Funding A Vineyard Or Winery

Making wine is expensive. You need the land, the labour and specialist plant and machinery plus long-term capital to support expansion and maintenance. It takes five to ten years for a new vineyard to start selling wine so sufficient capital will be needed in the early years.

Where that money comes from is important. Are you borrowing it? From whom? What is the loan secured on? A range of assets can be used for security, not just land itself; some require more bespoke financing than others. The right finance can make a huge difference to the amount you can borrow, the interest you pay and how much flexibility you have over the operation of the business.

Generally, land is the easiest asset to secure and, in recent years, money has been reasonably cheap. However, high street lenders will not usually lend against agricultural property, meaning you need to approach the handful of specialist lenders in this area. Larger and more established vineyards with a