Established in 1995 as one of the first Black- and women-owned wineries in Northern California, Brown Napa Valley, perhaps best known for its Brown Estate label, has now opened a hybrid office and multipurpose hospitality venue in downtown Napa. The San Francisco–based studio Catherine Kwong Design was commissioned for this project. (It previously handled the design of Brown Napa Valley’s first hospitality space down the street.) The goal was to cohere the brand’s main office with a new intimate tasting room and to do so with a residential touch.

The savvy result demonstrates how these distinct programs—office and tasting room—can be effectively melded together. Kwong layered together discrete zones, each partitioned off with half walls lined with translucent glass panels. To break down the scale of the 30-foot-tall space, she introduced a graphic wallcovering to define dining and tasting areas. A consistent material and color palette of muted blue plaster walls and blackened steel trim plays well with light-toned wooden furnishings and tall drapes. Custom counters and built-in banquette seating enhances the comfortable arrangement.

The mezzanine-level office and “situation room” conference space above flow between open-to-below cutaways, which allows the staff to interact with customers as they come in and for guests to glimpse the company’s inner workings.

The multilevel, loftlike space can easily be adapted for activations and special events, including “exclusively inclusive” VIP gatherings. The overall design not only takes on a domestic feel but also an elevated industrial, even urban, look: The interior lets guests step out of Napa’s semirural context and enter the world of Brown Estate.