Wait, there’s a new compliance program?

It usually starts with a conversation. You’re pouring at an event or catching up with a neighboring winery, and someone mentions a new CalRecycle program for packaging. They’ve heard it’s a big deal. They’ve heard there’s registration, reporting, and fees.

Then comes the part that makes your stomach drop: the first deadlines have already passed.

You ask around, and nobody seems to know much more. Your accountant hasn’t mentioned it. Your distributor shrugs. And you’re already juggling TTB reports, ABC renewals, excise taxes, label approvals, and everything else that comes with running a small winery. One more compliance program feels like one too many.

If that’s where you are right now, take a breath. You’re in the right place.

In the next 10 minutes, you’ll learn:

• What this program actually is

• Whether it affects your winery (spoiler: it almost certainly does)

• What to do first

• Where to go next for help

“But my wine bottles are already covered by CRV”

This is the first thing most winery owners say, and it’s a reasonable thought. Since 2024, wine bottles in California carry CRV, the California Redemption Value. You’re already paying into one recycling program. Why would a second one apply?

Here’s the catch: the EPR Program isn’t just about the bottle.

In California, your glass wine bottles are excluded because they’re already part of the CRV program. But the rest of your packaging is not. Think about everything else that leaves your winery with a bottle: the capsule, the boxes, the dividers, the shipping boxes, the inserts in your wine club shipments.

And California isn’t the only state with an EPR Program. Several other states have them too, and in those states, the glass bottles themselves are included. If you ship to customers or sell through distributors outside California, your bottles may be covered there even though they’re excluded here.

What is EPR? The picnic lunch version

Imagine a restaurant that sells picnic lunches in disposable containers. Customers carry their lunches to the park, enjoy their food, and toss the packaging in the trash. Traditionally, the city pays to collect and dispose of all those containers.

But what if the restaurant that handed out those containers had to help pay for cleaning them up?

That’s the basic idea behind Extended Producer Responsibility, or EPR. The businesses that put packaging into the marketplace help pay for what happens to it afterward.

Who’s involved in California

• SB 54. California passed the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act (SB 54) in 2022. It authorized CalRecycle to write the regulations that make the program work.

• CalRecycle. The state agency that oversees the program.

• The PRO. Businesses can report directly to CalRecycle or through a Producer Responsibility Organization, or PRO. Smaller businesses like wineries will use the PRO.

• The Circular Action Alliance (the CAA). The CAA is the PRO for California. It’s also the PRO in Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington, so if you sell in several of those states, you’ll deal with the same organization. Maine runs its program differently.

• You, the producer. This is where many winery owners get tripped up.

Why you’re the “producer”

You might think, “I don’t make packaging. I buy it.” But in an EPR Program, the producer is generally the brand name on the product, not the company that manufactured the packaging. If your winery’s name is on the label, you’re the producer.

Does the EPR Program apply to my winery? A 4-question self-check

Answer yes or no:

1. Do you sell physical goods in a package?

2. Do you sell or distribute products in any of these states: California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, or Washington? (as of 2026)

3. Do you own the brand? (This doesn’t apply to retailers, distributors, or resellers.)

4. Do you have more than $1 million in California sales? (Other states have different thresholds.)

If you answered yes to all four, the rules likely apply to you in California.

If you answered yes to the first three but your California sales are under $1 million, don’t stop reading. You may qualify for the Small Producer Exemption, but it isn’t automatic. You must apply for it.

If you sell in other EPR states, check each state’s rules. Their thresholds are different, and their programs include the glass bottle.

Skipping the application doesn’t make you exempt.

What it looks like when you have the EPR Program handled

Fast forward a year. The annual report is due again, and this time it’s not a scramble.

You’ve set up a few simple internal procedures.

• You know what every piece of packaging on every SKU is made of and how much it weighs. You already had this information, but it was scattered in different Excel files. Now it’s saved in one place. Since you bought all the same materials as the previous year, you didn’t have to update it.

• Your sales records show which state every case shipped to.

• Your purchasing records show how many shipping boxes and dividers you bought.

