Vineyard Cost Per Bottle Calculator

How it is calculated

The tool divides one total by one count: cost per bottle = total production cost ÷ bottles produced. The cost is the full amount in dollars for the vintage or lot you are looking at, and the bottles field is the number of finished, saleable bottles. The result is rounded to cents and shown beside the bottle count and the cost you typed in. The bottle count must be a whole number of at least 1, so zero bottles or a fraction such as 0.5 gives no result; the cost cannot be negative, and a cost of zero is accepted and gives $0.00. Everything in the numerator is up to you, since the tool has no cost categories of its own: whatever you leave out of the total, such as overhead or labour, is left out of the answer.

Common mistakes

• Leaving out costs that are not obvious, such as a share of winery labour, equipment depreciation, insurance, and losses to evaporation, spoilage or unsold lots. The tool divides exactly what you enter, so an incomplete total understates the true cost per bottle.
• Counting all litres produced as bottles. Enter only the bottles actually filled and saleable, not the volume in tanks or barrels, which includes lees and losses.
• Using a budgeted cost with the actual bottle count, or the reverse. Use both from the same stage, either both planned or both final.
• Entering a bottle count of zero or a fraction, such as a half bottle for a tasting sample. The field takes whole bottles from 1 upward and shows no result otherwise.
• Reading cost per bottle as a selling price. It excludes any margin, distributor share and sales tax.