What Are You Trying to Build? The Problem with Scaling Everything
Imagine this: your ideal customers have two shopping options. One is the Mall of America — massive, flashy, overwhelming. The other is a beautiful little European town, filled with small boutiques making high-quality artisan goods. Which do you think they’d choose?
Most of us would pick the European town. It’s personal. It’s authentic. It tells a story. So why, in the world of wine, does it feel like every new brand in the U.S. is trying to build their own version of the Mall of America?
The Scaling Obsession
It seems like every new winery is focused on scaling, expanding, and becoming “the next big thing.” But what’s the cost of that approach?
A Loss of Connection to the Land: Scaling often means buying fruit instead of farming your own vineyards. It means focusing on volume instead of quality, losing the ability to showcase the unique story of your terroir.
Forcing a Story Before It’s Ready: Exceptional wine takes time — sometimes generations. It takes experimenting with varietals, clones, and planting densities to find what works for your specific site. But in the rush to scale, wineries are cutting corners and charging premium prices for wines that haven’t yet found their identity.
Overbuilding and Overpricing: Fancy tasting rooms, architectural showpieces, and luxury experiences come at a cost — a cost that gets passed directly to the customer. It’s not uncommon to pay $100 for a tasting, even when the wines are too young to justify those prices.
Oversaturation and Economic Sensitivity
When everyone’s playing the same scaling game, the market gets oversaturated. And let’s be honest: the U.S. isn’t making enough wines that compete on quality-to-price ratio (QPR) with European producers.
Here’s what happens next:
Economic Sensitivity: Scaling makes wineries economically vulnerable. When times get tough, these operations are the first to feel the pinch.
Conglomerate Takeovers: Distressed wineries are often bought by big corporations. The charm, uniqueness, and story that made them special start to die as the focus shifts to profitability and mass production.
A Homogenized Market: What was once a landscape of diverse, exciting small producers becomes a sea of bland, corporate wines.
What Are You Trying to Build?
Instead of chasing scale, wineries should focus on creating something meaningful, sustainable, and unique. Think about what you’re trying to give your customers. Do they want another flashy, overpriced wine experience, or do they want to taste something real?
Frankly, I’d rather be tasting out of a barrel in a barn than sipping wine in a glass house for $100 a person. The barn feels genuine. It feels connected to the land, to the family, to the story. And that’s what makes wine memorable.
The Path Forward
If you’re a producer, ask yourself: what are you trying to build?
Are you telling the story of your terroir, your family, your stewardship of the land?
Are you creating something that could become generationally excellent?
Or are you just trying to scale for the sake of scaling, competing in a saturated market that’s already stretched too thin?
If you focus on quality, authenticity, and connection, you build something that lasts. You attract customers who care deeply about what they’re drinking. You create advocates for your wines — not just buyers.
The Wine We Want
What we want isn’t more brands scaling endlessly to out-market each other. We want small producers farming their own vineyards, experimenting, and creating something worth cherishing. We want wines that feel like they come from a place, not a factory.
So, let’s stop trying to be the Mall of America and start embracing the charm, soul, and authenticity of that European town. That’s the kind of wine world I want to live in. And I bet your customers do, too.
