Wineries (United States) — NAICS 31213

An investor's primer at the NAICS-industry (five-digit) level. NAICS 2022 code 31213 covers the manufacturing establishments that make wine, brandy, and brandy spirits from grapes and other fruit. This level has exactly one child industry — 312130, also "Wineries" — so 31213 and 312130 are effectively the same thing. This is a short rollup page; for full detail, read the 312130 primer.

1. Overview

Wineries turn grapes (and other fruit) into wine. It is a farming-linked manufacturing business with an unusually long cash cycle: vines take years to mature, grapes are normally harvested in September and October and finished wine becomes available for sale between five months and two years after harvest [1], and much of a winery's value sits in land, barrels, and aging inventory rather than in fast-moving cash. The investment story is a tension between real assets and premium brands on one side, and a genuine multi-year decline in U.S. wine drinking on the other — Wine Institute data show consumption falling from 1.06 billion gallons (3.16 gallons per resident) in 2021 to 870 million gallons (2.54 gallons per resident) in 2024, with volume now four to five straight years below the 2019 peak [2][3][4]. Almost the entire industry is privately and family owned, so most capital enters through private equity, direct winery/vineyard ownership, and farmland rather than the stock market.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

NAICS is a nested hierarchy. Each five-digit "NAICS industry" splits into one or more six-digit "national industries." Code 31213 has a single child, 312130, so there is nothing to roll up or blend — the five-digit level inherits its child's definition, scope, and economics exactly.

In scope (the shared 31213 / 312130 definition): establishments that ferment and produce wine, sparkling wine, brandy, wine coolers, cider, and nonalcoholic wine — including bonded wineries and blending-and-bottling operations [5]. A winery's own tasting-room and wine-club sales of its production count here. Excluded are grape growing (NAICS 111332, which is agriculture, not manufacturing), breweries (312120) and distilleries (312140), wholesale distributors (424820), retailers and bars/restaurants (445320 and 722), and imported wine (brought in by licensed importers).

Because the two levels are identical, everything below is this level's own figures plus a pointer to the child for depth; the mechanics, players, and risks are covered in full in the 312130 primer.

3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

These are our federal ground-truth figures for NAICS 31213. They are identical to 312130's, as expected for a single-child level.

The federal Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a standard market-concentration measure) for this industry is suppressed in the source, so no HHI value is reported here.

Undercount caveat — important here. Trade sources count roughly 11,000+ U.S. wineries (about 11,450 heading into 2025, slipping toward ~11,100 in 2026) [7], far above the 4,560 federal establishments. This is not an error: County Business Patterns counts only businesses with paid employees, while thousands of U.S. wineries are nonemployer sole proprietors, "virtual" brands, and "alternating proprietors" or custom-crush clients that share one bonded facility. The federal figures capture most of the industry's economic mass (payroll, shipments) but substantially undercount the number of operators. Both are correct for different questions. Two more scale facts: California produces roughly 80% of all U.S. wine [8], and the $24.3 billion figure is production value at the winery — not the consumer/retail market, which adds distributor, retailer, and restaurant markups. Market-size estimates for the consumer market vary widely by methodology: Silicon Valley Bank's measure is approximately $74 billion in 2025 (329 million nine-liter cases) [9], while Forbes/Wine Institute figures place it closer to $107–115 billion [10].

4. Investable universe — where value concentrates

Because 31213 has one child, the entire investable universe is the 312130 universe. The honest headline: you cannot buy "the U.S. wine industry" in the public market. Public pure-plays are scarce and small — Willamette Valley Vineyards (WVVI, $37.2 million 2025 revenue, down 6.5% and a loss year) and Crimson Wine Group (CWGL, ~$85 million market cap) are micro-cap and thinly traded [1][11][12] — and the one large listed name, Constellation Brands (STZ, ~$9.1 billion FY2026 net sales), is ~91% a beer business that has deliberately shrunk its wine exposure to a sliver (~$824 million) [13]. Value concentrates instead among large private/family owners (E&J Gallo, The Wine Group, Trinchero, Jackson Family, Delicato, Bronco) and private-equity-held portfolios (Butterfly Equity's Duckhorn; Sycamore Partners' Ste. Michelle). Trade data put U.S. supplier volume shares at Gallo 32.6%, The Wine Group 10.3% (now higher after acquiring Constellation's mainstream brands), with the top five suppliers commanding over 58% of case volume [14]. See the 312130 primer for the full company-by-company table.