• When the report is due, you pull the numbers from systems you already use and run them through a process that calculates the weight of each material sold or shipped to each state.

Notice what made the difference. It wasn’t a stack of new paperwork. It was a few tweaks to your system.

Today, EPR reporting feels overwhelming because the information is scattered across invoices, spec sheets, and memory. Next year, and the year after, it becomes routine because your packaging data, purchasing, and sales records are organized to answer the question before anyone asks it.

And when the fees are announced, you won’t be guessing. You’ll already have the numbers to see what the EPR Program adds to your overhead and plan for it in your budget and pricing.

Your EPR roadmap: 8 first steps

You don’t have to do everything at once. Work through these in order. Each step will link to a post or video in this series.

1. Confirm whether you’re a producer. Use the self-check above. If your brand is on the label and you sell in an EPR state, the answer is probably yes.

2. If you qualify, apply for the Small Producer Exemption. In California, this applies to wineries with less than $1 million in California sales. You must apply, and the exemption must be renewed every 2 years.

3. Register with the CAA for your home state. This is a one-time registration.

4. If you sell in other EPR states, register there too. Each state has its own rules and thresholds.

5. Document your packaging. For each primary packaging component (container, closure, capsule, label, and box), identify what it’s made of and how much it weighs. In California, also identify the weight of any plastic it contains. Do the same for your secondary and tertiary packaging, like boxes, dividers, and shipping materials.

6. Track secondary and tertiary packaging purchases. Create a simple procedure to record the quantity of boxes, dividers, and shipping materials you buy.

7. Make sure every sale records a “ship to” state. Review your sales procedures across every channel (tasting room, wine club, eCommerce, and wholesale) so you can report by state.

8. Build EPR fees into your budget and pricing. Once fees are known, add them to your overhead budget and factor them into your pricing.

Key California dates

The first round of California deadlines fell in mid-2026. If you missed them, you’re not alone. The best move now is to register with the CAA, or apply for the Small Producer Exemption if you qualify, and get your data in order.

Requirement

Data year

Due

Submit 2026 Baseline Producer Report

2023

May 31, 2026 (accepted through June 1)

Submit 2026 Annual Supply Report

2025

May 31, 2026

Submit 2026 Annual Source Reduction Report

2025

May 31, 2026

Register with the CAA

n/a

June 1, 2026

Submit Individual Source Reduction Plan

n/a

August 1, 2026

Pay California Early Fees

2025

Within 45 days of the CAA's invoice (after filing
the 2026 Annual Supply Report)

Last updated: October 2026

The 30-second recap

• The EPR Program makes wineries help pay for the recycling and waste management costs of the packaging we put into the market.

• You report the total weight of your packaging, by material, for the products we sold into each participating state.

• You pay fees based on the type of packaging material, its weight, and each state’s rules.

Where to go next

Wherever you are, there’s a next step that fits.

• Ready to start on your packaging? Download our free vendor email templates. They make it easy to ask your glass, closure, capsule, label, and box vendors for the material and weight information you'll need. You'll also get The Crush, our monthly newsletter, and we'll let you know when our EPR for Wineries – Course + Workbook and EPR Analysis Service are available.

• Want to do it yourself, with a guide? Our EPR for Wineries – Course + Workbook walks you through every step on the roadmap above, from registration to building fees into your pricing. Download the vendor templates to hear when it opens.

• Want help with the math? Send your completed workbook to our EPR Analysis Service (coming soon), and we’ll calculate the weights and plastic counts for your reports.

The EPR for Wineries series

This page is your home base. Each post below goes deeper on one part of the roadmap.

• Is Your Winery Exempt from California EPR? How to Tell If You’re a “Small Producer” — what counts toward the $1 million threshold and how to apply.

• EPR for Small Wineries: What Counts as Packaging — the packaging checklist, how to weigh it, and free vendor email templates.

• California EPR Reports for Wineries, Translated into Plain English — the four California reports and the acronyms, decoded.

• California EPR Penalties: What Happens If Your Winery Doesn’t File? — the penalties, the lawsuits, and what to do if you missed a deadline.

