Nuts and Bolts of Building a Winery. The Grace Hill Experience
Why build a Winery?
Passion
You must love wine.
You must love to drink wine.
You must love to drink wine with other people.
You must love to drink excellent wine with other people.
You must love to travel to wonderful places learning how others make excellent wine.
You must love to experiment on your own on how to make wine.
You must love to drink your best wines with others.
You must love to make excellent wines and market them.
You must be frigging crazy!
It’s difficult to delineate why people get so wrapped up in the world of wine, but I would
say that it is the romance, the history, the beauty, and the working of the vines and the
soil that connects us to our ancestors, the earth, and the cosmos. And when excellent
wine is enjoyed with friends at a festive gathering, there is just something magical about
wine that takes us to another plane. And I’m not talking just about a wine buzz, which is
also very nice, but rather that feeling of belonging, being a part of something bigger than
ourselves.
Okay, so the origin of our devotion to building a winery is probably as varied as the
people who start them. But without some sort of passion, don’t expect folks to stay in
business for the long haul or for them to consistently produce fine wines. You must have
the passion to do this!
We wanted to put in a few vines. How do you know what to plant?
“Kansas is still looking for its grape.” Doug Frost
Do your research! Visit lots of wineries and drink lots of wines. Especially ask which
wines are the best sellers and drink them heartily! Ask what grapes are in the wines!
Check the labels for Kansas vs American wines! Calibrate your palate!
We planted lots of different varietals:
Whites: Chardonel, Seyval, Traminette, Vignoles, Gruner Veltliner, Valvin Muscat
Reds: Norton, Chambourcin, Cabernet Franc, Noiret, Lemberger, Crimson Cabernet,
Cabernet Sauvignon
If I had to do it again, I would put in more Chambourcin.
Advantages of many different varietals:
1) Harvest comes at different times so there is time to spread out the work and do it
right.
2) You can move the nets from early harvested grapes to late harvested grapes and
use fewer nets.
3) Blending is vital to making wonderful wines.
4) Having the different times for harvest means you will get some excellent wines
from some of your varietals every year.
Disadvanges of many different varietals:
1) August and September are shot. You will be harvesting nearly every week. No
time to travel.
2) You need lots of tanks to keep the different wines separated until you are ready for
blending.
3) If you are selling your grapes, be sure you have enough grapes to make it
worthwhile to the buyer. Lots of less than 500 lbs are not very useful.
Each varietal has its own advantages and disadvantages. We have found the following:
Varietal
Advantages
Disadvantages
Chardonel
Great flavors, disease resistant, easy to grow
Seyval
Citrus flavors, Heavy producer,
Hard to kill
Traminette
Wonderful Apple and Pear flavors,
Very vigorous,
prone to fungus,
very vigorous,
Winemaking difficult
Vignoles
Great aromatics
Tight clustered,
Low yields
Norton
Great story, Interesting wine
Chambourcin
Easy to grow, Great yields, Versatile,
Wonderful cherry and red fruit flavors
Cabernet Franc
Great structure, Classic well known grape
Decreasing yields
Over time?
Prone to leaf
phylloxera,
Difficult to get started,
Very distinctive nose
Low in Tannins
Hates cold winters,
Short growing season
Needs attention
Green, herbaceous flavors
Noiret
Lemberger
establishes easily
Good fruit, good tannins
Crimson Cabernet
Great Color, good tannins
Burgundian flavors
Needs to be grafted
Low Productivity
What do you plant? Whatever your heart tells you to plant. If you want to sell to me,
I would love to purchase any of your grapes especially Chambourcin. With the few
Kansas grapes available and the 30/70 rule, you should be able to sell everything you
grow.
If I were a serious eonophile raising just a few grapes for home winemaking whose
favorite wine was cabernet sauvignon, I would plant cabernet sauvignon and baby those
plants like crazy. I would put in a few cabernet franc and Chambourcin as well. And if I
were a serious white wine lover who wanted a few plants for home use, I would put in an
assortment of Vignoles, Chardonel, and Traminette. You would not be disappointed!
How do you lay out a vineyard?
Beyond the scope of this lecture, but this is what I have learned over the years:
1) Get a soil sample. You may learn some valuable information.
2) Try to lay out the rows north/south because of the fierce Kansas south wind and
that you will train the plants so that the grapes will see the morning sun from the
east but be shielded from the hot afternoon sun from the west.
3) To rip or not to rip?
4) Travel around to see how different vineyards trellis their vines. Do what seems
best to you.
5) Think hard about irrigation.
6) Don’t plant more vines than you can take care of. They are like children. They
require lots of babying, training, doctoring, and time.
7) Be able to get your hands on the appropriate equipment.
