David Girard included a parklike setting with classical columns as a site for weddings when he planned David Girard Vineyards in Placerville.

Centuries after French winemakers began marketing an association between wine and the chateaus where they made it, Lodi winery owner Joe Berghold has gambled that the extra cost of creating an exceptional "sense of place" will boost sales of his wines.

"It comes down to the final question: If you build it, will they come?" he asks, then answers: "You only know after you put all your money up front and on the line."

Whether in Placerville, Lodi, St. Helena or south through the Central Coast and Santa Ynez Valley, California's 1,370 wineries are growing increasingly dependent on direct sales to earn profits.

OAS_AD('Button20'); No truth was more obvious at Sacramento's recent Unified Wine and Grape Symposium, where architectural firms from Santa Rosa and San Francisco vied for attention of 10,200 wine industry officials alongside bottle makers and mechanized harvester salesmen.

As many as 15 million visitors a year stream into California's wineries. Vintners use their idyllic grounds to sell the wine - and the wine to evoke fond memories that put customers in the same frame of mind they had on their visit.

"These places are geared up to be like a paradise," said William Kane, owner of Cristal Blue Carriage, a Bay Area limousine service to boutique wineries. "If (wine tasters) have as good an experience on the inside as they perceive they will on the outside they're as happy as little clams."

Last year, Berghold opened one of California's 520 new wineries since 1998 in what he calls an "elegant barn." Its large tasting room houses antique furniture, a grand piano and giant 1870s-era mahogany bar brought across country from Pennsylvania. Lodi wine officials say Berghold Vineyards sets a new design standard for their region.

"The profitability of selling one bottle directly is three times better than going through the wholesale distribution system," said Berghold, a former clothing and theme park executive who said ambience and hospitality are crucial when selling directly to customers. It's the one way you can exist and potentially become profitable."

For at least three centuries, wineries have leveraged the romantic quality associated with the wine country and their exotic architecture and parklike landscapes.

In California, home to venerable old Napa Valley estates and trendier newcomers, wineries generate an estimated $1.3 billion in tourist spending yearly as magnets for weekend wine-tasting, picnics, concerts and increasingly outside the crowded Napa Valley, for weddings.

To lure visitors, Northern California wineries can spend upward of $375 per square foot for hospitality facilities, architects say. A 10,000-square-foot center - one-sixth the size of a new grocery store - might cost $3.5 million or more.

"The ambience is all a part of it," said Sheila Davis, a Honolulu flight attendant visiting the Napa Valley. "When you drive along the Silverado Trail, that's how you choose. It's visual. If it looks quaint and clean, absolutely, that's what draws you in."

Winery owners in California often view themselves as engaged in elegant agriculture and their settings as mini-theme parks or eco-resorts. With fountains, gardens, grapevines, native rocks and a range of oak, olive and cypress trees, they welcome tasters to quaint farmhouses and barns, old French chateaus, stucco palaces and classic ivy-colored mansions.

In the Napa Valley, Opus One Winery beckons visitors from Highway 29 like an ornate jewelry box rising from a grassy berm, while Oakville's Groth Winery appears in its vineyard like an early California mission.

On the Silverado Trail, Quintessa Winery sits behind a giant curved, sandstone-color wall rising dramatically out of the vineyard. Finally, atop a nearby hill, Silverado Vineyards grandly welcomes tasters up a winding staircase to a tasting room of dark wooden beams and giant windows.

"The first thing you notice is the ambience of the room, the kind of hospitality you feel," said Marsha Lockett, an Austin interior designer eyeing the scene with a glass of wine. "It's kind of all the senses at one time. You're using everything."

Jeff Goodwin, who oversaw Silverado's recent expansion as associate principal of San Francisco-based Bar Architects, said: "A well-designed environment is going to make people happier and want to spend more time there."

Goodwin's firm recently designed a renovation of Clarksburg's Old Sugar Mill into wine tasting rooms and space for wine production and events.

Loraine Fowlow, a University of Calgary professor of architectural design and author of "Wine By Design," a picture book of global wine architecture, calls wine a hedonistic, sensual experience that feeds off quality settings.

"There's a generation now really interested in how you live your life, and that's feeding all things related to lifestyle, including wine, food and interiors," she said. "People are just joining wine clubs at a huge rate, and these people are now grouping and gathering for tours."

Fowlow said higher numbers of visitors are triggering an "explosion" of commissions for big-name architects to design wineries. While their fees are private, Fowlow describes superstar design deals as akin to the retail adage: "If you have to ask the price, you probably can't afford it."

Among them, Frank Gehry, designer of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, drew up plans for a similar bent-metallic look - "a silver cloud floating above the vineyard," said Fowlow - for the new Le Clos Jordan winery in Ontario, Canada.

"A beautiful building, an eye-catching building, will draw people in to experience that wine," said Santa Rosa architect Andy Hall, owner of Hall & Bartley architecture and planning. " ... A potential customer leaves the winery with a wonderful feeling for the whole facility."

Walnut Creek attorney David Girard aims for exactly that feeling with his new David Girard winery in Placerville. With a two-story Tuscan-style design, it's already being defined in the local press as "elegance personified."

"When people come to a winery, it's more than the wine," said Girard, who personally designed the winery's exterior but used architects to site it amid the rolling hills. "People want to go out and relax and feel good. They want to say, 'God, this is pretty. I enjoy being here.' "

David Girard Vineyards includes a parklike setting with classical columns for weddings. The extra feature represents added value to what is now essentially a direct-market agricultural operation.

"Little guys like us trying to get a distributor? Give it up," Girard said. "You have to figure out different ways of strategizing and diversifying. One of the ways is weddings and events. It makes financial sense. It brings people to the winery."

Placerville's Boeger Winery, considered one of the longstanding gems of El Dorado County's wine region, has used its landscaped grounds and tasting room ambience to stage Friday night events during the summer.

"By the end of the season, the whole town would be here on Friday night," said owner Susan Boeger. "It's not just wine tasting. They buy wine and go out and have dinners and appetizers and music and socialize. That's all because of the feel of the grounds."