After many visits to CA and OR wine country, a few years ago I finally realized my long-term plan: once my kid is off to college, and assuming (big assumption) I’ve saved enough for it, we’re leaving the crushing winters of Chicago, and I’ll (hopefully) live out my days trying to make people happy pouring wine in a tasting room. I can’t explain exactly what draws me to the wine industry, but I wanted to find a way to be involved that didn’t involve writing a giant check that I’ll never have. There’s a bit of romance to it, I realize, but it’s gotta be better than being the lawyer that I am currently.
Also, wine is one of the few hobbies/pursuits that I’m truly passionate about, and I figure I won’t be able to fill my days just doing crosswords and watching porn on the web.
Count me among those that would love to find a way to shift my career and expertise into the wine business. I wouldn’t be happy as an investor (nor do I have that kind of cash), but if I could find a way to apply my existing skills to something wine related, and it paid me enough to maintain a decent lifestyle, I’d be there in a heartbeat. (I will happily accept PMs from anyone wanting to chat further )
I think about this often and my trips to wine country make me yearn for a change. I don’t know if I’d want to go the farmer or winemaker route, but I do think I would be interest in the sales and marketing aspect of it all as that is where my experience lies. i’m not quite sure where I would go to find such an entry point as my belief is it’s such a small community, those positions are spoken for and probably never reach a headhunter/recruiter.
I know it would be a challenge and a big change, most likely requiring a move, but I think I’d be up for it. I’ve also thought many times about wanting to get in the spirits business, specifically single malt scotch.
I would love to move to OR and work in the winery and fields. I enjoy working in my yard and am not afraid of hard work. I like to be able to look back at the end of the day and see what I have accomplished.
I don’t have the money to invest in a winery and don’t have the innate winemaking skill that I think is necessary to make a good wine. If I could find a way to make enough to allow me to life at 75% of the level we do now, I think I would do it. My main concerns with it are being able to afford retirement and travel.
I definitely wish I had moved West after college and interned in Sonoma or Walla Walla or the Willamette instead of taking an entry-level office job. With that ship having sailed, I keep telling myself I’ll take some introductory winemaking classes at the local community college. I think it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever make any wine but I think the classes would be a lot of fun.
But sure, I wish I could parlay my favorite hobby into a profession that allowed me to take care of the family, too.
I do buy about $5 worth of lottery tickets each year, though, so winery ownership may be in my future yet.
I would suggest making a barrel or two of red wine and stopping there. Great experience and great fun. You also end up with 25 cases/barrel to enjoy.
That’s how I started. I made a barrel a year for 3 years then started a winery. My advantage was I’m a vineyard guy, so I had the fruit covered. The brand lived for 14 years (we had an AP in two different wineries over the period) and I have no regrets. We never made any money and worked our asses off. It took maybe 10 years to understand that we were never going to get anywhere.
2007 was our last year. We liquidated everything and actually made a few bucks at the end. Luckily we didn’t make any wine in the smoky 2008 vintage and before the economy crashed. We were just lucky on those points.
In 2013 I missed MAKING wine so much that I made a single barrel again with one of my vineyard guys. It was fun to be back in it again and also to teach another person about making wine. I just racked my 2014 last week and am very excited about that wine.
I don’t miss standing behind a 6 foot table at a wine event and answering stupid questions. I don’t miss ‘ride alongs’ with sales people who didn’t want me to be with them for a day and didn’t give a sh!t that I got up at 3:30 that morning to sulfur so I could spend my day with them selling my stuff.
I’d love to figure out a way to get ITB. I’m just too far along in my current career and have too many obligations and responsibilities to make such a drastic lifestyle change. Therefore it’s on my mind as something do to in retirement, or more likely semi-retirement. I do know I’m not a farmer. I’d love to live overlooking a vineyard, that my property butted up to! If I can look at it, and get permission to walk through it, I’d be all good. I wouldn’t mind taking a crack at wine making, but realize I’d be well behind the curve at that stage in life.
