LIFE BEYOND FIRST CLASS
DESIGN & ARCHTIECTURE
BENEATH THE VINES
Archery Summit’s new tasting room by Heliotrope seamlessly blends into its vineyard setting, transforming a once production-focused facility into a soulful, light-filled destination where architecture, landscape, and pinot noir converge in quiet harmony.
JESSICA HALL
PHOTOGRAPHY: JEREMY BITTERMANN
At the crest of the Dundee Hills, where the vineyards catch the golden hour with a painter’s precision, something quietly transformative has taken root. Archery Summit—a pioneer in Oregon’s pinot noir story since 1993—has unveiled a new tasting room that feels less like an addition and more like a revelation.
Heliotrope, the Seattle-based architecture studio known for its deeply contextual work, was selected through an invitation-only competition to reimagine the guest experience at the Dayton winery. The challenge? To integrate a new public-facing component into a facility originally built for production—not people.
The resulting design doesn’t merely solve a problem. It creates a destination.
Tucked within the estate’s only flat plot, the new tasting room nestles gracefully into a gardened courtyard, its form drawing visitors toward the existing cave entrance—an elemental portal to the winery’s heart. Here, barrels age deep in the hillside, protected by earth and tradition. Now, guests can begin their tasting not in a sterile reception area but at the literal and metaphorical entry point of the winemaking process.
A 100-foot-long colonnade defines the new façade, visually linking old and new with measured elegance. It offers rhythm and shade, its geometry reinforcing the linear movement from vineyard to cave. Inside, large Fleetwood glass panels slide open to reveal sweeping views of the Willamette Valley, dissolving the threshold between tasting room and terroir.
This is architecture in service of experience—not the other way around.
Light is choreographed throughout. A continuous skylight washes the retaining wall opposite the colonnade in soft daylight, while pendant lighting by Bocci lends sculptural intimacy to the private tasting room. Custom furnishings by Urban Lumber—crafted from locally sourced materials—further root the space in its region, while trees planted directly into the floor blur the boundary between built and natural.
There’s a clarity to the space that mirrors Archery Summit’s wines: expressive but restrained, elegant without pretension.
What Heliotrope has delivered is not just a tasting room—it’s a reframing of the entire wine experience. One that respects the vineyard’s legacy while gently guiding it forward. A place where the story of pinot noir is told not just in flavor, but in space, light, and thoughtful design.
In a region that helped define American wine, Archery Summit now offers a setting worthy of its reputation: timeless, tactile, and deeply rooted.