When you conjure the image of a beautiful winery, you might call to mind a glamorous château or Tuscan villa standing sentinel over undulating green hills as far as the eye can see. Well, winemaker Charles Smith and architect Tom Kundig, of the AD100 firm Olson Kundig, are rewriting the rules in Seattle. Together, they’ve transformed a onetime Dr. Pepper bottling plant with a gritty view of the tarmac at King County International Airport into a unique 32,000-square-foot winery packed with patina, style, and creativity.

The duo called on an old shorthand—developed a few years ago when Smith tapped Kundig to turn an auto-body shop in Walla Walla, Washington, into a tasting room—to build a new home for Charles Smith Wines, a label known for its rock-and-roll edge. Here, the entire winemaking process takes place, from crush to barrel storage to bottling. There are also public tasting rooms and sales offices.

“Everything is exposed in the winery,” says Smith. “Through the design, the public can see what’s happening that day—whether it’s bottling or crushing. It brings the wine to the people.”

But the journey wasn’t easy. The plant’s last incarnation had been as a recycling storage facility, and although the 1970s structure had promise, it wasn’t architecturally significant at its roots.

“I think these projects for many architects and designers are the projects of the future, where you aren’t necessarily engaging the most beautiful buildings, because we’re running out of those,” notes Kundig. “The job here is to strip away the ugliness and find the inner beauty that already existed.”

Kundig did just that by removing a street-facing wall to create a 19-by-60-foot wall of windows, calling on airports for design reference points, and naturally including one of his signature steel staircases. The result is a cool yet rustic space perfect for enjoying wine and watching planes take off.

“I feel like David Byrne in the Talking Heads song ‘Once in a Lifetime’ asking, How did I get here?” muses Smith. “But I am here, and this is home.”

Charles Smith Wines Jet City, 1136 South Albro Place, Seattle; charlessmithwineom