Winery Revenue Benchmark

Average Winery Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every winery with paid employees, from a family estate with a tasting room to a large blending and bottling plant, and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing that total by the number of wineries gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.

≈$5,302,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

How this is calculated: about $24.3 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 4,584 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $5,302,000 per employer establishment.

Scope: Wineries, NAICS 312130. The category covers establishments making wine, brandy and brandy spirits, and those blending wines. Vineyards that grow grapes without making wine are not counted, and wine retailers are counted with liquor stores. Classified separately in group 3121: 312111 Soft Drink Manufacturing; 312112 Bottled Water Manufacturing; 312113 Ice Manufacturing, and 2 further codes. Nothing outside that code is counted on this page.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed September 2026

Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group

Beverage Manufacturing, NAICS 3121, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 68.1 to 77.2 percent. This benchmark covers Beverage Manufacturing, NAICS 3121, as a whole, and this category accounts for 4,584 of the 12,276 employer establishments in it. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.

Payroll share of receipts, Wineries, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 15.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a small share in a category where large bottling plants ship enormous volumes with modest staffing and where the grapes, barrels and bottles cost more than the labor.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and it excludes grapes, barrels, bottles, vineyard operations and excise taxes, so the payroll share understates the cost of making wine.

Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data

How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.

Scale and ownership, Wineries, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 13.8 people, and the industry counted 1.1 employer establishments per firm. That staff count blends a small number of very large producers with many estate wineries employing a winemaker, a cellar crew and tasting room staff, and the establishments per firm figure shows that nearly all wineries are single-location businesses.

These are arithmetic industry averages. They state the size of the average establishment and show that multi-establishment ownership exists. They do not show the distribution of business sizes and they do not measure market concentration.

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Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis

Winery: what a revenue average cannot say about a business that ages its product for years.

Before you rely on this benchmark

• Where does the revenue come from? Tasting room sales, wine club shipments and direct-to-consumer orders earn full price, while cases sold to distributors earn far less per bottle. The channel mix decides what a given volume of wine is worth, and the census reports a single receipts figure.
• Does the winery grow its own grapes? Estate wineries carry vineyard costs, weather risk and years of waiting for new vines, while wineries that buy fruit or bulk wine avoid that but depend on the grape market. Both sit in this category with very different balance sheets.
• How much wine is aging in the cellar? Wine sold this year may have been made two or three years ago, and the cost of barrels, storage and capital tied up in aging inventory is a defining feature of the trade. A single year of receipts says nothing about that lag.
• Which shipping rules apply? Direct shipping to consumers depends on the laws of the destination state, and permits, taxes and reporting vary widely. A winery's ability to sell beyond its tasting room is shaped by rules that no national average reflects.
• What does hospitality cost? Tasting rooms, events, weddings and tours generate high-margin sales but require staff, facilities and permits closer to a restaurant than a factory. The revenue on this page counts them, so hospitality-heavy wineries push the average up.
• How does the vintage vary? Frost, drought, smoke and disease can reduce a harvest sharply, and a poor vintage affects sales for years afterward. The census year captures one vintage's sales, not the variability an owner plans around.