In early September, David Keuhner—founder and CEO of wine and food travel company Destination Cellars—prepared to head to the Greenwich, Conn. home of an Exclusive Resorts member to host a private wine tasting with a vintner he had flown in from Italy.

The private tasting for the destination club
member was just the latest custom wine experience organized by Destination Cellars, a two-year-old, membership-based company that organizes food and wine-centered travel experiences. Destination Cellars, which has hosted a series of private events for Exclusive Resorts over the past year, recently expanded the partnership to offer à la carte services to club members. The partnership echoes a larger trend among destination clubs to further expand their suite of travel-related offerings. Destination Cellars has already received requests to add wine activities to itineraries from Exclusive Resorts members traveling to club homes in Tuscany and Paris.

Destination Cellars has done everything from arrange for a sommelier to pair wines with a multi-course dinner to set up blending sessions with top winemakers. It once chartered a fleet of five chauffeured, convertible Bentleys for a client tour of Napa Valley. “There aren’t five convertible Bentleys in Napa Valley—we had to source them from Los Angeles, drive them to Napa and drop them off at the Napa Valley airport where everyone was flying in privately,” said Keuhner.

The company has partnerships with 110 wineries in ten countries, including France, Spain and Australia, as well as rising wine regions in South Africa and Hungary. The company also has numerous relationships with vintners in California and Oregon, among other U.S. locations, and plans to expand to Argentina by next year.

Exclusive Resorts members can either purchase private tastings, wine tours and other food and wine services on an à la carte basis, or opt to join Destination Cellars for a reduced initial fee of $5,000, 50 percent off the going rate of membership.