Building a distinctive winery that tourists want to visit often stems from the pride of ownership. It also forms the core of a smart business plan. Winery owners pocket substantially more revenue when they sell direct to consumers than when they sell through government liquor stores or to restaurants.
Summerhill Pyramid Winery owner Stephen Cipes understood this back in the late 1980s when the New York real estate developer first visited the Okanagan and bought his current winery site.
Cipes sells about 68% of his wine through his wine shop and in his restaurant. That’s down from 80% many years ago but it is still substantial given that many B.C. winemakers have trouble luring tourists to their wineries.
Cipes sells his Cipes Brut bubbly to tourists for $25 and the same wine in British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch liquor stores for $30.
He nets back only about $10 for each $30 bottle of wine sold in government liquor stores compared with more than $21 for each $25 bottle of wine that he sells in his wine shop.
“Our original concept was to save that middle-man cost and build a winery that would be a tourist attraction,” Cipes told Business in Vancouver July 21.
The number of wineries in B.C. has grown from 13 in 1984 to more than 200 today, but Cipes believes he was the first entrepreneur to create a destination winery in B.C.
He spent $100,000 to build a 900-square-foot wooden pyramid partly to dazzle tourists but also to fulfil what he believed was a vital component in making excellent wine.
He had felt a “tingle” when he visited caves at wineries in Champagne, France and chalked it up to the fact that the underground tunnels were all built using traditional Roman arch architecture.
Those upside-down “U” tunnels had a geometric symmetry that he believed had an impact on the wine.
“You have to be open-minded about these things,” he said. “I wanted to put the wines in a sacred geometry chamber before they were put on the shelves.”
Visitors were encouraged to do taste tests between wine aged in the pyramid and wine aged in a standard room.
“Everyone was blown away. They would swear they were two different wines.”
Expansion encouraged him to spend more than $1 million in 1997 to build his current 3,600-square-foot concrete pyramid and that structure encouraged even more tourists to visit.
His winery usually accommodates between 1,000 and 3,000 people each day during the growing season. Many of them eat at his 200-seat organic restaurant.
He hosts 160 weddings, 320 events and countless bus tours.
In the mid-1990s, when Cipes’ winemaking business was smaller, he remembers driving a truck filled with grapes and delivering them to Mission Hill Family Estate Winery owner Anthony von Mandl.
Von Mandl is another destination winery pioneer, having since built an iconic bell tower, restaurant and palatial wine destination.
The media-shy wine mogul told a British Columbia Technology Industry Association luncheon last fall that California wine pioneer Robert Mondavi mentored him and inspired in him the desire to build something that would put the Okanagan on the map.
“We needed something that a visitor coming from Paris or London might read in Vogue about Mission Hill, this winery in the Oka-something Valley, which is on the way to Napa in California,” von Mandl said.
Von Mandl plans to celebrate his bell tower’s 10th anniversary in December.
Rounding out B.C.’s three most-visited wineries is Nk’Mip Cellars, which was the second phase of a $25 million Nk’Mip project that also includes:
- the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre;
- the Spirit Ridge Vineyard Resort and Spa; and
- multiple restaurants, a golf course and a campground.
The stars are aligning for architects such as Vancouver-based CEI Architecture, which has Kelowna and Victoria offices and is aiming to cultivate a reputation for building distinctive winery buildings.
CEI principal Nick Bevanda has helped build winery buildings at Black Hills Estate Winery and Road 13 Winery as well as the restaurant building at Tinhorn Creek.
Robert Mackenzie Architect principal Robert Mackenzie has worked on nearly a dozen B.C. winery projects. Even B.C. architecture icon Bing Thom has dipped his toe in this growing niche, having helped design a building at Tantalus Winery.