Perhaps what makes most sense is owning a B&B in wine country. Buy the property outright when I sell my house in LA. That will give me good seed money. Then build a small winery facility on property. Make a little bit of my own, but lease it out to others to make their wine. That way I’m around the biz, but don’t need to make any money off of it. The key to all of this is…be in it, but don’t rely on it for income!
My wife got me into wine. I’m a very passionate and inquisitive person, and my passion has changed from sports to wine, where I am always learning and experiencing new things. Because of this passion, and because I am an entrepreneurial person, the ability for a small winery to be successful is very intriguing, and the path I’ve decided I’m going to take. in the few years before making that decision, I’d help out at my wife’s winery (Archery Summit) for events, I helped another small winery start a tasting room (Lachini), and I help out a friend every chance I get in any/all aspects (Ayoub).
We got the opportunity to start our winery (Ocelli Cellars) because a winemaker we had become friends with (and helped out occasionally) opened an avenue to starting that required much less capital than the “usual”, otherwise we would still be waiting to get started.
At the end of the day, for me, it comes down to this. Somebody told me once, when thinking about what you should do for a job for the rest of your life, is to find something you would do every day for free, and then find a way to make money doing it. Well, I’d work in a small winery, which is a huge departure from the current job I have (Databases and cubicles). Not many small wineries can employ somebody, and so I just need to start my own.
This is pretty much exactly where I am. Being posted up in the Midwest with a house and a wife in Grad school doesn’t help. My passion for the study of wine hasn’t waned in the last 9 years I’ve been at it, but as the saying goes, I’m not getting any younger and starting a family will be on the docket very soon.
I do have a wife who is itching to make the move to the west coast, but I feel like I’ve done pretty well in my current career and would be hard pressed to start all over as a cellar rat working for minimum wage.
I may have an opportunity to do a harvest internship this fall with a respected Napa winery, but I may not be able to go.
Every time I talk to a winemaker, the general sentiment is more hopeful that I generally make it out to be. If I could manage to get a job in my current field (Facilities Engineer/PE) in a wine country area, it would be a lot easier, but to move cross country while taking a huge hit financially seems ill advised.
Living in the Front Range of Colorado makes a winery or vineyard job difficult. Certainly there could be a niche as others have proven (Canyon Wind, Colterris), but my interests lately seem to center more on a retail/tasting storefront, targeting a very specific demographic. The 3-tier model is a bit frustrating, especially as Direct To Consumer has grown and in my opinion disrupted the market. Retail stores don’t necessarily have the model figured out yet. If I were to jump into the wine business, I would likely work to facilitate a new SaaS model to eliminate the middleman (or minimize their markup) and open up the market a bit to broader exposure of unique or underrepresented wines (and help my hypothetical retail shop better position itself in a somewhat crowded market). I am still learning, so that is part of my hesitancy to jump in as well. I realize I can’t wait for perfect knowledge, but I would like to be better educated prior to making such a commitment and I can only drink and read so much. I also need to get serious about creating a business plan, but I’m still trying to figure out the optimal ingress.
I’m 42 an have been passionate about wine since I was in college. It never crossed my mind that I would be want to make money from it besides thinking it might be fun to own a wine retailer or wine bar but I never gave it much more than a passing thought. Then a few years ago I made switch in lifestyle that was a little more “homesteading” in nature where we try and grow and ferment/culture a lot of our own food. Part of that process was making my own wine and cider and I kind of blundered into making some Zinfandel and my wife and I were surprised at how much we liked it. I really became fascinated with Zinfandel history and we live in Zinfandel ground zero so I kind of gradually became interested in making some commercially. I almost quit because my first vintage got damaged in an industrial accident but I feel a drive I just cant explain to make Zinfandel. Part of it is that I think Zinfandel is a significantly misunderstood and underappreciated grape and I feel somewhat evangelistic about it. So in short I never had much interest in making wine and I still don’t in general, I just very specifically want to make Zinfandel. I am also on love with spending time diving around the foothills and working in vineyards.
For those who want to make wine for “lifestyle” and romantic notions, you might find yourself disillusioned. Its 99% cleaning stuff and lifting heavy things. Its very blue collar in nature. (Which is one thing I like as my “day job” has me programming computers a lot of the time).
