Travel

Loisium: wine attraction
«Vkus» December 2006

What is an attraction in relation to wine?

A simple entertainment, a vivid performance or a whole artistic-historic space where wine serves as a main uniting idea? There is a place in Austria where the notion of wine attraction leaves conventional frames and becomes a new experience covering many dimensions.

The place is called Loisium and it is located in the Lower Austria, near Lagenlois. Loisium was opened three years ago and has already become a serious spot on the world wine scene. It combines designer architecture, historic wine cellars and art installations turning them into a background of art, science, esthetics, history and mythology for the only subject — wine.

The idea came to three Lagenlois families — Steininger, Haimerl and Nidetzky. Living next to each other and owning vast cellars, they decided to open their underground wine labyrinths to the public. American architect Steven Holl and Swiss communications bureau Steiner Sarnen Schweiz. Nearly ten million euros were spent for construction and design. Thus instead of a traditional museum with several old production tools and dusty bottles came a conceptual wine complex.

Urbanite Steven Holl who is considered to be one of key American architects divided the Loisium space into three parts — the wine centre, the underground expositions and the hotel. First visual shock awaits a visitor already on the way to the wine centre. A huge aluminum cube cut on all surfaces and tilted towards underground labyrinths appears among straight vine rows. Inside the building is finished with materials used for wine bottles — glass, aluminum and even cork. A spacious interior includes a café, a vinotheque and a boutique. This is the starting and the finishing point of the tour.

Several metres along the narrow path — past a glass roof covered with water at the ground level and past living vines of several varieties — and a man finds himself near a yellow wall. It is covered with pictograms which send the message of how to make wine. Behind the wall is the entrance to the underground world, but before getting there the visitor must endure a trial. Like a harvest undergoing the metamorphosis of turning into wine, every person must get own experience of this semi-mystical process. The birth of wine is a bacchanalian performance that employs energies of light, water and air and, naturally, the wine god Bacchus.

The underground wine route goes through galleries and paths, some of which were dug 900 years ago. The total distance is nearly a kilometer. This is a sort of a trip in time — from old semi-dark wine cellars to glistening steel production rooms which are a modern winemaking reality of Weingut Steininger.

Soon the underground kingdom captures a man and leads it through the grotto, labyrinth and basilica cut from loess. The local clay soil is a regular feature of the Lower Austria vineyards and is especially common in Kamptal where Loisium is located. The design intention is that the labyrinth and the basilica open a new perception of the winemaking cycle, eternal as the nature itself. Installations of a pendulum, a moon, a weather tower remind of natural rhythms and unite them with the process of wine production. Surrealistic banqueting hall refracts the light of giant whimsical candelabras and reflects it in mirror walls creating an illusion of sun in a wine glass. This is an intoxicating culmination of the holiday, the point of the highest tension of emotions which blinds with light and colour. After it it’s time to return to the real world — through a midnight pass that temporarily puts to meditation and sleep.

Loisium tells an intricate and wonderful story of wine. It uses light and sounds, space and textures, art works and technological processes which excite senses and pile into an inimitable human experience. By the way, the hotel has a wine spa with jacuzzi in a wooden vat and massage with oil of grape seeds. This is in case one would like to get to a full body contact after an emotive-cultural encounter with wine. Well, who said that wine has only one dimension?