• How Much Will EPR Fees Cost Your Winery? — coming soon. [LINK]

About the author: Jeanette Tan is the founder of QB Winery Solutions. She has worked exclusively with small wineries for over 15 years and has taught at Sonoma State’s Wine Business Institute.

Written by Jeanette Tan | Photo by Shutterstock.com

Disclaimer: QB Winery Solutions is not a law firm or regulatory compliance company. This information is intended to be educational and is not legal advice. EPR rules and deadlines are still changing; this post reflects what we know as of the "Posted" date above. Confirm material classifications, exemptions, and reporting obligations with your attorney, compliance professional, vendors, and the applicable state program.

Why the structure under your numbers is probably wrong — and what to do about it.

If your QuickBooks file feels hard to use — the reports don't make sense, the numbers don't add up, and you're not sure who to ask — that's not a QuickBooks problem. And it's not a you problem. It's a structure problem. And it starts with a false assumption that's been passed down through the wine industry for decades.

Winery Accounting Is Not the Same as Vineyard Accounting

The assumption is that winery accounting should be simple. It makes sense when you trace it back. A lot of wineries started as vineyards — and for a vineyard that's only growing and selling grapes, the accounting really is simple. One product, one channel, straightforward books.

But a winery is a manufacturer. You're buying grapes, transforming them into wine, aging that wine over multiple years, packaging it, and selling it through several different channels — tasting room, wine club, wholesale — each with very different margins. The accounting is fundamentally more complex than a vineyard, and your books need to reflect that.

The problem is that nobody told the industry. The vineyard approach got handed down from CPA to bookkeeper to new owner until it became just "how wineries do it." So when your reports don't make sense, the instinct is to assume you're doing something wrong — when really, the structure underneath your numbers was never built for how a winery actually operates

The AMS Hangover

There's a second piece to this that explains why so many winery QuickBooks files look the way they do.

For decades, the dominant accounting software in the wine industry was a program called AMS. It was built specifically for wineries, and because it was the only real option, its workflow became the industry standard. When QuickBooks came along and small wineries made the switch, they brought their AMS habits with them.

AMS was designed more than 50 years ago, on a very different technology platform. AMS is still being used today by the larger wineries. However, the workflows that made sense inside AMS don't always translate to QuickBooks. But because everyone learned from someone who used AMS, those workflows got carried over anyway.

The result: many small wineries are running QuickBooks using processes that exist not because they're the most effective way to use the software, but because that's how it was always done.

I call this the AMS Hangover. And the easiest place to see it is in the Chart of Accounts.

What the Chart of Accounts Is Actually For

The Chart of Accounts is the backbone of your financial system. Every transaction you record in QuickBooks flows through it — and if it's built wrong, every report that comes out of it will be wrong too.

A well-built winery Chart of Accounts organizes your finances into four main areas:

Income — a single Wine Sales account, not creating separate accounts for every sales channel. This is one of the most common AMS Hangover mistakes: recreating the AMS channel structure in QuickBooks income accounts, which creates a cluttered, hard-to-read P&L. QuickBooks has a better solution which I will explain later.

Cost of Goods Sold — the cost of the wine that was actually sold. In a correctly built QuickBooks file, this number populates automatically when a sale is recorded, because the inventory items (SKUs) are set up correctly. No manual entries, no guessing. There are no winemaking accounts in this group

Overhead Expenses — all other operating costs, grouped into functional categories so the P&L stays readable. When grouped correctly, the entire report fits on one page — which matters more than it sounds. A one-page P&L is one a winery owner will actually read.

Winemaking Expenses — all winemaking costs, are in the “Other Expense” section at the bottom of all the expenses. They are not in COGS and they are not on the Balance Sheet.

The One Structural Mistake That Makes Your Numbers Meaningless

Here's where a lot of winery QuickBooks files go wrong, and it directly affects whether you can trust your net income number.

Winemaking expenses — grapes, cellar labor, packaging costs — often get dropped straight into the Cost of Goods Sold section. It seems logical. These are costs related to making wine. But it's incorrect, and here's why.

