wine economics is very odd because on the one hand, its an exchangeable good, but on the other hand nearly all of its value is tied to marketing. Like, an incredible surplus is made in terms of the amount of grapes crushed, but various local laws are in place to tighten the supply for premium bottles.
In the past 20 years, exurban areas which have no agricultural business growing grapes are being used by retirees as vanity projects/ tax dodges. Sort of like horses. In many cases, since state governments (and to an extent federal governments) see "land in agriculture" as important to the soul of the nation or some other bullshit, these fun little retirement projects are actually getting taxpayer funding. Now- starting a winery in say the D.C. Suburbs is different from starting one in Sonoma CA in that for the time being, a vineyard in Sonoma will reliably produce a quality crop.
The problem is, and I've seen this on multiple scales of the business, the winery owner aims for a production target that is at about twice of what the market actually wants. If they enter the game rich enough, and don't have too much debt, this isn't a huge problem. They just end up selling grapes to their neighbors causing their rate of profit fall :marx-hi: but in order to drive more customers, often their only strategy is to load the place up with bachelorette parties and weddings, which require a big marketting budget etc. and eventually the bills are going to come due...
also the winery owner has a net worth over $200 million from his multibillion dollar private equity firm