A business measured in vintages
California winemaking has a long history, going back to the late 1700s, when Spanish missionaries planted Vitis vinifera vines at their missions, and Father Junipero Serra planted the state's first vineyard at Mission San Juan Capistrano. Today Wine Country, in the northern San Francisco Bay Area, is known worldwide for its wineries, its cuisine and its hospitality, and the Central Coast is another major growing area. Napa Valley is an American Viticultural Area in Napa County, and Sonoma County has its own winemaking identity; in the United States, county names automatically qualify as legal appellations of origin for wine made from grapes grown in that county.
For the owner, a vintage is a long investment. Grapes are bought or grown, crushed and aged, and the wine is sold months or years later.
The harvest cash gap
| Stage | Cash event |
|---|---|
| Vineyard year | Labor, pruning, irrigation, pest management |
| Harvest | Picking crews, fruit purchase, fuel, extra cellar labor |
| Crush and fermentation | Yeast, additives, lab work, tank time |
| Aging | Barrels, storage space, topping and testing |
| Bottling and release | Glass, corks, labels, cases, finally sales |
For a wine that is aged for a year or more, money goes out in the fall and does not come back until well after the following harvest has begun.
Barrels, tanks and presses
Oak barrels are an expensive consumable, and many wineries replace some of their stock every year. Stainless tanks, pumps, presses, destemmers, a bottling line or a mobile-bottling contract and temperature control systems add to the equipment bill. A cellar fire, a cooling failure or a pump breakdown during crush can threaten a whole lot of wine, so owners treat equipment problems as urgent.
The tasting room is a second business
A tasting room brings direct-to-consumer sales and wine-club income, but it has its own staff, lease or property costs, hospitality supplies and marketing. Visitor traffic changes with seasons and events, and a winery with a strong tasting room may still have slow stretches that must be carried. Owners in North Bay wine country and on the Central Coast also compete for the attention of visitors with many other places.
Growers and producers
- Grape growers invest in vines for years before they produce a full crop, and sell fruit on contract terms.
- Small producers who buy fruit pay growers at or before harvest and sell wine later.
- Custom-crush and service providers have equipment and labor tied to a fixed harvest window.
A worked example, for illustration only
For illustration, a small winery buys fruit for 2,000 cases, with fruit, labor, barrels and bottling expected to cost $120,000 across the year. The first revenue from that vintage may arrive 12 to 18 months after harvest. Working capital allows the owner to buy the fruit at the right time and keep the tasting room and payroll steady in the interim. These figures are not our terms or a typical result.
How to apply
If a harvest purchase or a new barrel program is ahead of your account, a funding decision based on your bank deposits can help. The application takes about five minutes. We ask for roughly three months of business bank statements and use a soft credit pull; no tax returns are required. FICO 500 and above is considered, funding runs from $25,000 to $5,000,000, and money can arrive in as little as 24 hours. Sole proprietors can apply. Start your application.