Haute Cabrière

Project Details:

Value: R11.1m
Date: 2011, 2004, 1997, 1994
Client: Clos Cabrière
Engineer: Swiegers & Associates/Apec

Haute Cabrière was one of the first wineries in the Cape to build an underground gravity-fed cellar. The project included a new wine processing cellar, a maturation cellar and a restaurant. The barrel maturation cellar was constructed with high barrel-vaulted ceilings with a bush-hammer finish to give the space a cathedral-like quality. The cellar had to be constructed with great precision. Formwork for the complex roof structure was designed on site and the whole roof had to be completed in a single cast at a time before readymix or concrete pumps were the norm. Concrete mixers were on site to make the concrete at a rate of five cubic metres per hour, with cranes to pour the concrete into the moulds.

Work on the cellar started in the winter of 1994. Conditions were far from ideal — the site for the new underground cellar had originally been used to collect clay for an earlier dam-building project. Heavy rain in June caused the clay walls to collapse, covering more than half of the cellar’s foundations. Despite the setback, the cellar’s thick concrete walls were completed by August. Next came the concrete slabs — more than 1,300 m3 of concrete was mixed on site. In order to meet the project’s deadline, construction continued round the clock from mid-November through December to complete the cellar before Christmas. In 2004 the cellar was enlarged and a new tasting room, offices, auditorium and additional storage space were also added.