It flows like wine between stone and wood, in a place that tells of culture, traditions, family. From the dedication of the Client to a profession that becomes passion comes the need for a space, worthy of preserving and sharing a precious and compelling story, lasting a lifetime. The new Enoteca, which is much more than a place, wants to be an exclusive meeting point, elegant but at the same time welcoming and informal, in which to undertake a multisensory journey around food and wine. 1954 - Cantine Universali was born in the historic center of Ragusa and is divided between the commercial basements of two distinct and separate buildings both structurally and by construction period, which overlook two streets at slightly different heights.
The entrance opens into the rooms of the building located at the lower level, along the main road, introducing the sales area. This is characterized by the presence of the counter and the full-height wooden bottle racks, in a warm, welcoming, vibrant atmosphere. The labels sparkle between the oak and walnut, on a mineral floor of local stone slabs. From here you can perceive the shape of the Enoteca: a succession of irregular, almost vernacular spaces, created between the walls of the pre-existing buildings, on ascending floors, connected to each other by small groups of steps. The stone slabs on the floor cover the entire path, through the various rooms and their steps, which appear like small waterfalls between communicating lakes.
From the contemporary, urban, extrovert mood of the shop, you enter spaces that gradually become more silent, material, introspective. The walls covered in wood and copper are replaced by the stone block walls of the barrel vaults, bathed in the grazing light of the floor spotlights, which enhance the rough and irregular surface. The wooden furniture is replaced by the slender and sculptural bottle racks made of anthracite-colored metal bars. From contemporary to ancient, from present to past. In this way, the journey through space is also a journey through time. The passage between these two dimensions is further emphasized by the internal courtyard, covered by a sheet of glass to allow natural light to slip into the atrium, the source of life for lush vegetation.
The last room, the old warehouse, is used for tasting and is furnished in an essential way. Slender tables and chairs in metal frames allow the materiality of the vaulted space to shine through. The floor light passes through them, creating abstract designs of shadows on the surface of the vault, which proudly shows the signs of time and its numerous alterations. The empty space in the floor is immediately striking, an old cistern, reused as a cellar for the finest wines, and closed by extra-clear tempered laminated glass. The composition is completed by the back volume, the closing head of the entire project, a copper-colored service block in which other refrigerated cellars, the air conditioning system and the bathrooms are located. A further leap between one dimension and another, a total immersion in color before reaching the toilets, where the dominant material of the room reappears, stone in its various forms.
The most significant intervention from a structural point of view was the creation of the central opening in the retail area, using metal hoops, precisely to create a visual connection between all the areas of the project. In this way, it was possible to obtain the most fluid and linear path possible through the different settings of the project, which progressively lead from the contemporary to the ancient, from the present to the past, in a succession of changing scenarios.
The bottle racks in the entrance/retail area were conceived as dense three-dimensional textures. The wine emerges from the pores of an enveloping and highly structured wooden membrane. The lighting is part of the surfaces of the project, integrated between the compositional elements. It shows, enhances, sometimes conceals, sinuously follows the lines of the project, caresses.
Attention to detail, the combination of materials, the balance of shapes, the harmonization of light. These are just some of the high ambitions that have accompanied the entire design and construction process for the creation of a true "wunderkammer" in which the guest can experience the most authentic essence of the products, the one also made of archetypal images, ancestral memories, traditions far away in time, echoes of lived stories.
