by Rachel E. Grossman

He's not as well-known as Santiago Calatrava, but Jesus Manzanares is certainly a rising star of contemporary Spanish architecture. Forty-one years old and based in Madrid, this architect has carved out a career specializing in one building type, wineries. He has built his professional reputation during a decade of dramatic economic change in the Spanish wine business.

The positive economic climate has provided significant opportunities for creative architecture. This year "mega-architects" of international standing, such as Frank Gehry and Norman Foster, have been commissioned to design wineries on the Iberian Peninsula.

Manzanares is an outstanding Spanish expert in the genre, and the Enate Winery, located in Somontano de Barbastro, in the northeast of Spain, stands out in his body of work. The project, covering 130,000 square feet (12,000 square meters), has grown steadily with significant additions over a period of ten years, with the most recent phase inaugurated in 2001.

Home to the Arts

Enate and its owners, the Nozaleda Family, added a new spark to the Spanish wine business in 1991 when they began contracting contemporary avant-garde artists to design the label of every new product brought to market. The most recent phase of the winery includes a gallery space that showcases Enate's emblematic art collection.

The horizontality of the building blends the structure into the surrounding landscape. Photo: Fernando Alvira The architect contrasts the round shape of the wine barrels with the angular lines of the structure. Photo: Fernando Alvira   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.