GARAGE VINO

I read somewhere recently that there’s a great divide between those who have the ability to afford large plots of arable land, and those with the desire to farm. Makes sense the more you think about it: it’s the rare trust fund baby or other instant-wealth type who, upon receiving said instant wealth, is simultaneously struck by the desire to farm. Sure, there are some retired businesspeople out there too who, presuming they’ve got the energy left, prefer to farm ten acres of grapes, strawberries, or almonds to tinkering with some bulbs in the flower garden out back.

But mostly – especially in wine country — you’ve got landowners who, either by necessity or habit, are busy working their tails off at a white collar gig somewhere – running companies, taking them public, whatever – and who possess neither the desire nor the time to plant their asses on a John Deere seat and rip the cover crops in the rows between 20 acres of vines. Back and forth. Sulfur and maybe some copper or fungicide sprays the next day. Done before the winds pick up or the neighbors wake up to face facts on the semitoxic nature of modern agriculture. Back and forth. Pruning for days on end just to get through an acre or two in the month of February while the vines are in hibernation. And organic fertilizer, AKA chicken manure? Forget about it.

No, for most landowners, the boardroom beckons, either because, as most people in their right mind would see things, it’s cleaner . . . or because there exists the need to keep showing up to work in order to afford the $20,000 a month mortgage on the 400-acre ranch.

Those who prefer the tractor seat, the shears in hand, the hoe to till one’s way toward organic weed control – well, suffice to say that the margins on farming ain’t great even if you have the land, and unless you find yourself in the boardroom of Dole, Del Monte, or Constellation, a desire to work in the farming industry overall is kind of the blue-collar equivalent of the graduate degree in English Lit – probably not the best route to wealth.

No, if you’re a farmer it’s usually going to be because you identify, in the soul, with soil, and leaves, and fruit, or vegetables – with the seasons – with nature, both the good and the bad it brings. These soulful types aren’t usually loaded with a few mill to throw down on that vineyard ranch in Santa Ynez Valley.

So what happens is people find their way to what they like or need, right? The wealthy landowner with a penchant for wine hires a vineyard management company to plant 40 acres of Cabernet. An onsite or offsite caretaking team manages the vines, aided by waves of Mexican immigrants eager for and expert at farming work. The same landowner might hire a winemaker and staff – who, usually, will have studied enology, worked in low-wage jobs as a cellar worker, assistant winemaker, and so on, barely able to pay the bills but happy doing it – yet still, far from capable of affording that vineyard estate herself. It’s magic in its own way: the landowner has a pretty vineyard and enjoys fine wines made from his land; the farming types farm, the winemaking types make wine, and there you have it, a microsociety functioning smoothly in its little circle of life.

What happened to me in this confluence of worlds was, first, a flash of inspiration on seeing Sonoma vineyard properties, a subsequent pursuit of the purchase of such lands, then later, a frustration at the affordability of such lands and a “side hobby” of farming vines and making wine, and finally, and only recently, the realization that while I do want to earn a living doing these things, it is, in fact, the function of the farming and winemaking that interest me. That I’m compatible with. That hook into my soul.

Which begs the question: Why be in real estate?

In other words, my conclusion, reached, perhaps, by necessity, was that I enjoy winemaking and farming. I’d like to start a business directly involving me in these pursuits. This costs money, like any business one launches. But why in the world would you need to buy a multimillion-dollar property to launch or run such a business?

Remember, at the outset of this garagevino journey, I stated that part of my end goal in following the business model I’d devised was to eventually own that rolling vineyard ranch. But as I get closer to pulling off the launch of a winery business, I’ve realized the wisdom of the cheapest-possible business model for getting started is actually superior to that supposed end goal.

Here’s how it works: if there’s no need to buy the vineyard to get the grapes for your wine, why be in real estate? If there’s no need to buy the storefront or warehouse at which you crush your grapes and barrel-age your wine, why be in real estate that way either? If you want to farm, to spend time on that John Deere seat, here’s the thing:

Because of that great divide between landowners and those who desire to farm, you can lease the land from the wealthy landowner, and farm the land to source your grapes.

Because of a similar divide between wealthy owners of downtown warehouse and retail space, you can also lease a facility where you can make the wine and sell it to visiting tourists and locals alike in a retail tasting room.

Take this a step further and you can even lease the equipment that normally would cost a fortune as capital outlay in order to crush, press, and transport your wine.

You can even rent the services of a bottling truck to get your wine in the bottle, in the case, and on the pallet to be kept in the climate-controlled space you rent by the month.

In the end, here is the American fallacy of the value of ownership exposed for what it is: ownership is fine if it gives you something you want on a more or less permanent basis, but this begs the question, What is it you truly want?

And in my case, it’s the function of farming the grapes and making the wine.

So if I can lease a space in which to make the wine and find such a place in the vicinity of a “wine trail” or tourist destination where people might buy wine – for example, Santa Barbara – then for the lowest possible cost, I can operate a business that matches the function of what I care about doing.

If I can also lease vineyards on which to farm the grapes I use to make the wine, then I’m performing the function of farming for the least possible cost within the framework of the overall winery business that empowers the farming and winemaking functions as ways of making a living.

This writerly, convoluted essay can ultimately be summed up a little more simply: I realized I can farm vineyards and make wine without ever buying anything immensely expensive. And since those are the functions I like performing, well, that’s what I plan to do. Do I need some money to get going? Sure. Are there ways of making wine and selling it at someone else’s winery, where you work in your day job, and therefore the business model gets even cheaper to launch? Yes. Can you, in that scenario, trade labor for grapes or barrel space or tasting room shelfspace? Yes. Do I personally have an opportunity for enough moolah to be made in a “day job” out of the wine industry that allows me to launch this business along these lines, while I spend what is the appropriate amount of “learning launch” time at night and on weekends to make first a modest amount of wine, then a more commercially functionable amount, buying the grapes then leasing and farming the vineyards from which I source them, until at the point it is a living, and I am not yet of retirement age, I will then have transitioned to adopting the functions that tie into my soul?

Hell, yes.

So that’s what I’m up to between now and either harvest 2009 or 2010. Smart strategy or no, these things take time to find, to lease, and to get permitted.

Little help from some fellow farm-and-winery “functioners,” and with any luck I can pull it off.