Tracking Wine

Tracking Wine

Do you know how wine performs through your business?

We know the cycle – grapes turn into bulk wine which gets sold or bottled, but does your business analyse costs vintage to vintage, batch to batch, bottled to previous vintage bottled?

Comparing costs throughout the wine journey provides valuable insights into how the performance of the product is tracking compared to the management decisions in the vineyard, winery & bottling plant. It’s not the only way to check performance is on target to meet projected goals, but it should be part of the mix.

Vintage Costing

Costing grapes & tracking yields year on year will provide some base line information for wine costs. We know there are a lot of variables that affect yields including weather, replanting, changes in vineyard size, etc and some of the costs are fixed so the total yield does play a part in the final grape cost.

Understanding the grape cost is integral to understanding the changes to bulk wine costs by variety year on year.

We recommend costing grapes the most relevant way for each business which is usually based on yield per hectare, or costs per tonne.

Bulk Wine Costing

Knowing the base cost of the bulk wine each vintage enables informed decision making through the rest of the winemaking & bottling process.

If monthly records are kept for Bulk wine costs by batch, any blends can be costed prior to entering into a sale contract. Although the market often determines the sale price of bulk wine it’s still important to know whether the sale is viable, or if another outlet for the wine should be sought eg: bottling, export, or another bulk buyer.

If bulk costs are high is the answer to value add by bottling?

Bottled Wine Costing

We recommend costing each bottling with actual costs, and comparing each wine bottled to earlier bottlings & bottlings of earlier vintages of the same wine. It takes more time than waiting for the accountant to provide a cost based on averages at the end of the year, but the insights could help your business thrive.

Costing each bottling will provide valuable information about costs that can be used to determine: where costs are blowing out; if a review of bottling costs & options is necessary; whether the wine is still viable in the current & expected future markets; and if the wine needs to be repositioned or refreshed to attract a higher sell price to maintain or improve profits.

If you don’t know how wine is performing through your business is that something you should change?