Friday, April 15, 2016

PSST! Wanna Buy a Winery Cheap?




Seller orders 30% reduction to $625,000.  Bank-owned winery and vineyard in the lower Yakima Valley. (Technically, it is in the Central Yakima Valley, but most people are geographic idiots.)

Well, here is another sad story from wine country. Everybody wants to get rich in the wine business, but very few do so. The original selling price was around $2 million, but at that time the winery had some inventory as well as a good reputation. I think the bank loaned about a million and the owner carried the rest as a low interest/balloon payment scheme. My accountant told me if you accept these sales terms, be happy with the down payment, because that is all you are going to get. Since the bank has the first lien on the property, they get the property.

Making money in the wine biz is tough. They did the magical thing; they opened up a second tasting room in Woodinville. There was more overhead and apparently the magic that was Woodinville has worn off. They stopped paying suppliers. Word gets around real fast about that. When you can't get grapes, bottles, etc. you go out of business in short order.

There are about 15+ acres of land available, two houses, (one is a B&B), 9726 square feet of production area, plus some equipment like tanks, press, crusher/stemmer, and bottling equipment.

Here is your big chance to own what used to be, you guessed it, Tefft Cellars. Sealed bids due May 26, 2016.