Rooms with vineyard views: new hotel aims to boost Western Slope wine tourism.

• Author: Kretschman, Bob

RISING FROM THE VINEYARDS of Palisade is something as important to the Western Slope wine industry as grapes--a new $8 million hotel designed for guests who want to savor wine country around the clock.

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The Wine Country Inn is an 80-room Victorian-style hotel that marks an important step in the Grand Valley wine industry's growth as a tourist attraction. Until this summer, most people who came to the valley to tour wineries and vineyards stayed overnight in Grand Junction, about 10 miles from the heart of wine country. Aside from a handful of bed-and-breakfasts and a small, aging motel, Palisade had no overnight accommodations for visitors. The Wine Country Inn's opening makes first-class lodging available literally in a vineyard.

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"I think it's going to be huge for Palisade", said Leif Johnson, executive director of the Palisade Chamber of Commerce. "The concept is so unique, it's going to help put Palisade on the map. It's very unique to Colorado. It has a Napa Valley feel to it; it's a hotel in the middle of the vineyards."

Wine tourism is a significant and growing industry in western Colorado. Studies by Colorado State University researchers determined that wine tourism throughout Colorado generated $20.6 million in economic activity in 2005. Mesa County, where wine tourism consists mainly of people visiting wineries and attending wine-related special events such as the annual Colorado Mountain Winefest, was responsible for about $12 million of that amount.

Wineries have become the top destination of Grand Valley visitors, ranking above the spectacular sandstone canyons of Colorado National Monument, the trout-filled lakes of Grand Mesa and other traditional attractions. A survey of more than 1,000 online visitors to the Grand Junction Visitor and Convention Bureau's website in early 2008 revealed that approximately 61 percent of tourists said they had visited a winery during their trip to the Grand Junction area. That's triple the percentage that cited wineries as a destination in the last online survey, conducted in 2005. Similarly, the percentage of respondents who visited the winefest also tripled from 2005 to 2008.

Johnson said wineries are one of several attractions that boost visitor interest in Palisade. Many wineries and peach growers offer public tours of their operations through an "agritours" program that began in 2007. Tours of the Palisade Brewery, one of three microbreweries in...