A Taste Of Elegance

Tom and Anne-Marie Hedges have a lovely home among the vines high on Red Mountain at Hedges Family Estate Winery & Vineyards in the Yakima Valley.

But for their west-of-the-mountains place, they find downtown-Seattle living more to their liking.

"We grow there and sell here," says Tom. "Besides, I like walking to work, and you're 10 minutes from Daniel's Broiler and 10 minutes from the Fairmont (Olympic Hotel).

"And if you have a glass of wine, it's not a good idea to drive to Sammamish."

So, four years ago, the Hedges sold the Sammamish home that had served them locally and moved to a Belltown condo, making plans to bring their Issaquah tasting room to Seattle, too. But this new place needed to serve multiple needs; equal parts private tasting room, corporate offices and family apartment.

The Hedges needed a pied a terroir.

"Our family and friends use it," Anne-Marie says of the elegant one-bedroom loft behind a glass door and upstairs from the new South Lake Union tasting room in the Whole Foods complex.

"And, look, my kids were just here and didn't finish making the bed," she says, straightening pillows. The bed sits in a newly constructed space directly over the kitchen, directly over the tasting room. The bedroom is open to the downstairs but closed off and darkened by heavy silk curtains.

Anne-Marie, who is from France, wanted "contemporary with some old touches," design for both tasting room and loft. A look and feel that speak to the Hedges as a family and a business — and that complements the grand Red Mountain château housing their winery, main tasting room and private apartment.

So they called upon SkB Architects to design and help furnish their urban château, 950 square feet for the tasting room/office, 700 square feet for the loft upstairs. The space was gutted and re-formed, led by Kyle Gaffney, along with principal Doug McKenzie, Emily Moses, Shannon Rankin and Brian Collins-Friedrichs. Built by Schuchart/Dow, it was completed in July 2007.

The result, upstairs, is chandeliers and blackened steel, antique mirrored drawers and a leather sofa. McKenzie worked on the interiors of the apartment, from lighting to furniture to fabrics and paint, along with Anne-Marie and son Christophe's finds from Versailles in Seattle.

Downstairs in the tasting room, the floors are dark-stained oak, the same as was used in the airport terminal in Copenhagen, Denmark. The table is burnt fir with Philippe Starck chairs in polished aluminum and leather. The Dalst wine cellars are of stone powder from the Comblanchien Quarries in Burgundy. Crisp contemporary office work spaces close off when it's tasting-party time.

"I was talking with Marchese Antinori of Col Solare, and I asked him how long he'd been in the wine business," Anne-Marie muses. "He said to me, 'I am the 25th generation.' We want to be permanent like that."

The Hedges are working on it. Brother Pete Hedges is head winemaker, daughter Sarah Hedges Goedhart is assistant winemaker, Christophe and his wife, Maggie, work in management: 23 more generations to go.

Rebecca Teagarden is assistant editor of Pacific Northwest magazine. Benjamin Benschneider is a magazine staff photographer.