Free Vineyard Lease Offer: Follow Your Wine Making Dreams In 2026
Grape Growers and Wine Makers Seek Exit Strategies While Consumers Hunt Discounts On Their Bottles Of Wine
Over the years friends have uttered this invocation over a glass of wine, “I would love to be a wine maker.” There may be a way for our friends Tim, Susan, Mike & Rainer to fulfill their dreams on the cheap. One winery in Oregon is offering a free 2026 lease on mature grape vines producing quality wine grape.
Wine making seems like the ultimate job. You wander through your barrel laden caves with the crystal glass sipping tasty grape in a glass. After all, someone has to quality control the wine and it may as well be the wine maker.
| ‘There are plenty of California bottles of wine looking for a home, plenty of wineries offering ½ priced mixed cases of wine.’ |
But the barriers to entry are substantial. It’s all about money, farming, chemistry, pest abatement, ABC licenses, wine making, hospitality, direct sales and cash flow. Right about now you’re thinking, ‘That’s a whole lot of work and expense.’ It certainly is. There’s a joke in the industry that goes like this, ‘How do you make a small fortune in making wine? Start with a large fortune.’
With the wine making industry in trouble as Boomer generation consumers pull away from alcohol and Gen Y and Gen X failing to show interest in this nectar of gods, money and cash flow are major hurdles for anybody wanting to create and sell wine.
But there is hope for the cash strapped wannabe wine maker. There is one place where you can lease vineyards for free. With 13 varietals on 160 acres this sounds like a dream.
Celtic Moon Vineyards in Oregon’s Rogue River Appellation has an offer you can’t refuse. They’re offering 67 acres of planted vine. It’s free for 2026. They grow mature Pinot Noir, Grenache, Barbera, Malbec, Tempranillo, Mourvedre, Chardonnay, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc and Orange Muscat.
They’re ready to make a deal. If you can maintain the vineyards by trimming vines, controlling pests, watering and harvesting you can lease the land for zero dollars and create as much wine as the land might bear. Owner Dennis O’Donoghue is interested in you maintaining his vineyards. He’s willing to allow you to harvest grape for your very own personal wine.
The only catch: no place to make or sell wine. According to O’Donoghue, “It’s just a vineyard. There are no wine making facilities on site, nor a hospitality suite or living quarters.” And, the property’s for sale at $4.5 million. It might be a short lease. Or, if the industry continues retracting it could be a long-term lease. Only wine consumers control your fate.
Winebusiness.com just came out with another report showing wine sales down another 12% in September 2025 versus September 2024. Sales continue to decline. Another example of this downward pressure is Aquilini Family Wines’ abrupt cessation of 2025 production with hundreds of grape tons on the vine. The Washington producer of eight distinct labels informed custom crush partners they would harvest no more grape, right in the middle of harvest.
We recently chatted with a grape grower from California’s Placerville area. This Sierra Foothill grape growing area is known for Zinfandel, Syrah and Barbera. He demurred when asked if he sold his 2025 crop but shared this thought, “Many of my fellow growers are likening these hard times to Prohibition in 1920 when it became illegal to create alcoholic beverages.” Many winemakers and growers switched product lines to religious wine after passage of the Volstead Act. But there certainly was much more wine grape than demand. A lot of people either went out of business, created illegal wine or yanked vine out of the ground, planting different crops. Prohibition spanned 13 years, 1920 to 1933.
While there are plenty of California bottles of wine looking for a home, plenty of wineries offering ½ priced mixed cases of wine there is a great deal of pain in the wine industry.
If you are dreaming about making wine as you prepare to graduate from business school, while writing your final thesis business plan, you probably shouldn’t pursue wineries for your college exit strategy.
After publication another six acre property with “Mostly pinot noir, some pinot gris and a little reisling” has arrived on the market. Eve West Vineyard is offering a ‘Name Your Price’ lease for their Yamhill-Carlton AVA acreage in Oregon. We suspect more will be available in the coming months.
