cam made the trip south to work for another regional architecture firm before joining Clayton Korte in 2016.

Cam leverages his passion for building performance and environmental stewardship to help lead the firm’s environmental design process, and graphic visualization standards. His current stable of projects include ranch houses and vineyard projects in Texas and California that embrace their connection to their environment. His interests in architecture stem from an appreciation for the subtleties of materials, light, and the procession of space.

Cam manages the firms summer internship program and represents Clayton Korte at university career fairs. In 2023, Cam delivered a lecture on the firm’s work and design process to students and faculty of The College of Architecture and Environmental Design at California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, CA. He is an avid bicycle commuter, self-sponsoring the firm’s annual Bike-to-Work challenge, and has a deep affinity for music.

Project Name and Location: Fulldraw Vineyard, Paso Robles, California

Since their first vintage in 2016, Fulldraw Vineyard has emerged as a leading family grower in the heart of Central California’s wine country within the Templeton Gap AVA near Paso Robles. Set on 100 acres of established vineyards less than twenty miles from the Pacific Coast, the area is known for its rich limestone soils and cool maritime climate - the perfect setting for growing Rhone-style varietals. Owned by the husband-and-wife team of Connor and Rebecca McMahon, Fulldraw features organic produce and regenerative farming practices.

According to their website, Fulldraw is not only the McMahon’s vineyard and livelihood, but it is their home, which aligns with the intimate care that they bring to the stated purpose of their winery: “By sharing its wines with those we know and hope to know, our intent is to inspire community, enhance people's lives, and create memories that give meaning to the time we spend together.”

In 2015, the McMahons invited the renowned architects of Clayton Korte to design the structures of their new winery complex. As a firm that has established itself as a leader in the world of winery architecture, the architects of Clayton Korte understood that their task at Fulldraw would be not only to create meaningful interaction with the surrounding landscape, but also to echo the owners’ unique personality and passion for winemaking, blending the disparate ideas of familiar yet exclusive, comfortable yet sophisticated.

Tucked into the rolling terrain, the winery is accessed via a long, looping drive taking visitors through the vineyards before arriving at their destination. The proprietors tasked Clayton Korte with designing a winery that represents their personality and passion for winemaking. The solution is a winery that is familiar yet exclusive, comfortable yet sophisticated—seemingly disparate ideas that come together through a visitor experience that is as curated as it is intimate.

The 12,620-square-foot winery complex consists of three buildings: a 6,972-square-foot Fermentation Building and Barrel Aging and a 2,170-square-foot Case Good Storage area, plus a second phase hospitality building that should be complete by 2026. The buildings are joined by a generous 2,703-square-foot covered Crush Pad. Indoors and out, the facilities provide a direct connection to the surrounding scenic landscape, as each of buildings overlooks the vineyard and the region. The two new structures are situated parallel to one another and shifted slightly in opposite directions to provide each with access to views and daylight. The use of simple forms along with honest materials and textures help break down the scale of the buildings to fit within its context.

Responding to site topography and climatic influences of sun and prevailing breezes, the steel-framed building houses open-air fermentation spaces that foster cross-ventilation, utilize night cooling, and provide well-lit working environments with ample natural daylight. Interior and exterior materials are clean-lined while resilient. An integrated photovoltaic system will minimize future reliance on utility-provided energy. The simple configuration will support and help facilitate production and flexible experimentation of balanced Rhone-style wines with an annual production capacity of 10,000 cases at full build-out. The new facilities mirror the existing durable exterior material palette, including painted and weathered steel, burnished concrete masonry bearing walls, and fiber cement cladding.

PHASE 2

Expanding the Fulldraw Winery campus, the new 3,918 square foot hospitality building includes areas for a variety of tasting experiences, both indoors and out to provide an intimate connection to the surrounding scenic landscape, overlooking both Fulldraw and Booker Vineyards. The main tasting room space connects to a private lounge / wine library holding past and future vintages, restroom, back-of-house and private administration office areas.

A low slung, human-scaled structure, the tasting room sits beside the winery on the north edge of a small plateau, leveraging the vineyard views to the north and west. As with the existing winery, an exterior material palate includes painted and weathered steel, burnished concrete masonry bearing walls, and fiber cement cladding, chosen for their resilience outdoors. Naturally expressive materials like wood, stone and concrete are used on the interior where warmth and human touch become more important. Stretched forms and repetitive material textures help mediate the large scale of the site and winery. In this way, the tasting room becomes an instrument to pull the guest’s attention away from the noise of everyday life and focuses it on the incredible landscape and flavors of the Fulldraw Vineyard lineup.

Fulldraw is rich; a place where the craft and culture of wine is expressed through the experience of land, place, and the intimacy of friends sharing memories.