As part of the focus dedicated to contemporary architecture within the annual program of Merano Arte, the exhibition New Italian cellars - Territories and architecture offers the opportunity to discover a series of new cellars: CASABELLA will in fact offer an overview of these buildings, proposing three South Tyrolean wineries and eight from other Italian regions. The exhibition, curated by Roberto Bosi and Francesca Chiorino, offers these eleven wineries accompanied by four large-format photos for each and an explanatory catalog. The chosen architectures are able to combine high quality contemporary architecture and technical requirements, landscape aspects and specific needs of the wine industry, thus establishing themselves as a synthesis between agricultural enterprise and architectural reference point.

Since the construction, between 1995 and 1998, of the now iconic winery of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron in the Napa Valley in California, the wine industry - with its buildings used for production, sales and tasting - has hosted examples of excellence in contemporary architecture around the world. In Italy, in terms of tourist attractions, the wine industry is second only to cultural sites. Currently, around 20,000 wineries are open to the public throughout the country.

Already at the end of the 1990s, South Tyrolean winemakers grasped the uniqueness represented by the cellars as buildings. In recent decades, many of them have been redesigned through competitions or commissions. Consequently, the cellars are often at the center of architectural debates, have been exhibited in exhibitions that propose comparisons between international examples and specific characteristics of local contexts or have been included in various publications dedicated to these aspects.