Cost of Production Resources

Understanding Your Cost of Production

Strengthening Virginia wine in the traded sector.

Virginia produces world-class wines, but long-term profitability and competing in the market comes down to cost of production. This free set of resources, developed for and with Virginia’s wine community, helps you understand what each case of wine actually costs to make, see how your numbers compare to regional benchmarks, and identify the management decisions that most improve your bottom line.

These tools will help you find that opportunity in your own operation and act on it, whether your focus is direct-to-consumer, distribution, or a blend of both.

Cost of Production Resource Guide

A guide to the financial side of running a winery: what belongs in cost-of-goods (and what doesn’t), how to price across sales channels, where to trim costs without sacrificing quality, and how vineyard yield drives profitability. Includes three tools: a By-the-Glass Price Calculator, a Channel Margin Modeler, and a Potential Annual Savings Estimator.

View Guide
Cost of Production Calculator

Build a complete picture of what your wine costs to make. This tool walks through your vineyard and winery costs by variety and by SKU, then generates a personalized cost-per-case report you can download. Entries are anonymous, and the aggregated data helps strengthen the benchmarks every Virginia producer can draw on to support profitability.

Launch Calculator
Cost Competitiveness Benchmark

The research behind the toolkit. This report compares Virginia’s cost of producing Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay against the Finger Lakes benchmark and shows how best-practices close the gap, improving profitability. It includes economic impact estimates by winery size, framed as ten-year averages that account for Virginia’s real vintage-to-vintage variability.

Coming soon

Webinar Recordings

Numbers that Grow Wineries: 5 Costly Financial Blind Spots

Most wineries make pricing, inventory, and growth decisions on shaky numbers. Join wine-industry accounting specialist Zane Stevens (Founder, Protea Financial) for a fast-paced look at the five financial blind spots quietly costing wineries money—and what “good” looks like instead.

View Recording
Understanding Margins in Different Sales Channels

Every producer knows the same drop of liquid earns more or less depending on where it’s sold but capturing true margins and balancing your sales mix is far trickier. In this webinar, learn about understanding COGS and setting healthy margins across sales channels.

Coming July 22nd

Additional resources

Beyond this toolkit, the following organizations offer specialized financial expertise for wineries and small businesses:

Protea Financial

Bookkeeping and accounting services built specifically for wineries, including cost-of-goods tracking and winery-focused financial reporting.

Learn More
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Wine Division

Banking, lending, and industry research for the wine sector, known for its widely cited annual State of the US Wine Industry report.

Learn More
Central Virginia Small Business Development Center (SBDC)

Free, confidential business advising and resources for small businesses across the region.

Learn More

This work has been supported by grant funding from the Virginia Wine Board and GO Virginia Region 9.

Any questions?

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