8) Get a consultant to review your plan or your vineyard
9) “More fertilizer, More water!” Andy Allen, Keith Striegler
The general rule of thumb for vineyards is that plants won’t start producing until the third
year, and then will only have about a half sized crop, and won’t really hit their stride until
the fourth or fifth years. Some plants are easier to establish than others.
This lecture is on the Nuts and Bolts of building a Winery, but you see I started with
building a vineyard. Do you need a vineyard to have a winery? No, but you’d better
have a very good reliable source of grapes in Kansas who you trust will sell to you year
after year. If you are planning to simply have a vineyard and sell grapes to a winery,
under the current Kansas grape market, I would say you could sell just about any kind of
grapes that you raise because of the burgeoning number of wineries, the few quality
grapes available from inside the state, and the 30/70 rule.
So we put in our vineyard in the absolute worst place on the entirety of our quarter
section right where the topsoil was 4 feet deep and consisted of 50 years worth of
composted cow manure. Also, water sat there whenever it rained. The plants grew like
jack and the beanstalk but were prone to many diseases, canopy management was
impossible because the plants would grow literally a foot a day sometimes, and the birds
had 3 sides of the vineyard lined with trees to sit and review their dinner.
VINEYARD PROBLEMS
A) A digression on birds, “Net it or Forget it.” Dave Sollo
Watch out for orioles, robins, blackbirds, starlings!
Failed methods
1) Plastic owls
2) Country Music
3) Propane cannons
4) Giving up your Audobon Society Membership
The single most influential factor in failing to get a good yield is bird loss.
I hate netting because
1) Netting is expensive.
2) Netting is time consuming.
3) Netting must be removed at harvest when your time would be better spent doing
other things.
4) Netting must be stored.
Netting
Advantages
Bail Netting
Cheap, works fairly well
Top Netting
Works well, Reuseable
Multi row available
Side Netting
Works well, Reuseable,
Stores outside, Hail protection
Disadvantages
Hard to remove, single use
Wind removal, storage
Hassle, expensive
Expensive, Gap problems
Best with VSP
.
B) Pests other than Birds
1) Black Rot and other fungal diseases. Spray program. We use
Manzate, Captan and Rally
2) “Apply Manzate just after budbreak and two more times before Memorial
Day, and you won’t need to use the more expensive stuff.” Wayne Peterson,
Midwest Growers Supply
3) Canopy Management! Remove laterals, suckers, good weed management.
“You need 17 leaves per cluster to get optimum ripening.” Brad
4) Green June Beetle. Control composting areas, Sevin
5) Achymon Sphinx. Looks like a tomato worm. Hard on young plants. Sevin
6) Deer. Hard on young plants, not optimum pruners or trellisers. Fencing
7) Leaf Phylloxera.. Seyval most effected. Need a permit to spray Dannatol.
C) Weather! Kansas has cold winters, hot summers, prone to droughts and flooding,
tornados, straight line wind, and hail. Irrigation is a must for us. Look at the end
tendrils, check for soil moisture, look at leaves to assess efficacy of watering. Don’t get
behind! Side netting is 99% effective against hail.
The Bottom Line, “You must have quality grapes to make quality wine.”
After we put in the test vineyard in the worst possible place but saw how well the plants
were growing, we decided to plant about 2 acres worth of grapes with multiple different
varietals. Life was Good!!!
Oh no, we need a winery. Maybe we should think about this for a minute.
Grace Hill Winery Mission Statement, “Our goals are to make the best possible wines
from Kansas grown grapes and to be financially and environmentally sustainable.”
Put up a building.
“Put up a building twice the size you think you are going to need.” Randy Story,
Windswept
Winery building design is beyond the scope of this lecture, but the essence of what Randy
says is true. Build the ceilings high enough to accommodate big tanks, always think
about drainage in the floors, have a lab area, a tasting room area, a handicapped
accessible bathroom, a cellar for barrels, plenty of storage, and pay attention to
government regulations.
A perceptive winery visitor notices that most wineries consist of at least 3 buildings!
1) Winery Building
2) Storage Building
3) Tasting Room, Events Building
Unless you are a radiologist or married to a radiologist, start small and work your way up.
“It costs about $150,000 to start a winery.” Rebecca, University of Missouri Grad
Student
“It costs a Helluva lot more than $150,000!” Dave Sollo
Of course you will need a vineyard, a tractor, spraying equipment, a winery building, a
crusher-destemmer, a press, tanks, and barrels. But always start in the winery with
cleaning equipment!
“Winemaking is 90% Cleaning.” Jeff Sollo
Premise: “Quality wines come from quality grapes.”
Corallary 1: “You can still make bad wine out of quality grapes.”
Based on my travels, “I have never had good wine from a dirty winery.”
