Life on the Vineyard

Filed in archive Wine News on September 24, 2007

What a view, eh? On our honeymoon, my husband and I stayed at a winery in Bordeaux, Château Meyre, and that was what we saw from one of the windows in our suite. Imagine looking out on rows upon rows of grapevines every day! Well, people in the United States seem to have caught "vineyard fever" and whereas once developments looking out onto golf courses were the height of popularity, developers in several states are breaking ground on planned communities of luxury homes overlooking sprawling vines. From a recent article in the San Jose Mercury News:

Some are built on or around existing vineyards, by vintners out to supplement their wine-business incomes and lower their property taxes ("We're not doing this for poetry," said Patricia Kluge, the chairwoman of Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard in Charlottesville, Va., who is giving over a quarter of her 2,000-acre estate to 24 private residences); some, like Ruby Hill, are created from scratch by developers, who see the vineyards mainly as residential amenities and who leave the cultivation to residents or outside professionals. At some developments, the vines are within view but out of reach of the residents; at others, residents are encouraged to set up their own vineyards and develop private-label wines.

The properties aren't cheap. "Vineyards allow us to charge a 20 to 25 percent premium on the price of the land," said Lloyd Mahaffey, a developer and vintner in Eagle, Idaho. But most homeowners who grow their own grapes manage to eke some small income out of their acreage, and even for those who don't, the pleasures of vineyard living seem to make up for the cost.

And as you might have gleaned from that snippet, vineyard living is not limited to obvious locations like California and Washington. There are developments in Idaho, Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, New York, and Rhode Island.

I think that the potential income for residents would come from selling the grapes rather than making their own wines and selling them, but for the home winemaking enthusiast I can see the appeal of living among the vines if you can afford it. The "snob factor" exists, too. There is a certain prestige attached to wine country living, and people don't seem ashamed to admit it:

"I can go to any country club and play tennis," said Tom Davise, a 58-year-old foreign exchange analyst who spent $800,000 in June on a 2,000-square-foot single-story bungalow at Trilogy at the Vineyards, a new 481-acre planned residential community built by Shea Homes in Brentwood in Contra Costa County. Davise and his wife, Anamae, bought the house after attending a wine and olive oil-themed event there a month earlier.

As for me and my vineyard dreams? Maybe I'll set up an arbor with some trailing grapevines in my backyard. (Unless I hit the lottery!)