Just as city’s newest and most buzzed about wedding venue prepares to open its doors to the public, I’m borrowing from my esteemed coworker Jess Voelker to bring you her hardhat tour report of Urban Enoteca. Of course, the main draw is that your wedding, rehearsal dinner, or other big day-related bash can be steeped in the culture of our state’s viticulture, and you don’t have to leave the city to get the vibe.

The space at Urban Enoteca is such that you can have an intimate gathering of 20 or a big to-do with more than 200. To paraphrase Jess and her initial report on the space, if one’s not big enough for you, Puff Daddy, you can rent out all three. Melissa Hogenson, a really experienced events guru familiar to many in the Seattle scene, heads up the private party division (tough job, someone’s gotta do it) and ensures that your wedding and/or reception goes off without a hitch.

From here we’ll take it from Jess.

This morning I took a hard-hat tour of Urban Enoteca, a 20,000 square-foot warehouse in SoDo that opens next month for business. Wineries will staff individual tasting bars where you can sample their wines and customize flights—you could try all the cabernet sauvignons, for example, or stick to a particular winery. Whatever you want—you pay at a concierge desk as you enter, they hand you a “library card” that tracks your purchases.

The tasting center is big enough for 15 wineries, but it will open with these: Five Star Cellars, Cave B, Côte Bonneville, Fielding Hills, Fidelitas, Kiona Vineyards, and McCrea Cellars. General manager Sheri Spurgeon says Urban Enoteca will eventually host up to 12 wineries, the other three spaces will be reserved for guests pours.

Terry Thompson, the man in charge, says he disqualified any winery that already had a tasting room in Western Washington. He also wanted the wineries to represent different growing regions, winemaking styles, and varieties. “Many were called, few were chosen,” he told me. The big idea is to bring the Eastern Washington wine experience to the city, and to work with the wineries to offer classes, food events, and winemaker dinners. The first dinner, on December 11, will feature wines from Côte Bonneville in Yakima.

Chef Jason Wilson Events, the catering business from the chef/owner at Crush, will make snacks and small plates to go with the wine. Wilson will also be the inhouse caterer for private events at Urban Enoteca, which will be held in any of three spaces. There’s the blanc de blanc room which, it shouldn’t surprise you, has a white-on-white color scheme; it seats 25. The barrel room—with a rounded ceiling made to look like an inverted barrel—seats 40. The Riddling room can accommodate 230 people seated.