Starting a winery business or opening a vineyard can be a difficult task that requires extensive planning and saving. Wine can be a challenging field to break into; the vines are fickle, a bad growing season can ruin an entire vintage, and crafting an excellent vintage will take a lot of hard work. However, it can be an extremely rewarding field once your business gets off the ground. Here, we will take a look at some tips to help you with starting your own winery business.
Getting Started
What type of winery are you starting?
The first thing to do is decide what type of winery you will be starting. There are three parts to a winery: growing grapes, making wine, and hosting guests. Many wineries do some combination of these three.
Are you going to grow your own grapes or get them from farmers? Some wineries will choose to outsource their grapes in the beginning until their own vines mature and then take over from there. You can also grow your own and buy others from farmers to give you more variety in your grapes.
Do you plan to produce the wine yourself? You can also skip these steps and work with someone who produces the wine while you host events and sell the wine.
Find the Best Location
Once you know what kind of winery you want to open, the next step is to find the perfect location for it. If you are planning to grow your own grapes, you will have more limited options for your location; wine grapes are notoriously fussy and fragile. They require a specific soil and climate in order to flourish. Depending on where you live, this may be difficult. If you are not planning on growing your grapes, you will have many more options available to you. Finding the right location is key to the success of your winery, whether you are growing the grapes or not, so take your time on this.
Compose a Business Plan
You will probably need a loan to start your winery business, which means you need a business plan. Putting a business plan together will take a lot of research.
Research the local, state, and federal regulations for your winery. This comes with a lot of paperwork, but it is necessary to get your winery off the ground. Including this in your business plan shows how much work you have put into the plan.
Start Marketing Early
The winery industry is highly competitive, so once you decide what your niche in the industry will be, you should begin working on marketing and branding.
Plan Distribution
If you will be selling your wine out of your local area, determine how you will distribute it. Wine is just as fickle off the vine, so you need to transport it carefully.
Design Your Winery
The floor plan and layout of your winery are up to you. Think about how you plan to use your space and leave room for growth. You can customize a steel building to your needs but take the time to research what you need. Look at the floor plans of other wineries for inspiration. Steel buildings are perfect for wineries and tasting rooms, and you can design them with moveable walls to accommodate events where you need larger space, like for weddings, or a smaller, more intimate space for private tastings.
If you are growing and producing the wine, give yourself enough space to store supplies and for production. As you grow, you will need more space for your wine production and to store bottles and barrels.
Grapes
Winemaking grapes are fickle and stubborn, so let’s look at some things to consider if you are going to grow your grapes. If you are not planning on growing your own grapes, you can skip to the next section.
What is the climate like?
The first thing you need to know when selecting a location for a winery is the climate. When does the area freeze? Usually, grapes need to be planted after the last freeze of the year and harvested before the first freeze. How much sun does the area get? Do you have a lot of extreme temperatures? Grapes do not like extreme heat; they prefer moderate days and warmer nights.
Survey the Land
Grapevines love south-facing slopes to flourish because those typically get more direct sunlight during the day.
Test the Soil
Vines like soil that is acidic and not too nutrient-rich. They tend to thrive in rocky soil that drains easily.
Spacing the Vines
Grapevines need to be planted four to six feet apart so they do not shade each other; grapes hate shade. Therefore, each row needs to be about six feet apart, too, to avoid shade.
You generally need about 20 pounds of grapes for one gallon of wine, and a healthy vine produces about five pounds of grapes in a season. This gives you a good idea of how much land you need to grow your grapes.
Choose and Buy Your Vines
There are thousands of types of wine grapes available, so you have plenty of options. Since they are fickle, you will need to make sure you choose grapes that will flourish in your climate.
To make it easier for a vintner to get started growing, you can buy one-year-old vines, which are mature enough to be planted and can begin bearing fruit within a year or two. If you go this route, research the companies first, and ensure that the vines are healthy and certified as one year old; sometimes, companies will try to sneak in an older vine they could not sell the previous year, which may not do well transplanted.
When you plant the vines, set up a trellis system for them, so the vines have support as they grow.
