Notaviva Vineyards Blog

« Proposal | Main | LLC »

May 31, 2003

Winery Seminar

Today we attended a winery seminar given by Dr. Bruce Zoecklein from Virginia Tech.

What an amazing amount of knowledge to gain in a single day. Main focus of the day was on business plans for varying size wineries, from 2,000 cases all the way up to 200,000 cases per year. Excellent course material broke out all the costs associated with a winery start up. Additional presenters from the Virginia wine industry also gave excellent information on everything from tank selection to power requirements.

This seminar was great because we got a sense that Dr. Zoecklein and the other people are total realists, and essentially tried to discourage the people in attendance from starting a winery unless they were absolutely 100% serious about the venture. As wonderful a notion as founding a winery is, it will also be a rough road getting it off the ground. This is not going to be a cheap or easy venture - probably the main reason Shannon and I are attracted to it. I guess if we didn't bag this idea today we're in it for the long haul!

Posted by Stephen at May 31, 2003 5:12 PM