House of Smith

Hand cranks and Washington fruit

The hand-cranked pivot doors set the room in motion before a glass is poured. Charles Smith, winemaker at House of Smith in Walla Walla, works from that same appetite for movement: wine built in Washington, presented in a downtown room that can change its posture in minutes. His path into the cellar did not begin with a neat apprenticeship ladder. He worked as wine director at Ritz Carlton Hotel in Palm Springs from 28, then in Denmark as a bartender and talent booker at a honky-tonk, then as band manager for The Raveonettes. The sequence matters here because the house is not arranged like a hushed salon. It has the timing of a room that expects people, music, glassware, and service to collide without losing the thread.

Smith came to Walla Walla in 1999 with $5,000 and an Astro van, and the later scale of the enterprise still carries that directness. House of Smith, opened in 2012, functions as the downtown tasting room and world headquarters for his wine operation, with Washington wines at the center and a portfolio that reaches across K Vintners, Substance, SIXTO, ViNO CasaSmith, Golden West, POPUP, and B.Leighton. His own line about the work is plain enough to leave intact: “I’m like the Forrest Gump of winemaking. I just keep going.”

A portfolio poured through one room

The program at House of Smith is built around breadth rather than a single estate expression. Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Riesling, and Merlot sit within a larger Washington frame, and the room supports still red, still white, rosé, sparkling, and dessert wines.

That breadth suits Smith’s signature labels. Boom Boom! Syrah, Band of Roses Rosé, Kung Fu Girl Riesling, Powerline Syrah, and Royal City belong to the vocabulary of his work at K Vintners and around the wider portfolio. At House of Smith, those names are not treated as museum pieces. They are part of a service rhythm that lets a guest move between grape, label, and house style without pretending the portfolio is small. The method is repetition at scale, with Washington as the through-line.

The old auto garage opened to the street

The building began as the Johnson Auto Electric garage in 1917, and Olson Kundig left the industrial bones legible. Brick walls, wood trusses, and concrete floors keep the room close to its former use; the large steel pivot doors replace the old garage openings and turn the tasting room toward the sidewalk. When the doors rise, they form an awning for outdoor seating and make the wall feel less like a boundary than a working part of the house.

Inside, the pieces move. Olson Kundig’s Armadillo, floating seating and stage rafts, docking tasting tables, and a sliding panel that can work as a video screen allow the room to shift from retail to dining to performance without changing its skin. The noise can lift. The bench here is the bar, the back of the room, the street edge, and the glass in hand.

Built to change shape

The most concrete statement of the house may be architectural rather than verbal: vehicles, including delivery vans or taco trucks for catering, can drive through the space. That detail tells you how seriously the room takes flexibility. The next turn at House of Smith does not need a larger claim than the crank of the pivot doors in the 1917 garage.