The many perils — and occasional pleasure — of owning a vineyard

Picture yourself owning a vineyard. An ocean of chartreuse, vine-carpeted hills rolls gently towards the horizon under a blindingly blue Mediterranean sky; you relax, perhaps with a glass of something in your hand.

Then imagine that drink turning to blood; imagine the frogs, the lice, the flies, the locusts and the rest of them. The 10 plagues of Egypt are a stroll in the park compared to a life shackled to the upkeep of a wine estate. And I should know, as the firstborn and reluctant (prospective) heiress to the estate of a first-generation vigneron.

Winemaking equals “financial suicide”, said my brother — after informing me he’d rather I didn’t write about the family business. Vineyard owners need to deal with a seemingly never-ending array of costs and unpredictable variables.

The land’s times are slow. Wine production, from planting to tasting, spans more than three years. Unexploded bombs can surprise wine growers at every turn. Grapes are highly vulnerable to bacteria, with all the nooks and crannies of a vine to nestle in, and to exposure to high temperatures and humidity. Unlike beverages with a higher alcoholic percentage, such as whisky, wine is prone to nasty contaminations during the vinification process, which can only be staved off with a near-obsessive hygienic regime.

And, after years of strenuous work, winemakers dive headfirst into a saturated market.

Planted land can cost €2mn per hectare and a good vineyard tractor as much as a new Porsche

Yet, sales for wine-estate properties across southern Europe have been on the rise for years, according to the estate agency Knight Frank. Why? “I can think of all sorts of reasons to buy a winery, but purely as an investment is not one of them,” says Bill Thomson of Knight Frank Italy.

Not even Hollywood could make a go of the archetypal corporate-gone-bucolic career switch. In 2006’s A Good Year, Russell Crowe turns down a coveted role in finance in the City of London to embrace the vigneron life (and a glowing Marion Cotillard) — the film bombed at the box office.

Following an eerily similar trajectory, Mr Giusti, when I was six, abandoned a generously paid job, sold the only property to his name and borrowed money to buy a vineyard in a region of Italy that I’m not allowed to name.

In 2015, Francesca Seralvo, a former M&A lawyer, deserted her career in Milan to take over her third-generation family winery, Tenuta Mazzolino. She loves it but admits: “I now work doubly hard.”

Only doubly? My brother likened the 2014 harvest to the Normandy landings. “We were covered in mud, the tractors were bogged, we could barely see,” he says. Most grapes were lost.

Weather events can be devastating. In 2017, spring frost visited Bordeaux overnight. Daragh Quinn, who left an 18-year career in investment banking to join the family winery in January, tells me his story over the phone.

“We managed to save a few grapes but we didn’t feel they were good enough quality to make and commercialise any wine in 2017.” The vineyard’s revenue for that year was zero. Costs were not zero.

“Winemaking is seriously expensive,” says Seralvo. First and foremost, in regions with decent terroir or an appellation, planted land can cost €2mn per hectare. Then there is the vineyard and wine cellar machinery. A good vineyard tractor can cost as much as a brand new Porsche. A smooth-running bottle-filling machine can cost €100,000. Wine vats, where the wine ferments, typically cost €15,000. For the wine yielded by a small vineyard, you need 15 of them. For all the machinery for commercial production, you might need €300,000.

So is it all downside? Not at all. Most winemakers I know — including the (ahem) desperate ones — share a feeling of blessedness, of satisfaction with their lifestyle and of belonging to the land. Seralvo calls winemaking “the most beautiful job in the world”. She loves being attuned to the changing seasons and walking every day across the fields where she grew up.

“The idea that [the wine we make] ends up on somebody’s table with family or a friend” is what motivates Quinn to continue the 500-year-old work on his French vineyard.

“Passion for wine underpins all the work,” my father says, “and cultivating the millennia-old relationship with the land.”

Somehow, we haven’t lost the house (yet). When I was growing up, I might have been aware my father was losing sleep or being overly conscious of the weather. But there were many sunny days spent driving around the vines with him on the tractor, splashing inside old plastic wine vats with my brother, roaming the hill and picking fruit. It was, at least sometimes, idyllic.

And now, of course, there is the wine. It is undeniably, memorably, intoxicatingly delicious. I’m just sorry I promised my brother I wouldn’t tell you what it’s called.

Marianna Giusti is an FT Weekend audience engagement journalist

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