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Thoughts on the intensive business, too, because inventory turns at 12 to 24
months, or longer, hence the need for inventory financing.
future of payments Water supply and permits are big issues now.

Unlike the old days, where the county was open to almost
(and the wine biz) any winery project, today the grower must conform to
the increasingly rigorous demands of all state and local
agencies. A big issue is the supply of field workers, because
many vineyards were planted before mechanization.
What if you don't have enough workers to pick the grapes
and manage the vineyard? Labor costs, availability, and
immigration reform are pressing issues.

In February 2017, 14,000 people attended our annual
wine conference, Unify Symposium. The tradeshow
floor was the size of three football fields. People talked
about things like tank geometry, managing oxidation and
reduction, and managing oxygen reactivity. Smart bungs
(stoppers or corks) now give the winemaker the ability
to measure barrel temperature, pressure, humidity, fluid
level, ambient light, and SO2 levels via remote mobile
devices. Vineyard research is ongoing, on subjects such as
water deficits, drought-tolerant rootstock, greywater, cold
hardiness, effective pruning and the effects of red blotch
virus.
By Brandes Elitch As in wine, so in payments
CrossCheck Inc.
Wine making involves significant technology and
n Wine Country (also known as Sonoma County, innovation. And you could say the same thing about the
Calif.) where CrossCheck is located, people always payments industry. There is an old winemaker saying, "It
ask about the wine industry, and I enjoy comparing takes a lot of beer to make good wine," to which I would
I it to the payments business. I've been looking for an add, "It takes a lot of wine to create a successful new
opportunity to use our corporate collection and payment payment product."
guarantee skills in the wine business, but, alas, I keep
coming up blank. What a confusing world payments has become. Remember
the Gartner quadrant? It's also called the "Gartner hype
The wine industry is doing well. It's a seller's market. cycle for emerging technologies." By my count, there are
Cash flows, profitability, balance sheet capitalization and at least 30 emerging technologies in the payments space
the ability of wineries to price in the market are excellent. now. Gartner divides them up by "years to mainstream
We've had three years of good quality. A reduced crop last adoption." Some are less than two years, some are in a
year stabilized inventories. Total 2016 North Coast wine two- to five-year time horizon, some are more than ten
grape tonnage was 1.45 billion. The value of the Sonoma years, and some are even "outdated before plateau," also
crop was $566 million, at 221,400 tons. The average price known as "dead on arrival."
for all Sonoma varieties was $2,561 a ton. Land and
vineyard values continue to climb (10 to 15 percent last Emerging technologies start with an "innovative trigger,"
year), as evidenced by a pension fund purchase for pinot then move to a "peak of inflated expectations" and then
noir land at $170,000 an acre. to the "trough of disillusionment." They climb the "slope
of enlightenment" and finally reach the "plateau of
Chardonnay is the largest varietal grown here, and productivity." Most of the 30 or so I see are in the first
it provides a faster cash flow for wineries than pinot. stage. Some, like bitcoin, seem to have garnered a fair bit
Wineries are looking to nail down their sources of fruit of disillusionment recently.
by buying more vineyards for their own consumption
and expand production, forcing the price of land upward. There's one big difference between a winemaker and a
The larger parcels have already been acquired by the big payment guru. To be a winemaker, you must have a uni-
players, such as Jackson and Gallo. versity education at a school like University of California,
Davis. Then you need to do few crushes in the United
It's harder to start a new winery now, because of increasing States, France, South Africa, South America, Australia or
environmental and regulatory constraints. This is a credit- New Zealand. Next, you need to put in a few years as an

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