The buying a winery shell game

Or, buy a winery because it’s fun and glamorous, and don’t worry about how much money you’re going to lose. Or that it ain’t so fun and glamorous, either.

That’s the gist of an email I got from a PR flack touting a post on something called the Financialist blog:

Owning a vineyard is a common fantasy among wine lovers, but over the past couple of decades, it’s started to become a common reality as well. There are many reasons why investors are making their dreams of owning vineyards into reality; we unlock them in this article.

This is so patently untrue that I can’t believe anyone would write it, let alone send it to reporters and bloggers and expect them to write about it. As noted here, the wine business is a lousy investment; pre-tax profit was in the single digits for most of the past decade and still hasn’t gotten back to its 2007 level.

So why did I get the email? Turns out the Financialist blog is “presented” by Credit Suisse, one of those huge multi-national banks that has received so much good publicity over the past decade. So when the blog runs a post like this, entitled “A Terroir Fantasy: How to Buy Into the Vineyard Life,” it’s probably a come-on for the bank, which lends money to the people who buy wineries because it’s such a common fantasy.

The only difference between this release and the street corner shell game? The Credit Suisse bankers probably have all their teeth.

Comments

[Jason]

Lousy investment or not vineyards and wineries in the Napa Valley continue to sell well at unrealistic prices. Clearly your economic argument is rendered irrelevant by the continued demand of the rich to satisfy their need for ego-slaking acquisitions.

[Richard]

A well-run winery, with staff that is attentive to source/production costs, a winemaker that actually knows how to make good wine, and one with a well-thought-out sales and marketing plan does not have to have a single-digit pre-tax profit.

On the other hand, without the above, a "life-style" winery is a wonderful money hole and a perfect method for re-distribution of wealth, albeit one that functions more efficiently in generating down-stream profits than our current government administration is able to do.