Develop protocols for washing and sterilizing the equipment, tanks, and barrels. Think
about getting an ozonator. It is one of the few pieces of winery equipment that will save
you time and money and worry.
Look forward to “Blending Day,” as it is one of the few winery dividends you will get to
enjoy in the first years of the winery. Single varietal wines are going out of vogue.
Blending adds complexity and covers minor holes in the wines. For example, a little
Chambourcin added to Cabernet Franc can add fruit to the mid-palate and nose, add a
little garnet color, and still have the wonderful tannin structure, acidity, and power of the
Cabernet Franc. Both are made better with the blending. Many grapes are like this.
Don’t be afraid to experiment.
And, very importantly, “Don’t fall in love with your own wine.” Chuck McGuire
You need to know what good wine tastes like, so try all kinds of wines from all over the
world, all over the state, and from nearby wineries. Try to be objective and critical about
how your wines rate with the others. Read or talk to others about their favorite wines and
what makes them so good. It is easy to figure out Robert Parker, James Suckling, and the
Wine Spectator. Keep in touch with their writings, but don’t dwell on them. I hate
competitions because they have been shown to be totally non-reproducible. My
marketing guy says that draping medals over wines helps to sell them. How unscientific.
Wines are like people. Just as people have good days and bad days, it is the same with
wine. A particular vintage of wine may be very good on one occasion and a month later
be only so-so.
How do you make a Kansas winery financially sustainable?
In a broad sense, we need to make high quality wines so that we can charge a premium
for them.
Apart from capital equipment, labor costs, marketing costs, barrels, chemicals, yeast,
sulfites, cleaning supplies, water, power, utilities, repairs, insurance, fertilizers,
transportation costs, computers, taxes, and other miscellaneous stuff, how much does it
cost to produce a bottle of wine?
1) bottle 0.85
2) cork 0.15
3) capsule 0.05
4) label 0.20
5) grapes 1.75
Total = $3.00 Bare Minimum
Bottle closure systems: synthetic corks vs real cork vs screwcap
Labels are very important to both the consumer and to the producer and to the
government:
1) A wine can be labeled with a single varietal IF AND ONLY IF it contains at least
75% of that grape in the contents. This leaves room for blending.
2) A wine can be labeled a Kansas wine IF AND ONLY IF it has 75% of its contents
originating from Kansas grapes. This leaves room for blending.
3) A wine can have a specific year on the label IF AND ONLY IF its contents have
95% of its grapes originating from that year. This does not leave much room for
adding in a different vintage.
4) Producers like to keep the label costs low, have the labels easy to use (a single
label verses a front and a back), versatile from year to year, and have them help
market the wines. Hence, non-vintage, distinctive, single labels with fanciful
names have worked best for us.
5) Very few consumers are knowledgeable about what the label tells them about the
wine. Ie, Alcohol content 12.5% means the alcohol content is 11-14%, American
Wine means that more than 25% of the grapes came from out of state, Kansas
Wine means that 75% of the grapes came from Kansas, Harvey County Wine
means that 75% of the grapes came from Harvey County, Seyval means that at
least 75% of the contents of the bottle is Seyval.
In Kansas, sweet wines sell better than dry wines. 70-75% of our sales are sweet wines.
“Double your sugar, double your sales.” Norm Jennings, Smoky Hill Winery
How much do you charge for a bottle of wine?
Depends on who you sell it to:
1) Retail at the winery is best, say $20.
2) Direct wholesale to the liquor store, about 30% less, say $14.
3) Distributor, about 40-50% less, say $10-11.
4) Restaurant, variable pricing but they usually price the bottles at 2-3 times retail
which means you will have to cut your price by about half to make it affordable to
the consumer, so say $10.
Try to sell as much wine from the winery as possible to improve your profitability.
Hence, having events at the winery spurs sales and profitability. Having an events center
at the winery helps keep sales at the winery. Winery sponsored events are more
profitable than private parties and here are some of the things we have done:
1) Cooking classes
2) Blending Day
3) Harvest Parties
4) Spring and Fall Release Parties
5) Library Wines Day
6) Concerts
At Grace Hill Winery we have put Quality as our Top Priority throughout our business
plan in hopes of being able to establish a brand name known for Quality. Hence, we
would like to be able to charge more for a given bottle of wine than someone else. Given
all of the costs involved in making even a mediocre bottle of wine, I don’t see how you
can make a farm winery financially sustainable by selling a bottle of wine for less than
$10. So we won’t do it.
“The wine business is 5 years of misery, and then all of a sudden you’re making money.”
Norm Jennings, Smoky Hill Winery
“It took longer than I thought. It was harder than I thought. And it was more expensive
than I thought.” Dave Sollo