Tucked into a neighborhood retail street in Birmingham, Alabama, Golden Age Wine is an unexpected find. The 2,000-sf wine shop is the first in the state to offer natural wine by the glass and bottle. The Golden Age proprietors wanted the flexibility to showcase an unrivaled selection of more than 800 natural wines in a space that captures the honesty, sustainability, and beauty of this growing movement. Adaptive reuse of an original 1962 building, the space had great bones that had been covered up through the years. A dropped acoustic-tile ceiling hung down past the storefront windows, the interior was clad in bumpy drywall, and the concrete floor was obscured by dark brown polish. The new design opened the ceiling to full height, smoothed the walls, ground the floor surface down to its original aggregate, and reorganized the interior space.

The renewed home of Golden Age Wine is characterized by a balance of comfortable warmth and uncluttered minimalism. With the building pared back to its bones, strategic details in simple materials create an inviting, uncluttered elegance on a modest budget. The original space included an office on an existing second floor toward the rear. This upper space divides the ground-floor shop, allowing for a soaring tasting room up front and a shift in scale for an intimate back room for gathering or overflow seating. Arches added to the hallway soften the transition between the front shop and bar and the event room behind. The final space includes 60 seats (42 in the front tasting room, and 18 in the event room) plus a 600-sf stockroom. Two broad strokes of shelving—totaling 400 linear feet—define and frame the interior.