GARAGE VINO

Trawling the Web for wine business knowledge as is my usual late-night habit, I stumbled across an article on a guy who may as well be my twin. Not in appearance, mind you (though another handsome devil be he), but in regard to the obsession with winery-startup aspirations Ira Kreft is his name and he’s taken UC Davis online classes, worked as a harvest slave, and made a little wine in his garage. All that’s missing for full twinship status is a two-year debate on whether to relocate from back east (he’s in Michigan, I was in Connecticut) to California for easier access to grapes and wine-tasting-trail buyers:

Wines & Vines Article

Best of luck, Ira – I can certainly confirm you’re doing all the right things, or at least I can confirm that you’re doing it about the way I am, which had better be the right way!

My only suggestion based on what’s covered in the story is that Ira’s notion of needing $750K in investment capital is potentially on the high side, depending on the business model he’s looking to pursue for that 5,000-case winery he mentions. Probably only need that much if you are in fact buying the vineyard…in which case you’d need more than that to buy the appropriate land in California. Perhaps in Michigan that would do the trick, and perhaps he’ll need to plant some grapes to assure himself of high-quality fruit in an emerging winegrowing state.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Winemaking, Look Before You Leap, Starting Out. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.