L'Ormarins Wine Estate

Isipani has a long association with the L’Ormarins wine estate in Franschhoek and has completed numerous projects on the estate over the years, including a three-storey underground cellar for red wine production. The cellar’s underground structures are buried under three to four metres of soil and a twenty-metre tower is the only structure that remains visible above the ground.

The cellar was designed to maximise the use of gravity to transport harvested berries, freshly pressed juice and wine through the production process. The cellar’s interior design was inspired by the inner workings of a watch. At the centre of the structure — designed to resemble the cog of a watch — is an impressive steel wheel and revolving chute to channel the incoming grapes into the respective fermentation tanks. The cellar’s storage tanks are on the next level with the barrel and bottle maturation cellar at the lowest level.

A network of underground tunnels was constructed to link adjacent buildings and private vinoteque to the red-wine cellar, with a lift for access to the upper levels. The cellar’s large vats were installed in situ by French coopers.

Other L’Ormarins projects included the construction of a new L-shaped building to accommodate two multilevel apartments for satellite winemakers, an Armagnac cellar, a white-wine cellar called Terra del Capo, a wine-tasting venue, a private restaurant, stables for the estate’s thoroughbred racehorses, a motor museum, as well as a number of other smaller projects and external works.