[jmheflin]

Thanks for your question!

Grapes used for making bulk wine wholesale for about $2000/ton. I am not yet able to produce them at that price point. For now, I am hoping to partner with a vineyard that wants to make the highest quality wine possible, and is willing to pay for grapes that enable them to do so.

[zaphod12]

I mean the argument is you're going to lose any sense of Terroir...and that is a huge amount of the cost at the high end of the market. Sure, you pay for taste, but you also pay enormously for origin and provenance.

[jmheflin]

Absolutely agree. I am not going to convince people that wine origin doesn’t matter. But I believe that 15% of grapes from a ‘Napa Valley Cab Sauv’ labeled wine can be grown outside of Napa. 25% if the wine is labeled as a ‘North Coast Cab Sauv'. So maybe the project is good for these types of situations.

[jfengel]

Rather than a vineyard, perhaps you'd want to seek out a "custom crush" facility? You could locate an experienced hobbyist who wants to make a small amount of high-end wine, but doesn't have a full set of facilities. And you could locate several different makers, giving you multiple chances per year of finding a set of growing parameters to show progress towards an exceptional wine.

Making a ton of wine at a custom crush house could cost around $5,000, so you're talking about people with multi-thousand-dollar hobbies. You might be able to talk them into taking a flyer on expensive, experimental grapes. It would be a lot of work to handle a lot of sales one ton at a time, but perhaps easier than finding a high-end winemaker willing to take a risk on unproven growing techniques.

[jmheflin]

This is a great idea. I will reach out to some. Thanks!