COGS should only reflect the cost of wine that was actually sold. That's what the name means: cost of goods sold. Winemaking costs, on the other hand, are components of wine that's still being made — Work in Progress inventory. Those costs are part of the inventory asset and belong on the balance sheet until the wine sells.

In a correctly built QuickBooks file, winemaking expenses sit in the Other Expense section at the bottom of the P&L. At the end of the month or year, your accountant moves the total cost to the balance sheet so that this section zeros out so they don't affect your profit from operations.

If you skip that step — if winemaking costs are sitting in COGS and never get zeroed out — your gross profit is wrong. And if your gross profit is wrong, your net income is wrong. You can't manage from a number you can't trust.

This is also where the AMS approach causes problems. In AMS, winemaking costs flow directly to the balance sheet, bypassing the P&L entirely. Some winery owners try to replicate that in QuickBooks — but when you do, you lose the ability to see your winemaking expenses on a report, compare them to budget, or track them year over year. Just because something worked in AMS doesn't mean it's the right approach in QuickBooks.

How Classes Replace the AMS Channel Structure

One of the most powerful features in QuickBooks for wineries is Classes — and it's often either underused or skipped entirely.

Instead of creating separate income accounts for each sales channel (the AMS approach), Classes let you tag every transaction with a channel — Tasting Room, Wine Club, Wholesale — and then run reports that break out revenue, COGS, and gross profit by channel automatically.

This is the structure that makes meaningful analysis possible. When your P&L is set up with one Wine Sales account and Classes turned on, you can see gross profit by channel with a single report. That's the kind of visibility that helps you make real decisions about where to focus.

If you haven't seen what that report looks like, I walk through it in the companion video on Youtube

The Simplest Fix

You don't need to start over from scratch. The most impactful structural change is straightforward:

Reorganize your Chart of Accounts to separate overhead expenses from winemaking expenses. Group those accounts into functional categories so the P&L is easier to read. Move winemaking expenses into the Other Expense section — not COGS, and not directly to the balance sheet.

Just rearranging the accounts gives you a P&L where the Net Ordinary Income line is a number you can actually manage from.

Even with the right structure in place, there are a few day-to-day entry habits that can undermine it — I cover those in a separate video.

Where to Start

If your reports don't make sense, don't start by blaming QuickBooks. Start by looking at the structure underneath it.

The Fundamental Five is a focused course for small winery owners and their bookkeeping teams. We work through setting up QuickBooks correctly for a winery — Chart of Accounts, Classes, inventory, COGS — so that your reports reflect how your business actually operates.

Learn more about the Fundamental Five here.

If your winery QuickBooks file feels like a mess, the problem probably isn't you — it's the structure underneath it. In this video I walk through exactly why so many small winery files are set up incorrectly, where that structure problem comes from, and what a well-built Chart of Accounts actually looks like inside QuickBooks.

Most winery QuickBooks files don't start out messy.

They become messy over time.

Here's how it usually happens: Back when you first set up QuickBooks, the software asked you a few setup questions and then recommended a Chart of Accounts for you.

Seems helpful. Except — QuickBooks does not have a Chart of Accounts for a winery. It created a generic chart of accounts for any small business that sells stuff. Your chart of accounts is the same as for a t-shirt shop. That means from day one, the structure underneath your numbers isn't quite right for what you actually do.

Then life happens. Your CPA suggested adding a few accounts. Your bookkeeper needed a few more to handle something unusual. Someone suggests an account to fix a tricky transaction. And before long, your file has turned into a mess.

Imagine if your barrels were unorganized. Some are not labeled, and the barrels that have labels have inconsistent information. So you spend more time hunting than working. You know what you're looking for — you just can't find it. A well-organized cellar changes everything. And a well-structured Chart of Accounts does the same thing for your financials.

