d’Arenberg Cube in McLaren Vale opens on Thursday
SOUTH Australia has watched the d’Arenberg Cube take shape for 14 years — and now the state’s most anticipated piece of architecture is days from opening. Take a look inside.
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THE Cube is complete.
After more than 14 years of dreaming dangerously, convincing family and colleagues that daring was good and not mad, surviving the global financial crisis, defying building conventions and busting a budget, the state’s most anticipated piece of architecture will open on Thursday.
Watched by millions around the world grow into a striking green, white and glass geometric Rubik’s Cube-like structure, and attracting thousands of visitors wanting to be photographed outside it before even being finished, the vision of McLaren Vale-based d’Arenberg Winery’s eccentric boss Chester Osborn will finally come to life this week.
Part cellar door, part restaurant, part modern art gallery, and every corner of it wildly inventive, Osborn calls his Cube an “alternate reality museum” that will change the face of cellar door and winery tourism.
The eagerly awaited pre-opening of the five-storey building defied conventional planning, an intimate Saturday morning affair for politicians and close business colleagues and family before a private tour of finished sections of the interior. Pictures were closely guarded under embargo until this morning and there was a hush on the details.
“There are many different realities inside the building,” Osborn said at the unveiling.
“The board thought I was crazy mad at the time I suggested it, and while it’s been a challenge, we’ve done it,” he said.
“It’s very wine specific and it’s very d’Arenberg specific, and there are double meanings in everything in the building.”
With all the creative design and structural challenges, it’s not surprising the original $13 million budget ran over to the tune of close to another $2 million.
Initial support for the building included a $2 million State Government Regional Development Fund grant to support core construction, internal fitout, equipment and car park development, on the proviso that 58 jobs were created, which Osborn says d’Arenberg is already close to fulfilling.
The building will open 10am-5pm from Thursday, with the cellar door operating seven days.
A $10 entry fee includes a standard wine tasting with options to upgrade at a cost to more premium tasting opportunities.
The restaurant, with head chef Brendan Wessels at the helm, is accepting bookings from Thursday.
It will open initially for degustation lunches Thursday-Sunday, with dinners beginning in 2018. D’Arry’s Verandah will continue to offer lunches daily.
The Insider’s Guide to the d’Arenberg Cube
Considered by its creator Chester Osborn as an Alternate Reality Museum, the sensory experiences inside The Cube include:
■ A soundscape as you approach the entry, created by a DJ’s interpretation of The Cube’s ever-changing weather station data.
■ A mirror front wall and door that crumples on opening, and entry foyer with “reverse perspective” artwork of the adjacent winery.
■ Crazy artwork pieces throughout that refer to biodynamic viticulture.
■ A “peep show” of people dining decadently, viewed through peep windows in an oven, a fridge and a cupboard.
■ A 360-degree walk-through video cinema room that features exciting contemporary art imagery.
■ An elevator, stairwell and toilets that you’ll never forget.
■ A 3D Voxon Volumetric light display unit that creates a hologram of the McLaren Vale landscape.
■ Fifth floor cellar door bars and tasting areas with sensational views. Four bars built on glass include 115 television screens with groundbreaking imagery.
■ A fourth floor restaurant with husband and wife team Brendan Wessels and Lindsay Durr at the helm, featuring small and larger degustations for $150 to $190. Breakout balcony tastings and dining also available.
■ Function, tasting and blending experiences, masterclasses, scenic flights, helicopter tours and many other tourist options available.
Why the State Government injected $2m into the Cube
THE South Australian Government believes d’Arenberg Winery’s Chester Osborn is on the money with The Cube.
The anticipated growth in cellar door and Fleurieu Peninsula regional visitors is one of the driving factors in the project receiving a $2m regional development grant. And the new facilities and expanded cellar door are expected to deliver — The SA Tourism Commission has predicted The Cube will attract 500,000 visitors annually.
The grant has funded more than a 100 construction jobs and will support an expected 58 ongoing customer service, hospitality and sale jobs within 18 months of The Cube’s opening, according to state Regional Development Minister Geoff Brock.
His department sees the development as an “investment in the future (aimed at) supporting the state’s economic priorities of premium food and wine”.
As one of the most exciting new winery cellar door destinations in the country, even the incomplete Cube’s radical architecture already has lifted d’Arenberg’s visitor profile. And once the food and wine components are open, there’s no doubt the venue will lead South Australia’s representation at the Great Wine Capitals of the World global awards which celebrate the best of wine tourism.
According to figures released late last year, our food and wine sector has become one of the hot-ticket items of SA’s economy, growing $443 million in revenue to hit $18.64 billion annually and creating 3400 new jobs in the past 12 months alone.
A large part of the growth is in the export of food and wine, while the latest national statistics have shown that cellar doors are increasingly important income generators, accounting now for 29 per cent of domestic wine sales.
Both cellar door sales and associated mail order channels are up seven per cent in the past 12 months according to Wine Australia’s recently released “Small Winemaker Production and Sales Survey 2016”.
VISITING a wine region and including a few cellar doors in the process definitely changes the consumption behaviour of Australian wine consumers, a recent University of South Australia research paper led by Professor Johan Bruwer found.
One of the paper’s findings revealed that more than half the visitors to a cellar door ended up buying an average of nine bottles of wine within six months of that visit — and more importantly 16 per cent of those visitors had never bought the brand before.
“The net gain can be directly ascribed to the cellar door visit and experience,” Prof Bruwer said.
“People who visit a cellar door also become more educated about the wine region and this increases the consumption of wines of that origin.”
While visitation numbers result in increased sales, there’s a more altruistic reason for Osborn’s grand plans at the end of Osborn Rd in McLaren Vale.
The Cube brings together many of the ways wineries can connect to consumers through multiple sensory connections, through the association with food, and through the experience of travel.
“I want to challenge people, and inspire them to think about wine beyond how they have ever done before,” Osborn says.
“The Cube reflects our wines — and hopefully will encourage people to think about the effect of the climate here, the soil, the single vineyards where many of our wines are grown.
“It’s everything we portray.”
And everything Osborn embodies.
“Wine inspires emotion — starting with simply the smell and taste,” he ponders.
“It motivates your senses and makes you alive. You’re just coasting if your emotions aren’t firing. My motto is that life isn’t lived in the middle — it’s at the edges.
“You want to be living at the edge all the time, because that’s when you’re really alive.
“That’s when people find out what you’re doing is really interesting.”
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