When accounting firms talk about experience, they usually do the same thing. They add up every team member’s total career years and put the biggest number they can find on the website.
We wanted to do something more conservative and, I think, more honest. We counted only the time our team has spent here at Protea, doing wine and beverage accounting for our clients.
That number is 205 years.
It’s shared across our 38-person accounting and client service team, with accountants in Gqeberha and client service managers in the US. On average, each person has been with Protea for more than five years:
Seven have been here more than a decade.
Sixteen have been here more than five years.
Nearly two-thirds have been here more than four years.
And 205 years is a floor, not a ceiling. It doesn’t include the wine industry experience many of our team brought, so our real wine experience is higher. It also doesn’t include the years they spent in accounting, audit, and finance before joining us, so our accounting experience is even higher.
Why tenure matters more in wine than almost anywhere else
Most businesses run on a twelve-month cycle that a capable accountant can learn in a quarter or two. Wine doesn’t work that way.
A winery’s financial year is shaped by harvest. Costs flow through grapes, bulk wine, barrels, and bottling before they ever become case goods, and some of that inventory sits for years before it’s sold. Then there’s excise reporting, wine club runs, DTC versus wholesale margins, and the realities of three-tier distribution. Getting these right isn’t about knowing the rules. It’s about seeing how they play out across many vintages and wineries.
You only build that judgment one harvest at a time. Every year someone spends at Protea is another harvest costed, another year-end inventory closed, and another set of client questions they’ve already worked through once. That experience compounds, and you can’t shortcut it.
There’s a wider industry reason this matters too. The accounting profession is facing a well-documented talent shortage, and turnover is a fact of life at many firms. For a client, that often means a new person on your books every year or two, along with the cost of explaining your business all over again. We’ve deliberately built Protea to be a place people stay, and the numbers above show it.
What this means for the businesses we work with
Experience matters only if it makes a difference for our clients. Here’s where it does.
You stop re-teaching your business. When the team that learned your operation is still the team running it, you aren’t spending each year onboarding a new accountant into your cost structure, blending decisions, or wine club quirks.
Institutional memory stays intact. Why did you change your overhead allocation three years ago? Why is that bulk lot valued the way it is? On a long-tenured team, someone remembers. That continuity protects the consistency of your numbers year after year, which matters to your lenders, your auditors, and your own decision-making.
Harvest and year-end are less painful. The busiest, highest-stakes periods are where experience shows most. People who’ve lived through many harvests know what to expect, what usually goes wrong, and what needs attention early.
You get pattern recognition, not just bookkeeping. Our team has seen how many wineries handle the same challenges: DTC channel costs, inventory build-up, pricing pressure, growth funding. That perspective turns your monthly close into a conversation about what’s working and what isn’t, not just a set of reports.
You build a relationship, not a vendor arrangement. Trust comes from time. Clients tell us they value knowing the people on their account and knowing they’ll still be there next year.
The number behind the number
I’m proud of 205 years. But what I’m really proud of is what it says about the people here. They’ve chosen to build their careers at Protea, and they’ve chosen to get very good at one industry. That commitment benefits our clients every month.
Put 205 years to work for your winery.
If you’re looking for an accounting team that already understands wine and plans to stick around, I’d love to talk. Send me a message or book a time through our website.