When our other investment ideas take off... buy a vineyard?

The good news: there's still a lot of diversity in the land pricing within California. While we may never be able to get an acre in Napa, Central and San Joaquin valley still look affordable.



The best news: wine-producing land is even cheaper in some beautiful places like France and Oregon


Some other things to keep in mind:

• It takes ~5 years to convert unharvested land to productive vineyard
• Average returns on the sale of grapes alone is 4-5%
• "Most of the time investing in other alternatives is going to reap longer term returns that are higher," Kristein Nelson, head of Wealth Management at Bank of the West 

Sources:

• California Chapter of the American Society of Farm Managers & Rural Appraisers

• La Safer (cited in Forbes, French agricultural organization that tracks vineyard transactions)

• NYTimes