Winery And Vineyard Insurance

The winery industry has seen stratospheric growth in the number of wineries over the past two decades, with U.S. wine consumption trends to match. Long term trends for wine sales show business is booming overall, but winery and vineyard owners know the wine-making business isn’t always a big party. Vintners of all sizes face nearly all the risks found in other types of businesses, with several additional risks that are unique to wineries. This is why winery insurance is so crucial to your business.

Just as your vineyard and stored products face exposure to extreme weather, your entire business faces loss exposure, seemingly from every possible direction. It’s essential that your business be insured for the basics, similar to any other business, but just as important that your wine business be insured for the unique perils that come with being in an industry that involves agriculture to distribution to liquor liability.

Your labor of love, making great wines, is a complex process that requires several steps before your wine reaches someone’s lips, and each step along the way needs to be properly insured.

Winery or Vineyard Insurance Risks:

As the place where the magic begins, your winery or vineyard is at risk in a number of ways. Regardless of the size of your winery business, a single event can change the prospects for your business in an instant or burden the business you’ve worked so hard to build.

• Wildfires, insect infestation, and plant diseases all pose a massive risk to your vineyard.
• Other natural disasters or extreme weather conditions can wipe out a crop or destroy stored wine overnight.
• Winemaking equipment or agricultural equipment can break down, breaking the production schedule when it does, and affecting your business in ways you can’t always predict.
• Chemicals and insecticides can drift to neighboring properties. Ground water can also be contaminated, making its way to other properties.
• Guests on your property can be injured. Even if you’ve been careful, accidents can happen. It’s impossible to safeguard every possible risk on your property. You know how wine events can be.
• Guests can damage equipment, stored wine, or grapes. Accidents don’t just happen to people, the supplies and equipment you need for your business can be damaged as well.
• Your product could become tainted causing illnesses to many who consume your product
• What if you had to recall your product-this can be a huge expense

Wine Storage and Transportation Insurance Risks

The concerns don’t stop once the wine is made. Stored wine comes with its own insurance needs. Moving your wine from point A to point B needs to be considered as well.

• Transit losses. Grapes or wine being transported can be destroyed and supply is limited.
• Leakage makes a bigger mess than just some spilled wine. Every step of the process has to be repeated, costing time and money.
• Fire, theft, and vandalism need to be insured. This can include malicious tampering.
• Power outages or refrigeration failures can be costly to your wine business.
• Trucking exposures are a concern as well. Accidents happen, possibly causing injuries, property damage, or damage to products.

Important Insurance Considerations for Wineries

Protecting your product and protecting your winery business from the risks of your product are both equally important.

• Contamination and spoilage coverage for wineries: Product loss due to contamination or product spoilage can be costly, and can happen at a time when you aren’t in a strong cash position. This coverage can help pay for certain covered losses.
• Liquor liability coverage for wineries: Guests might enjoy your wine a little too much sometimes, and it doesn’t take much for reaction times to slip. Liquor liability coverage protects your winery against lawsuits for bodily injury or property damage due to liquor liability.

Other Insurance Considerations

Businesses of all types, including wineries, should have the basics covered.

• Workers Compensation coverage is required by law, depending on the number of employees you have.
• General liability coverage protects your winery against financial losses due to bodily injury or property damage. The legal defense costs alone can be crippling to a small or mid-sized business.
• Commercial auto insurance can protect both transportation vehicles and personal vehicles used for business purposes.
• Crime coverage protects your business from theft and fraud, even from within your business.
• Cyber liability coverage is becoming a very popular coverage that protects your business against both cyber breaches and damage caused to others by inadvertently transmitting a virus by email.
• Employment practices liability coverage helps to protect your business against lawsuits from existing or former employees.

Wineries aren’t just farmers, or just retailers, or just wholesalers, or just wine makers, or just entertainment venues. Often, wineries are all of these things, creating a unique set of insurance risk that’s hard to find in other industries. Even with all that can go wrong, wine making is a calling, a labor of love, and frequently a family heritage, or the ambitious beginnings of one. There’s a lot to protect, but with the right winery insurance coverage you can rest easy knowing that if something does go wrong, you’re covered. Sleep easy at night with sufficient insurance for your business.

At Balsiger Insurance we get it!  Our team works with small business owners on risk management throughout the United States.  Our philosophy is to put ourselves in your shoes and to work with you like we are working on our own coverage!  Give us a call to check out our winery insurance programs that are tailored to the needs of the winery owner.

We offer coverage in many states throughout the USA and we have physical locations in California, Nevada and Texas.