A couple of weeks ago, I attended Grape Day at Newsom Vineyards, up west of Lubbock in the Texas Panhandle – pretty much in the middle of nowhere. But it was worth the trip – several great speakers (Dr. Andy Walker from UC Davis, Dr. Richard Becker of Becker Vineyards, and many others), interesting people, →

Love or hate the 100 point system, Robert Parker’s rise to dominating the wine critics’ world has changed the way we think about wine, what we buy and the resources we use to make our wine-buying choices. His influence is so great that what he says about wines can actually shift markets around the world, →

Discussed previously in the first blog of this series, Three Ways to Produce Positive ROI in Half the Time or Less, we broke down that a traditional winery is actually three separate businesses – growing grapes, making wine and retailing. Using this traditional model, you invest in all three businesses in series and that it →

In Part 1 of Three Ways to Produce Positive ROI in Half the Time or Less, we discussed the traditional method for building a winery and vineyard from scratch and reviewed cash flow from year 1 through year 10. We saw that, if starting from scratch and planting a vineyard, making wine from your own →

I just returned from Colorado where I attended VinCO. The Colorado Association for Viticulture and Enology (CAVE), Colorado Wine Industry Development Board (CWIDB) and Western Colorado Horticulture Society (WCHS) put on this conference focusing on grape growing, winemaking, and issues pertinent to the business and marketing side of the fruit and wine industries. I came →

Hello Everyone and Happy Holidays! Today, I thought we would look back at the blog posts that generated the most discussion in 2011. I always post my blogs to a few wine groups in Linked In as well, so much of the action is often there. Read more comments there. #3 David and Goliath: The →

It’s the holiday season! Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday,and parties galore. Whether you celebrate Hannukah, Christmas or Kwanzaa…they are all coming up soon. That got me to wondering…do wineries and tasting rooms actually have an increase in traffic and direct sales between Thanksgiving and New Years Day? If your wine is not being distributed, do →

In my previous blog, Accelerate the Style and Quality of Your Wine Exponentially , we talked about The Other 46 having relatively very few years to gather and review historical methods and processes to pass down through the generations, but that there was an alternative to making just one wine annually from each lot of grapes →

As a winery in The Other 46, how do you make the best quality wine consistently year after year?  By that I mean, let’s look at Bordeaux.  The wineries in the Bordeaux region know how to make Bordeaux wine because they have had hundreds of years to perfect the process.  The same goes for Mosel, →

After many books, articles, classes, and consultations about winery ownership and how to build your own winery, the one important topic I find missing, time and time again, is addressing the WHY.  By that I mean, WHY do you want to own a winery?  There are all sorts of businesses you could go into, so →