In practical terms, when that happens, a few things start to break down:

• Transactions get coded inconsistently because it's not obvious which account to use

• Reports get harder to read because the structure isn't logical

• And it's genuinely unclear what the numbers are telling you — even when you're looking right at them

It's one of the most common things I see when I look at a new client's QuickBooks file. And the frustrating part? It isn't anyone's fault. Nobody designed it to be confusing. It just got that way gradually, one added account at a time.

When your Chart of Accounts is structured specifically for a small winery, everything else gets easier. Coding transactions takes less thought. Reports are actually readable. And the numbers start telling a useful story — which channels are performing, where the costs are, what the margins really look like.

The good news: this is one of the most fixable things in a QuickBooks file. You don't need to start from scratch. You just need to know what a winery-specific structure looks like and how to reorganize what you already have.

VIDEO: What a Winery-Specific Chart of Accounts Looks Like (And Why It Matters)

What this video covers:

• What a cluttered Chart of Accounts actually looks like inside QuickBooks — and what a clean, winery-specific one looks like side by side

• A quick walkthrough of the account groupings that matter most for a winery (and where most generic setups fall short)

• How to spot the top warning signs that your current structure is working against you

Getting the Chart of Accounts right is the first thing we tackle in the Fundamental Five — because when the structure is right, everything else works better.

But before we get there, I want to make sure your numbers are actually working for you, not just sitting in reports you’re not sure how to read.

That’s what I’m covering in my free webinar on May 14th: “Why Your Numbers Aren’t Helping You Make Better Decisions” — and what to do about it.

If you’re a small winery owner who looks at your financials and still isn’t sure what to do next, this is for you. We’ll talk about what your reports should actually be telling you, and why most winery financials fall short of that — not because the numbers are wrong, but because they’re not set up to answer the right questions.

… And Why It Matters More Now

Written by Jeanette Tan | Photo by Shutterstock

Costs are going up. Labor, materials, compliance, shipping — the expense side of the business keeps climbing regardless of what's happening on the revenue side.

And here's what that means in practice: every case of wine you produce needs to be accounted for correctly. Every bottle that moves — out of the tasting room, through the wine club, to a distributor — needs to land in your system the right way. Because when margins are already thin, the last thing you can afford is inventory errors quietly adding to the damage.

Which brings us to one of the most common and quietly destructive problems I see in small winery QuickBooks files: inventory errors.

The biggest myth I hear is: "QuickBooks can't really handle inventory."

It can. But if it's not set up correctly, it creates a mess that spreads far beyond inventory — into your cost of goods sold, your margins, your reports, and your ability to make decisions with any confidence.

But before we even get to setup errors — there's something more fundamental going on.

The elephant in the room is that you're probably not using the QuickBooks inventory function at all. You have spreadsheets. You have warehouse reports. You have an eCommerce program with its own inventory function. This feels normal — because it is. Almost everyone in the industry does it this way. Even your tax preparer says "just give me your inventory reports and I'll calculate your COGS for you."

But the QuickBooks inventory function isn't just for keeping a tally of your cased goods. It does something your spreadsheet can't: it calculates the cost of goods sold automatically, the moment you record a sale. Getting that number once a year, twelve months after the sale, is too late to do anything with it.

Knowing how much inventory you have on hand matters. But knowing how much money you have tied up in that inventory — and what it actually cost you when it sells — is what drives cash flow decisions and keeps the business on solid ground.

Here are the three mistakes I see most often:

1. Inconsistent sales entry. If you record wholesale and distribution sales in QuickBooks sometimes by the bottle and sometimes by the case — and record DTC sales separately in your POS or eCommerce program with its own workflow — QuickBooks can't keep up. Some owners try to solve this by running everything through their eCommerce program instead. That doesn't work either: the entries still don't match, the count starts drifting, and before long you've got a growing gap between what's in your cellar and what your system thinks is there. In a year when you need to know exactly what you have and what it's worth, that gap is a real problem.

2. Losing case goods after a bottle run. This one is sneaky. It is a longstanding tradition to give the bottling team some wine and to set aside the first-off and last-off cases. But if these cases aren't accounted for correctly after bottling, they basically disappear into a bookkeeping black hole — physically in your cellar, invisible to your accounting system. This creates phantom losses, incorrect COGS, and reports you can't rely on.

