Brian Korte, principal in Clayton Korte, recently sent me a signed copy of the firm’s newest monograph covering a single project, the Hill Country Wine Cave. With offices in Austin and San Antonio, the firm built its reputation on adaptive reuse projects while steadily expanding its capacity to deliver more complex, innovative projects in various market sectors. Today, Clayton Korte’s portfolio is balanced with a mix of residential, ranch, and commercial projects including restaurants, hotels, public projects, and vineyard-related work.

Clayton Korte retains its commitment to excellent design and creating spaces that set the stage for remarkable experiences. The places that draw us in, the ones that make us want to stay awhile and return to again and again are not the result of great architecture alone.    

The firm seeks to create refined spaces tailored to the specific needs of its client. While its projects are diverse in style, type, and geography, an independent spirit animates them all. They are detailed, inspirational, authentic, and humanist. They emanate a true sense of the specific place where they exist and are united by an ethos that puts the natural environment first. 

A+A recently interview Brian via email about this new book and its subject – a wine cave in the Texas Hill Country. We’re pleased to publish our second post on it today:

What’s so special about the Texas Hill Country?

The Edwards Plateau region of central Texas is commonly known as the Texas Hill Country. It is a land of many springs, limestone outcrops, winding rivers carving their way through steep canyons, and the region is home to rare plants and animals found nowhere else on earth.

Context is a powerful source of inspiration and has always shaped our work. We are fortunate to work on some truly remarkable sites around the world, including our client’s Hill Country ranch. Envisioning thoughtful structures that quietly emerge from within the natural landscape brings with it a unique challenge: ensuring that we don’t disrupt what makes the place so special.

Building any project in the Texas Hill Country requires a great deal of patience due to its remoteness. Constructing one within a cave introduced its own set of logistical complexities—but also offered a rare opportunity to design for resilience and enduring longevity.

How did the site drive the design?

For this project, the site was essential. Its very nature centers on protection through underground construction, with the earth acting as the primary insulative buffer between a variable exterior environment and the desire for a stable indoor climate. Utilizing subterranean space for aging wine barrels—or, in this case, storing approximately 4,000 bottles—takes advantage of naturally cooler temperatures. This approach not only minimizes site disturbance but also reduces the temperature differential across the building envelope, effectively decreasing demands on mechanical cooling.

Modern wine cellars and barrel storage caves have evolved significantly from those developed centuries ago—whether by design or accident. The French were among the first cultures to intentionally excavate subterranean wine caves, recognizing the benefits of storing wine underground: protection from temperature fluctuations, vibration, and ultraviolet light. These historical precedents speak to the importance of wine preservation across cultures—and the extraordinary measures people have taken to ensure it.

The project was designed under the pretense of an existing, excavated cave, with dimensional constraints of the cave already established, so the challenge was to safely and beautifully design a wine cellar and lounge within these constraints—recognizing that the existing excavation was neither watertight nor necessarily designed for this intent.

The response to this took two major forms. The first was to insert a human-scaled and more delicate wooden module into the volume of the excavation, like a “ship-in-a-bottle,” avoiding physical interaction with the cave wall. To do this, we started with a 3D scan of the existing excavation using our Matterport Pro2 camera technology and mapped all the irregularities of the existing cave with high, three-dimensional accuracy. This scan provided us with an accurate digital twin of the cave’s “topography” (a digital copy of a real-world space), so we could “scribe fit” the insertion to the existing and irregular profile of the stone hillside.

The second was to provide a bulkhead that effectively restrained the loose limestone at the cave mouth and provided a predictable surface to wed the wooden insert. By carefully manipulating the solids and voids of a “wooden-box” insert, the cave could be concealed and revealed to the occupant—leveraging the good qualities of subterranean construction while protecting from unwanted moisture and darkness.

Material palette:

On the exterior, the board-formed concrete bulkhead stands as a resilient sentry—able to weather the climate for perhaps centuries—and effectively restrained the loose limestone at the cave mouth while providing a predictable surface to wed the wooden insert on the interior.

“In much the same way a stone sarcophagus preserves delicate human remains, so too does the cave and concrete portal protect the interior space. In this way, this project can remain relevant and resilient for many, many years, preserving its most valuable asset—the wine.” – Cam Greenlee, AIA

A simple, yet rich, domestic interior material palette was chosen for its practical elegance, local availability (sourced mostly from San Antonio or Austin), and minimal maintenance. Surfaced white oak – both natural and ebonized – and raw Douglas fir were used throughout for wall paneling, cabinetry, and dropped ceilings, providing crisp contrast to the irregular textures of the cave surfaces. Salvaged cedar live-edge planks, sourced from a local sawmill, were used for the island top and vanity. The lumber came from trees felled in a major 200-year flood that devastated riverside cedar and cypress populations in the area. We were pleased to give these slabs a new life and extend their legacy on the ranch.

Low-emitting, single-coat application finishes were used only where functionally necessary, reducing off-gassing and VOCs while improving indoor air quality. The natural woods offer a warm contrast to the cooler cave shell and concrete floor.

The cave’s entry faces north, helping to avoid harsh summer sun while allowing important filtered daylight into the lounge space – and maintaining a visual connection between the interior and the surrounding landscape. This is essential to keeping occupants grounded in the outdoors. By inserting a human-scaled interior, the cave’s more challenging attributes—such as moisture and darkness—could be mitigated without losing the intrigue of being sheltered by the Earth.

Pushing the cellar to the back of the cave created an ideal storage zone at the deepest point of the hillside, minimizing UV exposure and ensuring a more consistent temperature. This project is an instrument – a tool or museum – that not only enables proper preservation of wine, but also offers a privileged perspective to the occupant. The experience of prospect and refuge, as one approaches and enters the cave, is a central tenet of the design. It reinforces a sense of subterranean occupation without the discomfort that might otherwise prompt escape. In this way, the cave can be appreciated from the comfort of the interior—just as one appreciates the stars from the safety of Earth.

How does this wine cave adapt to its context?

Buildings can partner with a beautiful setting, remaining subservient and quiet, while carrying their own elegance as stewards of the place they are in. The embedment of this space into the hillside contributes value to this larger environment by appearing as a non-building, and as a stealth destination that calls little attention to itself.

For more, go here.

Photos by Casey Dunn