5. How the money works

A winery's economics come down to price tier × channel mix × the cost and capital tied up in grapes, barrels, and time. Margins widen sharply up the price ladder (value under ~$11 a bottle, premium $11–25, luxury $25+), which is why the industry's survival strategy is "premiumization" — sell less wine at higher prices. Direct-to-consumer sales (tasting rooms, wine clubs, e-commerce) are the highest-margin channel — Silicon Valley Bank reports they account for 53% of the average participating winery's sales, with regional reliance as high as 78% [15] — but this channel also shrank in the downturn, with DTC winery shipments falling 15% in volume to 5.4 million cases in 2025 [16]. The three-tier wholesale system (winery → distributor → retailer) is lower-margin but the route to scale. Aging inventory that sits one to three years before sale, plus estate vineyard land that takes ~4–5 years to reach full yield, ties up cash and makes this a capital-intensive, real-asset business. Profitability is highly dispersed: in Silicon Valley Bank's premium-winery sample, the 2024 gross margin was 59.1%, but pretax margin was negative 2.6%, and only about half of sampled wineries were profitable — down from 76% in 2021 [17]. Full detail — channels, costs, grape pricing, and the role of critic scores — is in the 312130 primer.

6. Demand drivers

The single biggest force is a generational shift: the core wine-drinking Boomer cohort is aging out of heavy consumption, and Millennials/Gen Z are not replacing them, with the share of U.S. adults who drink at all near a record low (~54% in Gallup's tracking) [18]. Rising health advisories and "sober-curious" behavior, plus substitution toward spirits, hard seltzers, ready-to-drink cocktails, non-alcoholic options, and cannabis/THC drinks, add structural headwinds. On the other side, affluent, experience-driven buyers still trade up, so luxury and DTC hold better than the value tier, and wine-country tourism feeds the highest-margin channel.

7. Regulation

Wine is one of the most heavily regulated U.S. consumer products, at both federal and state levels — the regulatory picture is identical to the child's. The federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) issues the bonded winery permit, approves every label (a Certificate of Label Approval, or COLA), and collects the federal excise tax (~$1.07 per gallon on most still wine); the Craft Beverage Modernization Act (CBMA) gives smaller producers a meaningful tax credit (~$1 per gallon on the first 30,000 gallons) [19][20]. The post-Prohibition three-tier system forces most producers to sell through licensed distributors. A live risk is health labeling: in January 2025 the U.S. Surgeon General called for cancer-risk warning labels on alcohol — not yet law, but a potential future mandate [21]. Tariffs and trade policy cut both ways for import costs and export retaliation; 2025 U.S. tariffs on EU wine (10%, later 15%) raise import costs and invite retaliation [22].

8. Consolidation

The industry is a barbell — thousands of tiny wineries at one end, a few giants at the other. At this level, revenue concentration is moderate at the top: the four largest firms hold about 37.8% of receipts, the top eight ~46.2%, the top 20 ~56.1%, and the top 50 ~66% [6]. Volume is far more concentrated than revenue, since Gallo alone ships ~90 million cases and the top five suppliers command over 58% of case volume [14]. The downturn is accelerating shakeout: Constellation exited mainstream wine (selling those brands to The Wine Group for $846.5 million in 2025), Duckhorn went private ($1.95 billion), Vintage Wine Estates went bankrupt, and California growers pulled out ~38,000–40,000 acres of vineyards (~7% of state acreage) in 2024–25 to work off a grape glut, with an estimated 30% of the 2025 crop going unsold [23][24][25].

