Vintner's Journal

Back in the summer of 2000, walking the still unplanted vineyard with our viticulturist Jim Barbour, we discussed what it would all mean. I was pretty excited. Lately I had been spending quite a bit of money on my wine collection and I figured I could use this vineyard to provide an interesting addition to my collection. Sasha and I liked Merlot too so we decided to change the plan and plant 3 rows (out of 90) in Merlot. (Regardless of what the guy in the film Sideways says, Merlot can make an awesome wine.) Anyway, Jim informed us that the future Butterdragon Hill vineyard would, at full production, provide around 20 tons(!) of grapes.

[Gulp] 20 tons sounded like more than I would be able to drink even if we did expand the wine cellar. We needed help. Jim would grow us fantastic grapes, but what were we going to do with them? We had a couple of years before our first harvest, but we were to learn that those years would pass very quickly.

Luckily for us, Jim recommended we talk to Cary Gott. Cary is the founder of Vineyard & Winery Estates. He provides numerous consulting services for wineries and individuals and has probably forgotten more about wine and the wine business than most of us will ever know. With Cary's help we were able to look at some potential numbers and examine some "what ifs." What if we just sold the grapes? What if we built a winery? What if we did a "custom crush"? We also studied the soil reports, looked at our neighbors and the lay of the land. How good would the grapes be? (The land had formerly had a vineyard, but it was never cultivated to its full potential.)

We learned a couple of things from this exercise:

First, all indications were that this vineyard was going to grow some dynamite grapes. They would ultimately make a fantastic wine or be in high demand from other wineries. Secondly, no matter how we looked at it, unless we were able to move up full-time to the Valley and do the farming ourselves, it would be tough to operate the vineyard in the black by just selling grapes. Time to make wine!