Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 12
Vineyard Rights
With our relationship stabilising, my thoughts turned to our financial future. The wine busi-
ness could not follow our original plan of selling three quarters of our first year's production
to a
négociant
while we built up our customer base. The costs in France were significantly
higher than the American extension office figures used in the business plan. To make mat-
ters much, much worse, the yield we got was half of what we had estimated. We had to make
some dramatic changes for this property to be viable.
'What are we going to do?' I asked Sean, as we scrolled through the spreadsheet.
'We have to sell our wine direct earlier. We can't afford to take the easy option of selling to
the
négociant
. I couldn't do it anyway, not after the blood, sweat and tears we've put into it.
I never understood that cliché as well as I do now. It's high quality wine. We're not giving it
away.'
'But even if we sell direct in bottles will we make a living?'
We crunched the numbers. If we were successful at selling direct at the optimistic prices
we envisaged, we would still be struggling.
'Wehavetoincreasetheproduction.Theamountwe'reproducingisn'tsustainable.Wehave
to get closer to three hundred hectos.' A year before I didn't know what a 'hecto' or hecto-
litre, the equivalent of 100 litres, was. Now I knew the numbers for production and costs in
a vineyard and winery operation like the back of my hand.
'You're right, Carolinus. We have to get more planting rights so we can plant the peach
field.'
'But more vineyard will take a long time. We needed something that can offer more imme-
diate cash flow. What about a cottage to rent out?'
'But where will we get the money to build one? We'd have to start from scratch. We don't
have any spare buildings.'
I didn't know either. Still, we had to move forward. 'If we're successful selling all our wine
direct, planting more vineyard and developing a cottage, we'll have a going concern.'
