Opening a winery and vineyards--lessons learned?

[GSMChris]

A few others you might want to try - I’m not including many of the wineries already mentioned - grouped in pairs by location:

Caelesta - really like their Syrah. First tasted at a garagista festival.

Victor Hugo - bought Syrah grapes from them for my 2022 wine. Turned out great. Pretty much across the street from Caelesta

Zanoli wines - in Tin city - wide portfolio of wines - I particularly like their blends for example 60/40 which is grenache Tempranillo

Sans Leige - tin city - delicious Rhône wines

J. Dusi - Highway 46 west - 4th generation wine industry family making great zin with grapes planted in the 1920s and 1945. Ask about Paper Street - their newest vineyard planted in the middle of nowhere.

Austin Hope is across the highway and up a side street Arbor Road - offering a huge range of wines

Lone Madrone - further out 46 west. Excellent wines from the winemaker at Tablas Creek. Near Turkey and on the way to Epoch.

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[SonomaPinotBarrel]

Hi all! I'm opening my first boutique (fancy word for silly small) winery in southern California and wanted to ask around for lessons learned. Check us out at meyerwine.com! What are some things that you would do differently/better if you had to do it all again?

The rest of this is just info, feel free to skip if uninterested:

Spoiler: More info

Currently, we have 24 acres, not all planted yet, but getting there. 4-6 acres are actively producing good to excellent qualify Zinfandel, Malbec, Sangiovese, and Sauvignon Blanc. More to come over the years. As weird as it sounds, the goal of the winery is to make good wine, not to turn in to an empire. I'm fine if we just break even.

I'm the only winemaker here, so it's a lot a work and I love it. I'm open to hiring. I'm very confident in the wine quality, and have awards to back it up, though I really don't think they should be required.

I'm currently doing batches of 50-60 gallons of must at a time (larger tanks aren't really viable just yet until we have more grapes). 112L (31ish gallons?) barrels because they're easier to with with than full size ones. I'd like to keep the winemaking as "homemade" as possible. Focusing on the terroir and history. I plan on hand labeling, hand corking (floor corkers), hand-crank crushing/destemming, air vacuum transfers or siphon only (no big must pumps), etc---yup, that kind of hand made! This isn't for financial reasons or anything like that, I just love the process.

Once open (just waiting on county and ABC permits now), I'm planning on doing a wine club subscription, direct to consumer shipping, on-site sales during events only, and limited on-site tasting.

Congrats and best of luck!

 

[tjmeyer]

We just put our 2023 vintage on sale a week ago. I’m hoping it sells well due to bills and recouping some of our costs to build the winery so we can focus on paying off what we need to and expand the wine list. I have a couple wines I want to produce but am having to hold off till we get some bills paid off.

Oh boy do I feel you here. DO NOT start a winery without a healthy nest egg and being ready to be in the red for 5 years

 

[Nebbiolo020]

Oh boy do I feel you here. DO NOT start a winery without a healthy nest egg and being ready to be in the red for 5 years

We have some money obviously set aside for use so we’re not really in the red more so we’re slowly paying stuff off with revenue but yeah I don’t expect to be in a place to be profitable enough to expand as much as we want for 5-7 years. As once we pay things off it will be a case of slowly buying new gear and upgrades.