Hip Tastes Blog

Look, Ma, I bought a winery!
filed under: Goods & Gadgetry

The saying USED to go, "to make a small fortune in the wine business you've got to start with a big one." No more! With the WinePod from Provina you can now make your own wine with very little fuss and, fantastically, rather little up front capital, relatively speaking.

The MBA in me just couldn't resist crunching the numbers to see just how much capital it would cost to produce, say, a single bottle of your very own Cabernet Sauvignon. Armed with some stats on the purchase price of the Pod and the key ingredient - grapes - I set out to come up with an estimate. Here's what I came up with: $53 a bottle.

Yep, just $53 a bottle.

That's what I estimate it would cost you on a per-bottle-basis to make about 65 bottles of your VERY OWN California Cabernet Sauvignon using the Provina WinePod. Not all that bad, really, compared to what other bottles of the stuff fetch on supermarket and wine store shelves these days.

Here's how the numbers break down:
Pod: $1,999
Grapes: 640 (160 lbs @ $4/lb)
Barrel: 230
Bottling: 230
Miscellaneous shipping fees and taxes: 370

TOTAL: $3,469
Per bottle for 65 bottles: $53.37

Compare that to the millions of dollars it would otherwise take to launch your own winery.

Note: I didn't include labor in my calculation, which is, of course, your own hard earned spare time away from the office/family/gym/mall/whatever. I could certainly quantify that based on an opportunity cost method, but to do so would probably render the cost much higher and, at the end of the day, maybe there's no other way you'd rather spend your spare time than tinkering with this, er, egg shaped "winery" and so I decided it's a moot point.

Worth it?
So, now that it's (somewhat) affordable (perhaps more so if you drink $50 bottles of wine on a regular basis) to produce your own wine, do you think it's worth it? Meaning, do you actually want to make your own wine at home in this...egg? The beat about this thing is that some pretty illustrious winemaking types contributed to its development, and there's also word out that some of these same winemakers will be on-call so to speak to consult with at-home winemakers following the product's summer 2006 launch.

And, for those of you tech geeks out there who are wondering just how the thing works, allow me to explain to the best of my ability: the thing comes with software called Wine Coach, which the makers are trumpeting as "the first interactive winemaking software ever developed." You collaborate electronically with "real" winemakers who help you decide what to do with the Pod/egg , and when. They go on to say that the software is "like having your own personal consulting enologist wherever and whenever you like."

The thing thinks on its own too, wirelessly connecting to your home computer to do...something. It'll even guide you through the winemaking process, alerting you via alarm if you've missed anything or if you need to adjust the wine's pH level. George Snell, founder of Provina, said of his new gadget in a recent San Francisco Chronicle article: "the WinePod is more sophisticated than 99 percent of all wineries in the world. It virtually eliminates winemaking mistakes."

Which brings me to my opinion of the product: it just seems awfully squeeky clean to me. From its appearance to its high tech wireless connectivity to its all-in-one no mess cleanliness it all seems too...easy. If you want to make wine, you ought to get a little bit of juice on your hands, have to muck a few tanks,...you know, get a little dirty. This gizmo eliminates all that - I can't see what you really do to the stuff besides dump in the grapes and fiddle with a few controls.

But, to be fair, the other side of the argument is that, until now, there were few other viable means for folks like you and me (i.e. us duds sans enology degrees) to make our own juice. Without a somewhat decent knowledge of chemistry and...well, winemaking, there's really no way for us to get from juice to wine on our own, at home. The Provina WinePod provides that possibility for the first time, although I'm skeptical of just how much of a personal touch you can leave on a product that's been, for all essential purposes, created by an all-enclosed machine that tells YOU what to do.

Other things you can buy for $3,469 (more or less):
I thought it would be fun to look at other ways you can spend a chunk of change like that. Here are some of my favorites, in order of descending impressiveness to me:

- 1987 Porshe 924, red - just like the one Jake drove in Sixteen Candles! - $3,500
- 6 night stay for two at Bikini Bootcamp, at Tulum, Mexico's eco chic Amansala Resort - $3,684
- Square vintage styled lambskin Chanel bag, in periwinkle, and Christian Laboutin Linen Platform Wedges with periwinkle detail - $3,670, together
- Single bottle 1961 Chateau Latour, awarded 100 pts by Parker ("liquid perfection") & WS - starting bid $3,100

The verdict? If you've got the cash lying around, feel a hankering for a post-modern-looking egg-shaped almost-fully-automated wine making device, AND you've got the time to tinker, why not? Knock yourself out.

www.personalwinemaking.com

Posted by Courtney on May 25, 2006 02:35 PM

Comments

Interesting piece of crap that metal egg thing. What a waste of money. I just started 5 gallons of strawberry wine at a cost of about 38 bucks and 1 hour of picking 27 pounds of strawberries. Works out to about $1.50 per bottle not counting the labor. For me making wine is an art, not a science unlike what the metal egg article says.

As far as equipment goes, all you need is a 5 gallon bucket, a five gallon carboy, hydrometer, arilock and a couple other pieces to make some really good wine. Cost is less than 60 bucks for the equipment.

So for about $100 you can get started into making your own wine, which works out to $4 per bottle for your first run.

Posted by: Ben Evert on June 16, 2006 03:20 AM
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My, what a wonderful blog you have Courtney.
We had a rather humorous debate when I posted the home winery on our radio show's blog. My co-host, food and wine writer Kathy Marcks Hardesty, at first thought it was a "slap in the face" to our area's wine makers (we interview wine makers and chefs on our weekly show).

I started asking wine makers if they took umbrage with the inclusion of this story on our site's blog and, of course, most of them laughed and said something like, "Why not? Go for it!"

P.S. You've inspired me to refine our blog. The links to different topic sections is such a good idea!

Posted by: Wine Whisperer on March 21, 2008 09:50 AM
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