What the National Trade Press Is Saying About Winery Costs — and What It Means for Virginia
The July 2026 issue of WineBusiness Monthly features an article by assistant editor Katherine Martine, “Tips & Tricks for Cutting Winery Operation Costs,” that gathers cost-management advice from winery proprietors, financial controllers, and finance professionals across the West Coast. It is worth a read in full, and it arrives at a timely moment for Virginia producers: the themes it raises echo much of what we heard from our own industry while developing the Coalition’s new Cost of Production resources.
Below are a few of the big takeaways from the article, along with how they connect to the tools now available to Virginia wineries.
Know your numbers before you cut anything
The most consistent message from the experts Martine interviewed is that cost savings start with visibility. Alison Crowe of Plata Wine Partners emphasized that the best first investment a winery can make is a system that shows where money is actually going — ideally one that ties costs like crushing, aging, and bottling to specific stages of production, so cost of goods sold (COGS) can be tracked at every step of the winemaking process.
This is precisely the gap our Cost of Production Calculator was built to address. Many Virginia wineries do not have enterprise winery-management software, but the calculator walks producers through vineyard and winery costs step by step, building a picture of where dollars are going — and how those costs compare to peers.
Match your review cadence to your operation
How often should a winery review COGS and its balance sheet? According to the article, it depends on scale: some owners review annually, while larger or more complex operations reconcile quarterly. One Oregon winery profiled, Adelsheim Vineyard, moved from monthly all-company financial meetings to quarterly sessions that pair a financial update with training on what the numbers mean.
Our Cost of Production Resource Guide is designed to support exactly this kind of recurring review. It is a managerial decision-making framework — not a formal accounting exercise — and it works best when revisited regularly as prices, yields, and channel strategies change.
Financial literacy is a team sport
Several of the article’s sources made the case that cost management should not live only in the owner’s office. Crowe argued that when cellar and vineyard staff understand the financials for their own areas, they become active contributors to controlling costs rather than bystanders. Adelsheim reported good results from building accounting fundamentals — including how COGS is calculated — into its team meetings.
For Virginia wineries, the interactive tools in the Resource Guide (the By-the-Glass Price Calculator, the Channel Margin Modeler, and the Potential Annual Savings Estimator) can serve double duty here: they are decision tools for owners, but they are also accessible teaching aids for staff conversations about pricing and margins.
Revisit vendor relationships — even the good ones
One of the most practical ideas in the piece comes from Barry Waitte of Tamber Bey Vineyards in Calistoga, who described a comprehensive vendor review the winery undertook beginning in late 2025. Notably, the review was not prompted by any dissatisfaction — many of the vendors evaluated were long-standing partners delivering excellent service. Even so, the disciplined look uncovered meaningful savings, including changes to the winery’s fulfillment provider and outside CPA firm.
The lesson translates directly to Virginia: periodic, objective reviews of key partnerships can surface savings that comfortable relationships tend to hide. These are exactly the kinds of non-production savings the Potential Annual Savings Estimator in our guide can help quantify.
A Virginia footnote: costs matter, but yield matters more
The article focuses on trimming operating costs, and its advice is sound. For Virginia specifically, though, our benchmarking work points to an important complement: for many producers here, the single largest controllable driver of per-bottle cost is not packaging, vendors, or labor scheduling — it is vineyard yield. Closing the gap between typical Virginia yields and those achieved in comparable East Coast regions does more for per-bottle economics than most line-item cost cuts combined. Cost discipline and yield improvement work best together, and the Coalition’s resources are built to help producers act on both.
Explore the tools
All three resources — the Cost of Production Calculator, the Cost of Production Resource Guide, and the benchmark report — are available now at virginiawinecoalition.org/cogs-guide. And mark your calendar: on July 22, the Virginia SBDC will host a free webinar walking through the tools and how to think about wine pricing across sales channels.
Source: Katherine Martine, “Tips & Tricks for Cutting Winery Operation Costs,” WineBusiness Monthly, July 2026, pp. 54–57. Our thanks to WBM for continuing to spotlight the financial side of the wine business.
The Coalition’s Cost of Production resources were developed with support from GO Virginia Region 9 and the Virginia Wine Board.
