So you want to open a winery?
Many wine lovers and entrepreneurs dream of opening their own winery, spending blissful days walking through the vineyard, wine glass in hand, drinking cabernets or pinots or viogniers as the sun beats down on the vines—and then, receiving accolades and business from customers as they linger in the tasting room.
Pictured: Eric Miller
Just ask Scott Eliff, owner of DuCard Vineyards in Madison County, Va. He turned his dream into a reality. After 10 years of running a grape-growing operation at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains—where he sold grapes to others—he transformed his business into a full-fledged winery, complete with a tasting room that he opened last August.
“This is a decade-long story and started with us having a weekend property in the mountains that had a dead apple orchard on the front of it—and I couldn’t leave well enough alone and decided I could transform that land into a vineyard,” he says.
Eliff and other winemakers say establishing this type of business takes a lot of time, patience and money, particularly since weather can affect the vines and wines take awhile to mature. “It’s a very long-run proposition and not for the faint of heart,” he says.
But winemakers also say that owning and operating an established winery can make for a very enjoyable life.
Entrepreneurs wanting to enter this business have several choices to make before they take the plunge. They can start from scratch by buying the land, planting a vineyard, growing and crushing the grapes and turning them into wine. That endeavor can take roughly seven to eight years and cost up to $4 million, says James Lapsley, former winemaker and an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at University of California Davis.
“If you’re starting a winery from scratch, you’re not going to make money—you’ll probably go into debt,” adds Michael Kaiser, spokesperson for WineAmerica, the National Association of American Wineries. He says those who build a winery from the ground up can expect to take a loss within the first couple of years until the wine gets noticed. Still, there are wineries in all 50 U.S. states. California produces 95 percent of all wine exported from the U.S., according to the Wine Institute.
One can also buy a winery that is already successful. The other less expensive option, Lapsley says, is to buy bulk wine, have an existing winery bottle it, obtain a wholesaler’s license from federal government and the respective state, receive federal approval for the wine labels, which is mandatory, and then sell wine as a wholesaler.
Eric Miller, who grew up watching his dad make wine, started a winery from scratch in Chaddsford, Pa. In 1992, he and his wife Lee, a former wine journalist, founded Chaddsford Winery, located on a small country estate in the Brandywine Valley west of Philadelphia.
“What was difficult for me was that I didn’t know what I was doing and there was nobody who had been doing what I wanted to do,” Eric Miller says. “We were at ground zero.”
Miller says he read everything he could on the winemaking process and made mistakes. Over time he learned the ropes, partly by hiring a short-term Bordeaux consultant, partly by trial and error and partly by hiring good people. “Every time I hired somebody to do something, I said, ‘Your job is not to work here but to teach me what you know.’”
Winemaking experts say opening a winery is several businesses rolled into one: There’s the science of planting vineyards and growing grapes, the knowledge of how to process the grapes and turn them into many varietals of wine, the marketing of the wine and simply running the business, which means dealing with customers, management issues and finances.
Several colleges offer programs in viticulture (the study of grapes) and enology (the study of winemaking), including UC Davis, California State University Fresno and Washington State University in Pullman, Wash.
From a winemaking perspective, Miller says there’s no room for amateur mistakes in today’s market, since competition is stiff and local customers won’t support bad wine. He says winery owners and winemakers must know their climate and their soils, and “read like mad.” Miller should know, as Chaddsford Winery now produces 25,000 cases of wine annually, and his wines have received top marks from The Wine Spectator and The New York Times, among others. Miller also authored a new book on winemaking, titled “The Vintner’s Apprentice.”
“We have never made a lot of money but are able to pull out a good salary,” he says. “For us, it’s been a lifestyle. We had had time to raise four kids, and we had time to grow our business. We love wine—and it’s been very fulfilling.”
