Make $200k a year as a wine entrepreneur

I’ll just say it straight up — it’s tough to make money in the wine industry. We hear about The Prisoner being sold for almost $300 mil, or Garagiste doing over $30 mil of annual sales, or WTSO moving entire shipping containers of wine in a single day, but the fact remains that a wine job pays less than the equivalent position in many other industries.

Economics aside, there’s still ways to do it (as a non-producer). From what I figure, there are four main ways:

Don’t sell wine, sell wine content.

Wine Folly is the best in the world at she does, and continues to put out some of the best content in the wine world. They sell books and posters, both of which have massively more scaling potential and profit margin than selling bottles of wine. Madeline even recently started doing live tastings, where you can purchase the same bottles beforehand and follow along.

In a different vein, GuildSomm, Jancis Robinson, and Vinous all have successful premium content subscriptions that run over $100 a year, and are absolutely worth it for those in their target group.

What’s stopping you: creating original content takes TIME! Writing recreationally and writing professionally are on totally different levels of commitment. And then you always run the risk of people not really caring about what you write.

Why you’re going to try anyway: this is probably the lowest barrier to entry — while it means a ton of competition for attention, the right combination of an original voice, consistent output over several months, and distribution into the right channels always has the opportunity to stand out.

Don’t sell wine, teach about wine.

In my opinion, more than anything else, an informed wine student takes a course for the instructor-led tastings. A single 750 mL bottle can be split into 15 pours. A single class can have dozens of students (or hundreds, in the case of MWs showing up in China), each paying way more than the cost of setting up the event. This doesn’t scale nearly as well as online content, but the profit margin potential is there if marketed and merchandised right.

What’s stopping you: it takes a good deal of time to set up a credentialed school, and in the case of some places, a whole lot of startup money.

Why you’re going to try anyway: from a business perspective, running a wine school is pretty similar to any contractor-based business (lawn care, maid cleaning, tutoring) — a good amount of online SEO, customer service, location logistics, compliance, quality control. Any particular market can’t sustain too many at once, but there’s still a lot of opportunity out there, especially in areas away from big cities.

Sell wine, but import it yourself.

I think this channel is going to get much bigger in the next few years. Guys like Somm Select and Viticole Wine use their wine offers to gain monthly subscription members, and when enough members are accumulated, a direct import model can be implemented. Maybe throw in some name brand wines once in a while as loss leaders to calibrate customers’ price sensitivities. Honestly, I think this is the only way to maintain enough profit margin selling bottles of wine.

What’s stopping you: takes a long time to build up enough of a customer base to make it worthwhile to do direct import (where minimum order quantities from the supplier are at least 600 bottles at a time, plus transportation costs).

Why you’re going to try anyway: how else are you going to make six figures actually selling bottles of wine? Scaling will depend on reputation and fame, but at least margins are better than sourcing wine from local distributors.

Sell wine, in a completely different package.

…Here’s one other way. Seriously, check out VINEBOX, which is a monthly subscription for wine in a 100 mL tube. Nobody is going to look up the cost of a 750 mL bottle on wine searcher and multiply by (1/7.5) to see if they’re getting a deal on it — it’s more about the experience of getting wine in a slick glass tube.

What’s stopping you: not even half bottles are popular, how is a tube going to be? It takes some serious balls to even try to sell something that’s so different.

Why you’re going to try anyway: the margin potential is there, and it’s something totally new. Again, wine pricing is pretty transparent, and consumers are pretty sensitive to it, but when in a different format that sensitivity goes out the window. Other possibilities are pairing wine with a food item, packaging a known bottle with a private label bottle, etc.