Vines, barrels and a tasting room are paid for years before a bottle sells. Working capital helps owners bridge harvest, aging and the tourist season.
Apply Now →Wine is a slow cash cycle. Planting vines and waiting for them to produce takes years. In any given vintage, a winery pays for grapes or farm labor at harvest, then for crush, fermentation, tanks, barrels and bottling. Many wines are aged for months, and some for years, before they are sold. Meanwhile, rent or loan payments, insurance and staff continue.
Tasting rooms in New York's wine regions, the Finger Lakes among them, depend on visitors who arrive in warm months and around harvest and holidays.
Many wineries are both a farm and a hospitality business. The farm side faces weather risk: frost, hail, wet seasons and disease can reduce a harvest in a single year. The hospitality side has tourism seasonality, with strong weekends in summer and fall and thinner stretches in winter.
Direct sales through tasting rooms and wine clubs bring in cash sooner and at better margins than wholesale. Many owners work to grow that share, which means investing in the visitor experience. Wholesale sales to restaurants and shops are larger, but they are paid on terms.
A winery's sales channels pay on different clocks. A tasting-room sale is paid immediately, and a wine-club shipment is usually charged on a schedule. Wholesale to restaurants and retailers moves larger volumes but pays on terms and requires distribution relationships. Owners who lean on the first two channels have steadier cash, though they need staff, hospitality and marketing to feed them. Those who lean on wholesale need working capital to carry inventory until the invoices are paid.
For illustration only: a winery wants to add a covered tasting patio and kitchen, buy new barrels and hire seasonal staff, totaling $75,000 before the summer visitor season. The owner's job is to estimate the added visitors and bottle sales the patio will support and to compare that margin with what the funding costs to repay. A crop loss in a bad year would not change the repayment, so a cautious plan assumes a smaller harvest and weaker visitor numbers than the best year.
The application takes about five minutes with a soft credit pull. We review about three months of business bank statements and no tax returns are required. FICO 500 and above is considered. Funding runs from $25,000 to $5,000,000 and can arrive in as little as 24 hours after approval. Owner-operated vineyards and sole proprietors can apply. Because wineries have uneven deposits across the year, the most recent statements will reflect where you are in the cycle.
Costs for harvest labor, barrels and bottling come well before the wine is sold, and tasting-room revenue is seasonal.
Yes. Sole proprietors can apply. We review about three months of business bank statements and do not require tax returns.
Production equipment, barrels, tasting-room upgrades, vehicles, seasonal staff and marketing. Funding runs from $25,000 to $5,000,000.
Repayment does not change with the crop, so plan around a smaller harvest rather than the best year.
The application uses a soft credit pull, and FICO 500 and above is considered.
Three months of business bank statements and a 5-minute application. FICO 500+ considered. $25,000 to $5,000,000, funded in as little as 24 hours.
Apply Now →It takes about two minutes and it will not affect your credit score.
No obligation • No impact to your credit score