First off… ericleehall - I’ll be in your neck of the woods in June and plan on stopping by. Thanks for having your winery name in your avatar so that I could find you on Yelp and get an address.
Casey Hartlip - I LOVE the idea of making a barrel of wine. Other than figuring out how to keep it cool in this Texas heat I’m having a heck of a time finding a way to source fruit in such a small amount. Any suggestions?
Personally, I can completely relate to a lot of you. I’m in my mid-40’s with a wife and kids and a successful career. I can’t afford to walk away from that and start over financially. Nor do I have enough money to invest in a winery/vineyard (and I don’t want to even if I did). I do have a shot at being able to retire early if everything in my career stays on track. Early would be 50-55 to me. At that point the kids will be out of college and the wife and I want to move west. I’ve got an interest in doing something in the wine biz (tasting room, DTC, sales, maybe work for a distributor) as my current job is in technical sales (software) and I think a lot of my skills would easily translate over. I’ve pursued a Level 1 from the Court of Master Somm’s and am working on my CWS along with an online college class in wine making and vineyard management. The plan is to continue doing what I have to do until I can afford to do what I want to do.
As with many others here, would love to find a way to participate in the business but, at the moment, it doesn’t make sense. Would love to explore ways of getting involved “from a distance” and learn/add value as I can in the meantime, but the reality of jumping into it full time just isn’t in the cards (will be funding college for two kids between this year and 2022). Have thought about investing in the business (perhaps on the real estate side), but even there, I don’t have the time to really do it right and I’m not the invest and sit idle type.
This was my objective, and 4 years after giving up finance and starting VinConnect there’s still plenty of truth to that. We work with top European wineries acting as their agent for “mailing list” sales in the U.S. Yes, there are lots of headaches with web technologies, email hassles, logistics snafus, challenging traditional trade partners, etc., but spending time with some of the world’s top winemakers and helping them get their products to their customers who are the most passionate about them brings me great joy. I can say without hesitation that my winery clients/partners are a much more generous/fun/interesting group of folks to hang out with than the gaggle of software CEOs I used to chase around.
Now, the “make money” part is still a huge work in progress and it’s probably never going to be anywhere close. But it’s true that, at least when I’m in Europe, “what I do for work” (touring and tasting with top European wineries I know and love) looks precisely like what I would be doing with just about every vacation I’d ever want to take. Put another way, the pure, unadulterated joy I feel several times a day when I’m over in Europe traveling and tasting with my customers/partners/friends is worth every penny…
Kevin, I hope you don’t mind me pointing out that the two sentences in bold are 180˚ different. I’m using your post to emphasize the point that What John said that you quoted is a complete myth to a HUGE percentage of the population. A person should find what they do well and get paid what they consider a decent living - or better. Then you can afford to have luxuries on top of necessities. That’s a little more reality driven.
For some people, luxuries on top of necessities doesn’t mean a happier or better life. If I just wanted nice things, I’d live in this cubicle the rest of my life. I’d rather have a satisfying life, and enjoy what I do, and look forward to each day, even though doing so will mean a reduced income.
Here is a perspective from an investor- when looking at investing (and more specifically something like this), I believe it is important to look at the following:
Expected Return- do the analysis that summarizes the expected ‘financial’ return of your investment (money). Also determine the volatility of this forecasted return.
Liquidity Analysis- There are many investments one can make from the most liquid public market securuties (US Treasuries, Broad based ETF’s), etc down to very illiquid opportunities where it is very difficult to extricate from. Figure out ahead of time how liquid you want the investment to be- a simple way to is go through the hypothetical of re-selling into a market of average demand. Can this be done with the ease that is acceptable to you?
The ‘emotional’ or ‘involvement’ element. Do you want something where you can be personally involved in some capacity or just another line on your brokerage statement. This is very personal and may depend very much on where you are in life.
Structure- one that get’s glossed over but is very important as it is the framework of your recourse if things are not going well and your investment is declining. This is your money after all…
IMO making all of the stars align above is difficult- but that certainly makes it alot more interesting…
Jim- if you want to chat more about it feel free to PM me.
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