The wine industry is facing no shortage of pressure. Demand is softer, costs remain high, tasting-room traffic is less predictable, and excess inventory continues to consume cash.
InnoVint’s 2026 State of Winery Health Report looks beyond those challenges and asks a practical question:
Why are some wineries performing well while others facing similar conditions are struggling?
Based on responses from 541 winery professionals, the report evaluates financial, operational, and cultural health. Its central finding is that winery health depends less on location, size, or sales channel than many might expect. What matters most is how the business is managed.
Financial Health Is the Weakest Link
Only 42% of wineries rate their overall business health as good or excellent. In comparison, just 40% say the same about their financial health.
Operations and culture remain stronger. Sixty-two percent describe their operations as good or excellent, and 69% rate their culture as great or exceptional.
That suggests many wineries still have capable teams and functional operations, but their financial foundations are under strain.
Sales remain the biggest concern, cited by 80% of respondents. Tasting-room traffic, rising production costs, excess inventory, and competition from other brands and beverage categories also ranked highly.
All of these pressures are closely connected. Slower sales create excess inventory. Inventory ties up working capital and increases storage costs. Pressure to move wine can lead to discounting, which can further weaken margins. It is a vicious cycle wineries operate in.
Five Habits of Healthy Wineries
InnoVint identified five habits that separate healthier wineries from struggling businesses.
First, they run lean and protect profitability. Seventy-three percent of healthy wineries are profitable, compared with only 21% of struggling wineries.
One finding is particularly important: wineries with flat sales are profitable almost as often as growing wineries—57% compared with 58%. That challenges the assumption that growth alone will solve a winery’s problems. Growth without operational discipline can create more inventory, complexity, and working-capital pressure.
Second, healthy wineries understand what each wine earns. Forty-three percent of wineries still make pricing and discounting decisions without knowing the margin effect on each SKU. Even among wineries confident in their pricing, many do not know the true production cost or profit per bottle.
Revenue is great, but alone it does not identify a winery’s strongest products. Better decisions require accurate costing, SKU-level profitability, channel margins, and visibility into the impact of discounts. Clear and accurate margin data makes a big difference.
Third, healthy wineries operate connected systems. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said inefficiencies are costing them money, often because their production, inventory, sales, and accounting systems do not communicate effectively.
When teams rely on disconnected spreadsheets and duplicate data entry, reporting slows down, and errors become more likely.
Fourth, they invest in culture. Wineries with strong cultures report better employee satisfaction, healthier operations, lower turnover, and stronger financial performance. Culture is not separate from execution. It affects communication, accountability, and the speed at which problems are identified.
Finally, healthy wineries participate in their communities. Wineries deeply involved in local and industry networks were more than twice as likely to describe themselves as healthy overall: 60% compared with 29% among minimally involved wineries.
Turning the Findings Into Action
The report points toward several practical priorities:
Calculate the true cost and profit of every wine.
Review pricing and discounts against margin.
Align production with realistic demand.
Improve cash flow and inventory forecasting.
Connect financial, production, sales, and inventory information.
Select one measurable operational improvement each quarter.
The broader market remains difficult, and individual wineries cannot control consumer demand or distributor consolidation.
They can control the quality of their costing, systems, forecasting, communication, and decisions.
That may be the report’s most useful conclusion: healthier wineries are not waiting for conditions to improve. They are managing more deliberately with the information they have today.
For deeper analysis, read more here.