3. Not tracking samples, pours, and giveaways. Tasting room pours, distributor samples, promo bottles — all of this matters. When every case counts, untracked inventory quietly distorts your COGS and makes your reports less reliable with each passing month.

Once inventory is off, nothing downstream is right. Your cost of goods sold is off. Your margins are off. Your pricing decisions are based on numbers that don't reflect reality. And when the industry is this unforgiving, making decisions on bad data is one of the fastest ways to end up in serious trouble.

The encouraging thing: these problems are almost always traceable to a setup issue. Fix the structure, and the numbers start telling the truth again.

QuickBooks Inventory Mistakes Quietly Costing Small Wineries

What this video covers:

• Why most small wineries work around QuickBooks inventory - and why that’s costing them

• The 3 most common entry mistakes and what they do to your COGS and margins

• Why these problems almost always trace back to setup, not math

Fixing inventory is one of the first things we tackle in the Fundamental Five — because when your inventory is right, everything downstream becomes a lot more trustworthy. But first, I want to make sure your numbers are actually working for you — not just sitting in reports you open and then set aside.

That’s what I’m covering in my free webinar on May 14th: “Why Your Numbers Aren’t Helping You Make Better Decisions” — and what to do about it.

If you’re a small winery owner who looks at your financials and still isn’t sure what to do next, this is for you. We’ll talk about what your reports should actually be telling you, and why most winery financials fall short of that — not because the numbers are wrong, but because they’re not set up to answer the right questions.

Sales feel softer. Inventory is building. And the decisions that used to work… don’t feel as clear anymore.

You’re making more decisions than ever… with less confidence than ever.

This free training will show you what’s actually missing— and how to fix it.

Here’s what you’ll walk away understanding:

• Why more sales isn’t actually fixing the problem

• Where your profit is really being lost

• Why your numbers feel messy (even when they’re “done”)

• What’s missing to make confident decisions again

It’s not just that things feel harder — it’s that the numbers you rely on don’t feel clear anymore.

Register Here

If your winery financials feel confusing or useless, it's probably not you — it's the system. In this video I walk through the three most common reasons small winery financials break down: messy reports that nobody looks at, incomplete cost numbers that create false confidence, and the cash vs. profit confusion that makes owners think something is wrong when it isn't.

The wine industry has been contracting for years. Tasting room traffic is down. Wine clubs are stalling. Wineries are closing. If your financial system isn't built for this, here's what to fix first.

You probably know at least one winery that has closed in the last year or two.

Maybe more than one.

That's not a coincidence. That's a contracting industry — and the wineries that are surviving are the ones that can see their numbers clearly enough to make fast, smart decisions when it counts.

So here's the question: can you actually trust your financial numbers?

Not "do you have reports." Everyone has reports. The question is whether your reports are telling you something real — something you can act on. Or whether you open QuickBooks, look at the screen, and feel a vague sense of unease because something feels off but you can't quite put your finger on it.

If it's the latter, this is not a "you" problem. It's a system problem.

Winery bookkeeping isn't like normal bookkeeping. You're managing inventory that moves between bulk and bottle. Sales come through multiple channels — tasting room, wine club, online, wholesale — and those channels are all performing differently right now. You've got POS systems that don't always sync properly, samples and pours that need to be tracked, and wine club shipments that have to land in the right place in your system. None of that fits neatly into a generic QuickBooks setup.

Generic QuickBooks was built for generic businesses. A winery is not a generic business.

So what usually happens? You try to do it yourself and get frustrated. Or you hand it off and lose visibility. Or you end up with a system that technically functions but doesn't actually help you make decisions. You know the numbers are there — you just can't fully trust them.

In a stable, growing industry, that's a headache. In a contracting one, it's dangerous.

When your financial system isn't giving you clear answers, you can't price with confidence. You can't identify which channels are actually profitable. You can't see the problems coming early enough to do something about them. And when every dollar matters more than it did two years ago, operating with blurry numbers is a risk you can't afford.

