“This is our oil,” was the reaction of Marco Casamonti, a founder of Archea, who oversaw the project. He meant that the region’s great cultural and economic resource is its combination of landscape and architecture. Thoughtless development had depleted that resource in this part of Tuscany. Architecture can, and should, help and bring progress. A home for Antinori could be conceived in terms of the hill, he argued.

That the Antinori family embraced a more ambitious project, allowed Archea to design everything down to the furniture and fittings, then paid the bills after the budget more than doubled from its original $45 million, and also endured years of delays because of construction problems, shows how much fine, successful architecture depends on the right client. Since it opened, the building has attracted thousands of people, including many architects, who clearly don’t (just) come for the wine. They climb from the terrace to the top of the spiral stair and onto the planted roof. There’s a restaurant up there, with views over the hills. Materials are Cor-Ten steel, tinted concrete, glass and terra cotta. Surfaces are eloquently rough. Sawn-oak walls in the museum allude to the wood barrels that store the Chianti. The terra cotta comes from just up the road. The project is all about the beauty of the region and blurring the boundary between landscape and architecture. The hill keeps the cellars naturally temperate. Those cellars are the big eye-opener: airy, filled with soft light and the smell of clay.

Some 17,000 piles had to be driven into the earth to secure the headquarters into what turned out to be unstable soil. Almost 35 acres were excavated, the building installed, then the hill restored on top of it. So it is purpose-built nature on a very large scale — and a factory.

But it makes peace with its surroundings.

And adds a landmark to them.