Located in the new wine producing areas of Tasmania’s Coal Valley and surrounded by growing vines, Meadowbank Estate is one of the growing numbers of wineries in regional Australia that have added fine food and hospitality to their wine-making activities. Pragmatically, this increases the business’s trading base but, more importantly, it identifies the winery with what appreciating wine is really all about: relaxation, good food and pleasant company. For this, the owners have extended their original wine centre with a new largely timber wine sales and gallery area.

The form of the building is that of a large country farm structure, set among the lines of vines. The building’s texture and finish takes its cue from two things: the oak of the barrels used to age the wine, and the association that design in wood has with comfort, relaxation and naturalness. As wine is drawn from the fruit of the vine, wood is drawn from the trunk of the tree: both are natural products.

The building is in two distinct sections, reflecting the developing activity of the winery and an increasing sophistication in addressing their clientele. The spaces in the original section of the building, the restaurant and barrel room used for dining or celebrations are large, light and airy. Walls of windows and full height glazed sliding doors open out to a terrace, a panoramic view of the Coal Valley and the warming sunshine on the east and north. The exposed wood structure, the concrete floor and the stands of barrels scattered about leave the visitor in no doubt as to comfortable but ordered informality of the venue. The newer sections – the wine tasting centre and gallery – are quite different. While the spaces are still large, they are lower, more confined and contained with a strongly regular, symmetrical geometry. This encourages relaxation but focuses the visitor on the goods for sale.

Notwithstanding the different forms and approach, the materials palette is consistent. Both sections feature exposed timber beams, timber columns, and extensive timber lining. To encourage a rustic but peaceful and relaxing atmosphere, the level of finish to the wood is only moderated by safety and functionality. Where the purpose demands a smooth and protected surface, the wood is sanded and finished. Other surfaces are raw, in the same form as when they came off the saw.

The newer wine tasting centre is a relatively narrow three-storey building with a lower tasting room, and main wine tasting and sales level, and an upper floor gallery, This is visible from the sales level by a long central void. The lustre and tone of polished tongue and groove Tasmanian oak flooring, used in the both upper levels, underpins the design of the spaces. In contrast to this strong horizontal plane, the columns are explicitly rough sawn and unfinished. While they look like solid 175 x 175 mm columns, they are actually made up of four 175 x 50 mm rough sawn sections, screwed together at mitred corners. These box columns support large glue laminated beams running along the building and the joists of the gallery floor continuing through to support the roof of pitched rafters and exposed rafter ties.

The walls and ceiling in the gallery and parts of the tasting area are a rough sawn tongue and groove radiata lining, butted to a stop bead in the corners. In the gallery, the ceiling and walls run together, sweeping past the structural elements into the apex of the roof.

Inside this wooden shell, the tasting counters, benches, and shelving support the main functions of the space. Built around a light RHS steel frame, the tasting counter is a composition in steel plate and wood. The main counter top is raw steel cut to the curve. Above it, the upper of fine glue laminated wood is positioned to both present the wine in glass to the viewer and provide somewhere to rest against as the wine is sampled. The facing to the counter is oak staves recovered from barrels.

In part to echo and belie the straight and regular columns, the café-style benches on the eastern side of the room are solid 240 x 140 mm hardwood slabs recycled from a bridge or factory building. As these have dried, they have pulled out of square and checked with an attractive inconsistency. While the tops have been generally smoothed, they proudly include the boltholes of their previous use. In contrast, display cases on the other side of the room are smooth and polished, ply blades separating board shelves supported by a proprietary shelving system. This is backed with white slotted melamine board. The central aisle of the main tasting room is full of old barrels and oak spittoons.

The original wing of the winery houses the restaurant, the barrel room and the large outdoor terrace. The restaurant areas and barrel room reflect a more open aesthetic, with a clearer view and simpler arrangement. The large L-shaped room features a high gabled ceiling with exposed nail plate trusses supported on 200 x 200 mm Oregon columns. These are made up from a pair of 200 x 100 mm elements. Above the kitchen and part of the Barrel Room, large glulam beams support an executive meeting and dining room in a central mezzanine. The floor joists to this are rough sawn hardwood with the rack stick marks still prominent. Again the ceiling and walls are rough sawn pine lining. The floor is polished concrete.

The characteristic oak barrels are present throughout: from the Barrel Room with large stacks of barrels, to the imitative joinery of the bar and spittoons, and the barrels that function as small tables.

Throughout the building, Western red cedar has been used for the large windows and sliding doors, matching the external surfaces, which are also Western red cedar. Shelving is in Tasmanian oak.

Timber is such a versatile material that it has associations with comfortable informality on one hand and classical luxury on the other. In this building, as in many other hotels and tourist facilities, timber associations with relaxation and nature are used to make the visitor feel welcome. The colours of the wood are warm and it is also warm and soft to touch. So, while the building bubbles with sound and life when full, it is not distractingly so as the wood surfaces tend to take the edge off sharp echoes.

There is an allure to the raw and rustic aspects of the building. In the original section, this is best expressed in the Oregon columns that in their rough sawn state have a characteristically prominent grain pattern. By comparison, the surface of the rough sawn Tasmanian oak is smoother but retains clear markings of the saw.

This building illustrates the challenges of working with large section timber, especially hardwoods. All timber dries (or seasons) when it is cut from the logs. For most softwoods, this is a relatively easy and quick process and the material can stay fairly stable while it seasons. So large section Oregon, an American softwood, can be bolted together to form the columns in the restaurant. This is not the case with hardwoods. They have to be dried slowly and carefully, especially the eucalypts found in southern Australia. Consequently, most are produced with a maximum thickness of a relatively thin 50 mm. Larger sections are cut but these are generally used in engineering structures, such as bridges, and installed unseasoned. They dry in use and, as they do, they warp and twist, exactly as the recycled café benches in the wine tasting area have. Pieces of this size are too large to dry before a project, so large section members are assembled, either by gluing smaller pieces together to form glulam, or by making box sections joined together with mechanical fasteners, such as nail, bolts or screws.

The architects have tackled and overcome the challenges of working with large sections by creating a look and feel in the new section that echoes the original building with creative uses of more available – and manageable  timber.

Written by Greg Nolan

timber schedule

Columns (new), floors,joinery

Tasmanian oak, E. delegatensis, E. obliqua, E. regnans

Columns (exisiting)

 Oregon, Pseudotsuga menziesii

Walls

Radiata pine, Pinus radiata

Windows and slidingdoors, external walls

Western red cedar, Thuja plicata