Sep 10 2011
Small Sonoma Winery Estate
This winery is currently in my top favorites. It’s the perfect size and the winery specializes in my favorite wine varietal, Pinot Noir. 10 acres of wine vineyards is plenty for someone like me who is looking to work in smaller batches. With an average of 5,500 wine bottles being produced per acre of vineyards, that puts this at a 50,000+ bottle winery. I don’t think I can drink that much wine myself each year, so I may have to sell or give away a few bottles (wink, wink).
What I really love about this particular property are the extra features. Like I’ve mentioned before, I am a huge fan of natural cooking. I like to prepare as much of my food as possible from scratch. I love the fact that this property also has its own olive trees and they are set up to bottle and market their own brand of olive oil. I use olive oil every single day in my dishes. I also love to eat olives and stuff them with all kinds of ingredients.
The property also has a greenhouse already built. I would love to be able to grow much of my own fruits and vegetables to cook with. Sonoma county is a fantastic area for a diverse variety of crops. The house on the property looks really nice as well.
I’m working through the math on what it takes to own and operate a winery like this. They are asking $2 million for the entire wine estate. If you can sell at least two-thirds of the wine each year (40,000 bottles) and turn a $3 profit on each bottle of wine that would be $120,000 profit for the year. At this point my “profit per bottle” isn’t based on any fact- I need to do much more research to find out what a realistic profit would be. But let’s start with these numbers and I’ll perfect them over time. My research has shown that wineries can usually turn a profit by their third year in operation. It will be interesting to research how this is affected if you purchase a winery that has already been open for several years.
The average payment for property per $100,000 is roughly $700 per month. Assuming 20% down on the winery ($200,000), that would make payments of $12,600 per month. That’s roughly $151,000 per year. That leaves you with about $30,000 out pocket each year, or a $2500 monthly payment- Not Bad!! Not to mention a winery estate like this also bottle and markets its own Olive Oil. That also has the potential to close the gap. You could literally turn a profit, have an amazing home plus winery in Sonoma County, and be doing what you love every single day. Sign me up!