Winery and Vineyard Real Estate Market Rockin’ & Rollin’ in Southern Mendocino County and Northern Sonoma County

Special to Wine Industry Insight

By Todd Sheppard, www.TEAMSHEP.com

 

Disclosure: The author is a real estate agent and represents one of the five properties linked to in the article.

A recent posting by Rob McMillan, Founder of Silicon Valley Bank Wine Division noted that“Today, wine supply is moving into unknown territory.” And “We’ve not experienced this set of circumstances before…”

 

There are typically a fair number of vineyards for sale. They are marketed publicly through real estate companies. So it’s always pretty easy for interested parties to find a couple dozen on offer in most of the growing regions in the north coast. But for wineries there has always been an industry saying along the lines of: if truth be known one out of five wineries are for sale at anytime – we just don’t know which.

 

As winery sales were most often completed through specialist brokers and kept highly confidential. There are a few Merger & Acquisition (M&A) companies. Transactions were between specialized brokers and industry insiders behind closed doors. But it seems that winery sales are also moving into “new territory.” As there’s never been a time with so many wineries, tasting rooms and wine brands and businesses publicly listing they are for sale. In the era of digital media, everything is becoming more transparent.

 

More Transactions Recently

 

Focusing on southern Mendocino and northern Sonoma, Todd Sheppard of Compass Real Estate stated, “The number of wineries and tasting rooms being sold in the last year appears considerably higher that past averages, which were only a one or two each year.” In the past decade or so operations such as Kosta Browne, Duckhorn Wine Company, Rodney Strong, Wilson Artisan Wines, and Jackson Family have made acquisitions in this area.

 

Recent sales within the last 12 months have included:

• Topel Winery and Vineyards, Hopland
• Balo Winery, Tasting Room and Estate, Philo (Sold to Jackson Family Wines as reported in the Lewis Perdue new fetch on 9/15/19)
• Brutocao Cellars Tasting Room & Vineyard, Philo (Sold 9/27/19) – A secondary tasting room as their main facilities are in Hopland.

 

Wineries & Tasting Rooms For Sale

 

Additionally from the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) there are currently at least five wine properties with For Sale sign on real estate websites:

 

Yorkville Vineyard & Cellars, Yorkville. – $2,488,000

Vineyards 30 acres, tasting room and home  [See Listing]

 

White Oak Vineyards & Winery, Healdsburg – $11,499,000

Winery, estate home, tasting room, Vineyards 16 acres  [See Listing]

 

Milano Winery, Hopland –  $2,685,000

Winery, tasting room and 4 rental homes [See Listing]

 

Pendleton Estate Winery & Vineyard, Cloverdale –  $1,688,000

Estate home with small vineyard, winery and tasting room  [See Listing]

 

NDA required, Dry Creek – $11,500,000

Estate winery, 7.7 acres vineyard with tasting room in Healdsburg  [See Listing]

 

In Rob McMillian’s State of the Wine Industry Report 2019 on page 52 it says that among wineries producing in the range under 50,000 cases annually in his survey answered by thousands: “The likelihood of selling the winery in five years, 25% reported they were “seriously considering” or “likely.”

 

That represents thousands of wineries changing ownership.