Vineyard Land: Pay Up!
With so many sources on the Internet of great wine information it’s too easy to forget some of them. I was reminded of one such source with the daily e-mail i get from WineryExchange.
The daily WineryExchange e-mail pointed me to the website of Bergman-Euro National, a wine country and vineyard real-estate specialist that occasionally posts commentary on the state of the vineyard real-estate market.
In their current posting they highlight what many of us here in wine country have been witnessing: the creeping up of the price of vineyard land in Sonoma, Napa and across most of the state of California. A number of factors have led to this including the recovery in the consumer wine market, a slowly improving economy, and the low cost of money.
But what is really interesting is just how good an investment vineyard land is. According to Bergman-Euro, vineyard land in Sonoma and Napa has increased in value by 100% per decade for the past 60 years. Of course, the downside is the average cost of an acre of vineyards: about $100,000.
Out Sebastopol way, just to the west of one of Merry Edward’s vineyards full of pinot-noir-in-waiting, there’s 4.4 acres of apple orchard (which is what Merry’s vineyard used to be) listed for $600K (OK, it’s really only $599,950), or roughly $136,352.27 an acre. Plus the cost of vines, trellising, and irrigation – what, another $25-40K an acre? Hard to make money that way…
Here’s a map (the parcel for sale is centered, Merry’s vineyard can be seen to the upper-right).