Study of the climatic suitability for the wine grapes has great significance for optimizing the distribution of wine grapes and the utilization of climate resources. Based on the geographical distribution data of wine grapes (Vitis vinifera L.) and the climatic factors affecting the distribution of wine grapes, the Maximum Entropy model (MaxEnt) and Geographic Information Systems (ArcGIS) were used to identify the dominant climatic factors affecting the planting distribution and study the climatic suitability of wine grapes. The results indicated that the MaxEnt model could well simulate the potential distribution of wine grapes in China, and the assessment result was excellent with the average AUC 0.936. The contribution of climate factors to the geographical distribution of the wine grape was evaluated by Jackknife tests in the modeling analysis. The frost-free period, aridity index, annual extreme minimum temperature, annual precipitation, sunshine duration of growing season, and ≥10 ℃ accumulated temperature were the main dominant climatic factors affecting the spatial distribution for wine grapes. At present, the areas of optimum, suitable and sub-suitable subregions for growing wine grapes (Vitis vinifera L.) accounted for 2.9%, 20.4% and 76.7%, respectively, to the total climate suitable planting area. The optimum area was mainly distributed in Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Hebei, Xinjiang, and Gansu, considering only climatic factors, Shaanxi, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia had a large development room.