The calculator walks you through eight steps — from winery context to vineyard inputs to per-SKU production costs — and finishes with a full cost summary you can download and optionally submit to the statewide benchmark dataset. Before you start, gather your invoices, payroll records, and bottling statements for the year you are reporting. The more precise your inputs, the more useful your results will be.
Step 1 — About your winery
Enter your winery name (optional), Virginia region, report year, and total cases produced. The report year is the year you incurred the costs — not the vintage year of the wine. For example, if you grew and crushed fruit in 2024 but won't bottle until 2025, select 2024 as your report year.
Step 2 — Vineyard varieties
Add each variety you grow or purchase. If you have a fruit intake report from InnoVint or VinTrace, upload it to automatically pre-fill variety names, block names, and harvested tonnage — VinTrace files also pre-fill purchase price per ton and freight. You can also add varieties manually using the dropdown, including any custom varieties not on the list.
Step 3 — Costs & yields by variety and block
For each variety, add as many vineyard or blocks as needed — for example, Block A and Block B under Cabernet Franc if those blocks are farmed or priced differently. You can assign an optional lot code to each block (e.g. 25CFBKA) if your winery uses lot tracking. Enter acres, tons harvested, and direct growing costs including spray and fungicide, amendments, contract or harvest labor, and other estate-specific costs. For purchased fruit, enter tons purchased, price per ton, freight, and other purchase costs. Cost per ton calculates live as you type. Note: if you track spray and amendments as whole-vineyard totals rather than by block, leave those fields blank here and enter them in step 4 instead — do not enter them in both places.
Step 4 — Shared vineyard costs
Enter costs that apply to your whole vineyard rather than a specific block — vineyard manager and worker wages, payroll taxes, workers' comp, and crop insurance premiums. If you track spray, amendments, or cover crop materials as whole-vineyard totals, enter them here under Shared Inputs. Equipment, trellis, irrigation, and other shared costs are also entered here.
Step 5 — Wine SKUs
Add each wine you produced or bottled during your report year by name, vintage, and type. If a wine was made from your report year fruit but won't be bottled until next year, you can still enter it here and record costs to date — you do not need to have completed bottling to use the calculator.
Step 6 — Grape sourcing per SKU
For each wine, enter cases produced, bottles per case, and your cases-per-ton conversion factor — the number of cases of finished wine you expect from one ton of grapes, typically 50–70 for 12-bottle cases of 750ml table wine. Then enter the blend percentage drawn from each vineyard block. Blend percentages should total 100% per SKU. The calculator shows implied tons needed and flags block overages in real time.
Step 7 — Production costs per SKU
All winery cost fields are entered as totals for the full volume of that SKU — not per case. Enter dry goods (bottles, corks, capsules, labels, cartons), oak costs (new barrels, neutral barrels, oak alternatives), cellar and storage costs, and bottling and packaging costs. For sparkling wines a riddling and disgorging field will appear; for fortified wines a fortifying spirit cost field will appear. Enter federal and Virginia excise tax rates per gallon — totals are calculated automatically. Enter your FOB price per case to see gross margin live. Shared winery costs, facility and contract fees are entered once at the bottom and applied across all SKUs.
Step 8 — Review, download & submit
Your summary shows cost per bottle and per case for each SKU, gross margin by wine, vineyard versus winery cost breakdown, and a tonnage bridge showing how harvested fruit was allocated across your wines. Download your report as an HTML file — printable or saveable as PDF from your browser. You can also submit your data anonymously to the Virginia benchmark dataset. Downloading and submitting are independent — you can do either or both.