Grapes worth their weight in gold

Dining on the patio of the Restaurant at Wente Vineyards. The restaurant uses produce from the winery's organic garden. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Livermore Valley receives 6 million visitors a year, 60 percent of them Asian, and most of those are Chinese, Parr says. The bulk of those visitors make a beeline for the newest and largest high-end brand retail outlet mall in California, San Francisco Premium Outlets.

Wente Vineyards and the other 60 wineries in Livermore work closely with Premium Outlets to draw mall visitors to winery tours, tastings, fine dining and golf.

In doing so, the aim is not to pull in Chinese tourists by the bus load, Parr says.

"We want quality visitors who want to spend their time appreciating our wine and embrace our lifestyle."

As part of Wente's tourism programs, he says, the winery is developing partnerships with distributors through which visitors can have their wines dispatched to China to save them the hassle of lugging them around as they head home.

Wente Vineyards has also tuned its marketing to the catering market. It hosts more than 200 weddings a year, and a "significant number" of those are for ethnic Chinese, Parr says.

"Many of them live in the San Francisco area and choose Wente Vineyards to celebrate their weddings based on its beauty, prestige and convenient proximity to San Francisco."

The winery has a catering department that can incorporate spectacular wedding settings including grapevines, beautiful foothills and views of its golf course.

For every one of the past 22 years the winery's dining outlet, Wente Restaurant, has been awarded Best of Award for Excellence by the magazine Wine Spectator. This award is given to restaurants worldwide that excel in wine and food presentation.

"We are known as America's lifestyle winery," Parr says. "Great wines, food, sports, nature, concerts... And this is going to be an important marketing factor to China. Just think about what wealthy Chinese want. They want leisure and lifestyle."