The Fall of Kluge Winery #vawine

There is a great article in the Luxist about the fall of Kluge Winery. The article goes into great detail and gives the reader some ideas of the missteps that a lot of people with money make when starting a winery:

Kluge entered the Virginia wine industry in 1999, flush with cash and an outspoken desire to be the most prestigious winery on the East Coast. That kind of hubris irritated the rest of the Virginia wineries who aimed to promote the state's wines as a whole. Kluge wasn't looking for friends; instead she pumped a reported $50 million into developing the winery. Of that, $27 million was said to be spent on state-of-the-art equipment alone. In comparison, a source at one well-regarded winery down the road says they haven't spent that much in their 30-plus-year history.

Kluge spared no expense. She also lured renowned consultants and a winemaker from France whose salary was rumored to be $1 million. And while most Virginia wineries produce about 5,000 cases a year, Kluge tried to bottle 50,000 to 60,000 cases. But those in the wine industry say her unrealistic timeline is most likely where Kluge went wrong.

As one insider puts it, "The old saying goes: 'how do you make a small fortune in wine? You start with a big one.' But you can't spend like a drunken sailor because it's already expensive.

"You plant three years before you get useable fruit...it takes a decade just to figure out what you're doing," the source says. "The problem wasn't with the grapes or the winemaking, it was bad business."

The article is a really good read and worth checking out.