In the Western United States, there are over 2,000 family wineries, and each at some point will have been created or purchased—and dissolved or sold. In between, each owner is faced with questions of how best to start, how best to differentiate that winery while it makes and promotes its wine—and how best to value the enterprise if the time has come to sell.
I offer the following tiered services that will help you purchase a family-sized winery and vineyards, assess the strengths and weaknesses or your existing enterprise, or set a valuation from your winery and vineyards in the event you wish to sell.
While I enjoy working on all aspects of winery business, due diligence toward the purchase of vineyards and wineries is activity with which I am especially familiar.
• Due Diligence toward Winery & Vineyard Acquisition: includes assessment of existing vines and facilities, price/value assessments of wines, winemaker evaluation, cash flow, IRR and NPV projections.
• Valuation of Wineries & Vineyards for Sale: includes review of comparable sales, brand valuation, cash flow, IRR and NPV analyses.
• Business Audit: includes strategic planning, P&L analysis, vineyard consultation, winemaking assessment, wholesale and retail pricing, marketing and public relations strategy (including digital and Social Media), DTC and guest relations programs. (Viticultural and enological analysis will be done by a viticulturist-winemaker chosen for your specific needs.)
• Strategic Audit: includes complete business audit except viticultural and winemaking functions; includes competitive wine evaluation.
• Marketing Audit: includes brand building and story development, copy review of digital and print media, publicity assessment, DTC and guest relations evaluation, including wine club operation. May include creation or enhancement of social media strategy.
Chances are, you are an entrepreneur with impressive skills—yet you can’t expect yourself or your small staff to know it all. Smaller wineries often need a way to bring skills and timely advice into their fold in a cost-effective manner, without the long-term commitments of hiring managers or of taking on business partners. Bringing over thirty years of hands-on winery experience in a number of functional areas, I am in a position to help.
Coming from luxury brands whose standards were exacting, I offer an uncompromised attention to the details of your business. As a consultant, my pivotal goal is to listen actively, persistently, mindfully—to understand your work and to appreciate your vision.
Nothing is more fulfilling to me than to add value, harmony, and vitality to a prospective venture or a growing winery.
I look forward to the possibility of working with you.
“When the bird and the book disagree,
always believe the bird.”
James Audubon
