The Cellar and the Storage and Logistics Center of Gran Cruz, are located in the Douro region, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The site corresponded to a degraded area that had served as a civil construction building area. The land was reclaimed and further developed a project where both aesthetic and spatial choices were guided by the functional aspects of the economic and procedural functions. It is an industrial unit dedicated to winemaking and storing of Port and Douro wine. The major scale of the building attends to the fact of having to receive the grapes production from more than a thousand region winemakers.
With the use of a natural unevenness of the land, different levels were created to allow the use of gravity in the various winemaking processes, without disproportionately increase the volumetry. The project includes two cellars, the first one will vinify about 6,000 tons of grape from approximately 1.000 winegrowers from adjacent districts, and the second is focused on small volumes of Port and Douro wines of exceptional quality. Further comprising a Storage and Logistics Center to store 22 million liters of Port Wine and grape spirit Brandy.
It is the most modern center of its kind in Portugal, incorporating innovative systems at every stage of the production process, introducing huge environmental and quality increases. The image of the building contributes to strengthen the interest in Gran Cruz Porto and solidify the brand success in the future.