This past summer, Charles Smith opened his latest enterprise in Seattle, opting out of the serene tranquility of more remote parts of the state for a city that houses Amazon and Starbucks headquarters.
Why open a winery…here?
“I’d already dated the only three single women who live in Walla Walla. So I figured it was finally time to move to Seattle,” Smith jokes of his decision.
Smith grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains but moved to Denmark as a young man to manage rock bands and concert tours for groups like The Raveonettes. While in Scandinavia he fell in love with wine and, upon returning to the States, decided to teach himself how to make it. He was nearly 40.
In December 2001, Smith opened K Vintners on farmland first homesteaded in 1853 at the base of the Blue Mountains in Walla Walla, Washington. Within just a few years, Smith was a wine world hit.
In 2009, Food & Wine named him Winemaker of the Year, and in 2014, Wine Enthusiastdid likewise, making him the only man to win both awards.
“My whole thing is about making wine more accessible,” Smith explains.
Now with money and his ambitions of—say it, again—accessibility, Smith decided to try and conquer Seattle, which has a metro area of nearly four million people and a serious amount of tech industry wealth. His Jet City is the largest urban winery on the entire west coast, a stunning 32,000 square feet.
Designed by acclaimed architect Tom Kundig, it’s an oddly beautiful space, ultra-modern and sleek as a hip ad agency or graphic design firm.
You can tell it cost a ton to build, though no one will tell me exactly how much. A full wall of glass allows you to watch rich guy private jets take off from Boeing Field across the street—with Mount Rainier in the distance—while you drink at one of two tasting rooms.
For a city slicker like me, this was a heck of lot better than having to spend hours trekking out to Walla Walla—or, say, Sonoma, Napa, the Yakima Valley, even the Finger Lakes. For sure, those are all famously beautiful winemaking locales, but they’re not exactly easily accessible by bus, subway, or Uber. You can read the rest of the article on The Daily Beast.
Article source: Aaron Goldbarb The Daily Beast
Photo source: Jenn Pries SFWeekly Buxome Street Winery
