Many folks ask what does it cost to put in a small vineyard and make a good bottle of wine. It is a very difficult question as the biggest item in the equation in California is the land cost. You can have land come with your house as we did or you can buy raw land for about $75-100K/acre. The other big item we found is consultation and coordination of the activities. Consultants will either quote you a flat fee or around $100-150/hr. This ends up being a big portion of the small vineyard cost….I’m not going to list this as we are not done yet, but figure 15-20% of the total project.

I think the easiest way to talk about small vineyards is cost per vine. This will give you an idea if you want to pursue this dream/lifestyle.

Items Cost/vine
Dormant Vines $3.50
Amendments $1.25
Tilling $0.50
Posts/Wire $3.50
Irrigation Materials $1.65
Labor to Install $2.00
Gopher control $1.40

Sub Total $13.80
Consultant (17.5%) $ 2.42

Total $16.22

Yearly maintenance will run between $2-3/vine depending on if you are organic or conventionally farmed and the row spacing. Narrow row spacing, ie. below 6’, will cost more. If you do most of the work yourself, like the folks at Emtu, you can reduce this substantially. However, you will need to buy a tractor and a few more tools.

What you get….

For Pinot you get about 3.5 lbs/plant, or enough for a bottle of wine when the plants are mature in about 6 years. Chardonnay is about twice as much. If you sell the grapes, you can get about $2500-$4000/ton for Pinot.

Not a great financial return……will probably take about 10-12 years to make back your investment, but you are living a dream.

They should name the county animal the gopher. They are everywhere in Sonoma County. They love to eat tender roots, especially grapes that have just been planted. At least 3 times we have heard of people planting a vineyard and in the first year they lose 1/4 to 1/3 of the vines to gophers. Very expensive. We are going to try and stop them early by putting in a gopher cage around our entire vineyard and garden area. Yes, 1.5 acres. You may think this is crazy but we are hoping it will give us peace of mind and make it easier to control them in the future. Basically we will dig down 3 feet, bury 1/2” square gopher wire that is 4’ tall and attach the top to the fence. After the vines are established, the gophers are not much of a problem.

Bees…….most of the time we love bees. They do all sorts of good things for the land and we try and leave them alone. Yellow jackets are not my favorite, but Karina tells me that they also do very good things. However, when the yellow jackets make their nest in the ground near the house they are a problem. Back a few weeks ago when I rented the John Deere 310 to take out the fence posts and stumps, I hit a yellow jacket’s nest that was near the house. Joey said it was funny, but I jumped off the tractor and ran around for about a minute to get rid of them as they were chasing me. I got stung about 10 times. Linda told me the best remedy is to put a paste of baking soda on the bite and the sting and itch will go away.
Oh,,,,,I asked Dane how to get rid of them and he said he had heard of water. After an hour on the web, I saw that people poured boiling water on the nests. I can tell you that this is the easiest and best remedy. It kills them on contact so when you pour it on them you don’t have to run and it doesn’t cost any money or pollute the environment. Took me about 6 trips to the kitchen over two days, but it seems like they are gone now. We will see in a few days when they till the land.