In his post last week, Silicon Valley Bank's Rob McMillan posed the question: is the wine business sustainable? In it, he talks about the reality of the wine business vs. the view of the "lifestyle" from wine PR and our dependence on, as he puts it, "God, Mother Nature, and luck" to make a good crush--the foundation for any wine.
Rob's blog is one of the few I subscribe to; it can be relied on to be thoughtful and pragmatic. As they'd say back home, it got me to thinkin' about sustainability, particularly in light of Sunday's activity: the steamer.
So, what, you might ask, does a steamer have to do with sustainability? A lot, actually.
We'd been talking about adding a steam generator to the winery after the last round of barrel maintenance. Wine barrels, once they've been filled, anyway, are almost living things--or the will be, and not in a very nice way, if they're not maintained. Once we empty a barrel, it's cleaned, dried, and treated with sulfur dioxide to help keep any spoilage organisms from growing inside. Every couple of months, the barrel must be hydrated or the oak staves shrink to the point that the barrel will no longer hold liquid. The no-technology way to do this is to fill the barrel with water with, let the wood swell, empty it, dry, and treat. While not particularly difficult, it's time consuming and uses 60 gallons of water per barrel. Multiply that by a hundred barrels, and the time and water get noticeable.
Ergo, steam. If a barrel is steamed instead of filled with water, it can be hydrated with far lower consumption. Steam also is very good at killing spoilage organisms, which yields a "healthier" barrel with less dependence on anti-microbials like sulfur. So, it's a great sustainable solution.
Except, of course, for the small fact that a new steamer would cost around $8000. And, the fact that we don't have that kind of money for a, while laudable for environmental responsibility and constructive toward our ability to make better wine, discretionary purchase. Which brings us to a different sort of sustainability discussion: that of financial sustainability.
Wineries are huge consumers of capital, particularly at startup. The basic equipment for production--a destemmer, press, pump, hoses, containers, etc.--are all significantly costly. Moreover, the utilization of capital is pretty lousy, if you take a strict business view of things, because you really only use most of this equipment two months out of the year during crush. The rest of the time, it sits in storage, which, of course, contributes to overhead. Add raw materials costs (including barrels) that are episodic--big outlays during crush and bottling--and cash management gets interesting. There are some building basics--good drains, for example--that are necessary for good sanitation. All of it adds up, but, without good tools, it's much harder to make good wine.
The convenient thing to do is to call your local wine equipment supplier and buy or lease. We chose what, for us, was the sustainable route: we bought pieces on the used market, which takes patience, creativity, and the willingness to substitute knowledge and elbow grease for shiny and warrantied. It has its frustrations, but it's allowed us not to go in debt (except to our retirement savings) and to embrace reuse as a core value.
Which brings us back to the steamer. When I saw one come up for sale for $500, it was almost too good to be true. After some rapid fire emails that assured us that while missing some bits it was mostly in good shape, we bought it. It arrived yesterday and will need some work and a few parts, but we'll be able to get the unit workable for a LOT less than eight grand. Maybe the angels are smiling; I can only hope they continue to do so for the rest of crush.
We've made sustainability, in its many guises, a very important consideration in what we do. By choosing to put a winery where its consumers are located is, we believe, an inherently more sustainable model (rather than shipping consumers to us or shipping wine to them). We stayed where we lived (and loved living, by the way); using what you have rather than getting something new is always more sustainable. We repurposed an old, vacant building and live with less space and some quirkiness. We didn't put solar panels on the roof but did the 20% cost boneheaded things you can do that can save 80% of the power that you'd gain with "green" generation like cheap but efficient lighting, on demand hot water, a pressure washer, and, now, the steamer. We work with a couple of growers who have certified their operations sustainable (by managing resources and people in a way that provides good stewardship to the land and community) and others who crop organically; all our growers are small family operations, though, that provide jobs and capital back to the community. And, every day, we use EVERYTHING we've ever learned from microbiology (in a godforsaken corn syrup plant) and engineering to design for manufacturability and B-school with a little wrenching, plumbing, and woodworking thrown in for good measure.
There's one last question of sustainability to be answered, though. After four years in flat-out start-up mode, can we keep up the pace? There's a huge investment of human capital in every winery, and we're mostly going it alone with a little part time help (thank you Lisa and Danny!) and some very dedicated volunteers. Small businesses may be like marathons, but every fall we need to have a heckuva sprint to get through crush. That's where we're depending on the gods, Mother Nature, Lady Luck, and our supporters to be the wind at our back.