The fix isn't to try harder. It's to build the right system — one designed around how a winery actually operates.

VIDEO: Three Things Wrong With Your Financials

What this video covers:

• Why a standard QuickBooks setup doesn't work for wineries

• The 3 most common ways winery owners end up with numbers they can't trust

• The first thing to look at when your books feel more confusing than helpful

That's exactly what the Fundamental Five is built around — a winery-specific system for getting your financial foundation right in QuickBooks. Not more complexity. Just the right structure for how your winery actually works.

The industry is harder than it's been in a long time. The wineries that make it through are going to be the ones who can see clearly. Our next cohort starts May 28th.

Messy reports, incomplete costs, cash confusion — if any of those hit close to home, this webinar is for you. Join me for Why Your Numbers Aren’t Helping You Make Better Decisions, a free training where I show you the exact steps to build a financial foundation your winery can actually grow from. Save your spot below.

30% of Wineries Won’t Survive - Will You? 

In today’s challenging business climate, many small winery owners are cutting back wherever they can. But when it comes to marketing, the stakes are high: cut too much, and you risk losing momentum. Spend without a plan, and you may as well be tossing cash into the vineyard wind.

Too often, I see owners relying on what I call “hope marketing.” They send out an ad, launch a promotion, or host an event—and hope it brings in more customers or wine club signups.

It’s a bit like planting a vineyard without knowing your soil, climate, or varietals. You spend the money, put in the work, and pray for a great harvest… but you’re not set up for consistent success.

And then there’s the temptation to copy what big wineries are doing, thinking it must be the “right way” to market. So they hire an expensive marketing consultant—one who’s used to working with large companies—and end up hearing nothing but crickets. It’s like planting Cabernet in a region better suited for Pinot Noir: just because it worked for someone else doesn’t mean it will thrive in your unique conditions.

The good news? As a small winery, you actually have an advantage the big players don’t: you’re nimble. You’re closer to your customers. You can test and tweak your marketing on a small scale without wading through layers of approval or bureaucracy.

So how do you use that advantage wisely? Start with a simple, clear marketing strategy.

Four Questions to Build a Smarter Marketing Plan

Think of your marketing like tending your vineyard—each activity should have a purpose, be tracked, and improved over time. Ask yourself:

1. How much will this program or project cost?

2. What’s my expectation? Am I aiming for more tasting room visitors, wine club signups, or something else?

3. How will I measure it? What numbers will tell me if it worked?

4. How can I tweak this to improve next time?

This doesn’t require fancy software or complex dashboards. Think of it like checking your fermentation: you don’t need a lab full of scientists—you just need a hydrometer and regular tasting to stay on track.

Tracking Sales: Your Financial System as a Marketing Tool

Here’s where your financial system can help you make smarter marketing decisions.

One of the Fundamental Five steps in our QuickBooks system is tracking sales by “class.” Many wineries only track two: Distribution and DTC (Direct-to-Consumer). But lumping all your DTC sales into one category is like saying “red wine” without specifying Cabernet, Pinot Noir, or Zinfandel—you lose important detail.

Instead, create sub-classes for each DTC channel: tasting room, online store, wine club, events, farmers markets, etc. That way, you can see clearly which efforts are paying off and where you might need to prune your efforts.

I worked with a winery that broke down their DTC sales like this for the first time. They discovered their local farmers market booth—something they thought of as a “side project”—was outperforming their online store. With that insight, they shifted resources and doubled their wine club signups in one season.

Small Winery, Big Advantage

The beauty of being small is that you can try things on a modest scale, track your results, and adjust quickly. Large wineries might need a year to change course. You can do it in a month.

But here’s the catch: to make smart decisions, you need good data. That’s why tracking and reviewing your results is so crucial.

It’s like winemaking—tasting at every stage helps you adjust before the wine goes into the bottle. Marketing is no different.

Ready to Get Smarter About Your Marketing?

Your financial system can do more than track expenses—it can help you understand what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus your energy.

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Because hope is not a strategy—but a smart, simple plan can get you real results.