9. Risks

The defining risk is structural demand decline — the generational move away from wine, which premiumization softens but does not reverse. Layered on top: a health and regulatory overhang (cancer-warning labels, tighter drinking guidelines); oversupply and price pressure from the grape glut and heavy discounting; capital intensity and illiquidity (land, barrels, and multi-year aging inventory tie up cash and are slow to sell in a downturn); climate and agricultural risk (wildfire smoke taint, drought, frost, excessive harvest rain, heat spikes, pests, grapevine red blotch, and phylloxera can reduce yield or make grapes commercially unusable) [1]; trade/tariffs; and distribution power as wholesalers consolidate.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public routes are limited: Constellation (STZ) is a beer bet with token wine exposure; WVVI and CWGL are genuine but micro-cap, thinly traded pure-plays (WVVI's 2025 results illustrate the challenge: 60.5% gross margin but a $1.44 million operating loss) [1][11]; Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) is large but foreign-listed; and farmland REITs such as Gladstone Land (LAND) give indirect exposure to vineyard land, not winery equity [26]. Most capital actually goes through private routes — private equity, direct winery/vineyard ownership, and equity crowdfunding / Regulation A offerings. Near term, expect the volume slump to persist — SVB expects demand deterioration to moderate with the market bottoming in 2027–2028 [9] — while value holds up better as premiumization does the heavy lifting; vineyard removals should gradually rebalance the grape oversupply, and the health/labeling and trade debates are the overhangs to watch. For most investors the practical conclusion is that wine is largely a private-market and real-asset industry with a demanding demand backdrop — approached selectively, not as a broad public-equity theme. For the complete analysis, read the 312130 primer.

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Sources

1. Willamette Valley Vineyards, 2025 Form 10-K (harvest timing, inventory, financials, risk factors). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/838875/000119983526000061/wvvi-10k.htm
2. Wine Institute, U.S. Wine Consumption (1.06B gallons in 2021 → 870M gallons in 2024). https://wineinstitute.org/our-industry/statistics/us-wine-consumption/
3. The Drinks Business, "US wine trends 2025: premiumisation dominates as volume drops," 2025. https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2025/08/us-wine-trends-2025-premiumisation-dominates-as-volume-drops/
4. Vinetur, "US Wine Sales Drop to 329 Million Cases in 2025 as Industry Faces Prolonged Demand Slump," 2026. https://www.vinetur.com/en/2026011594880/us-wine-sales-drop-to-329-million-cases-in-2025-as-industry-faces-prolonged-demand-slump.html
5. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Definition — 312130 Wineries. https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=312130&year=2022
6. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns (2023) and Economic Census (2022) — Concentration statistics, NAICS 312130/31213; U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Size Standards (2023). (Histometrics ingested federal ground-truth figures.) https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
7. Vinetur, "U.S. Winery Count Drops by 3% in 2025 as Closures Hit Nearly Every State" (Wine Business Monthly data), 2026. https://www.vinetur.com/en/2026031197407/us-winery-count-drops-by-3-in-2025-as-closures-hit-nearly-every-state.html
8. Wine Institute, "California & U.S. Wine Production," 2025. https://wineinstitute.org/our-industry/statistics/california-us-wine-production/
9. Silicon Valley Bank, 25th Annual State of the U.S. Wine Industry Report (January 2026): market size $74.3B, 329M cases, -2.0% volume, -1.6% value; 2027–28 bottom forecast. https://www.svb.com/news/company-news/silicon-valley-bank-releases-25th-annual-state-of-the-us-wine-industry-report/
10. Liz Thach / Forbes, "$115 Billion U.S. Wine Market Enters 'Reset' Amid Shifting Consumer Trends," 2026. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizthach/2026/05/12/115-billion-us-wine-market-enters-reset-amid-shifting-consumer-trends/
11. StockAnalysis, "Willamette Valley Vineyards (WVVI) — 2025 revenue $37.2M," 2026. https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/wvvi/
12. StockTitan / StockAnalysis, "Crimson Wine Group (CWGL) — market cap ~$84.6M," 2026. https://www.stocktitan.net/overview/CWGL/
13. Constellation Brands, Inc., Full Fiscal Year and Fourth Quarter 2026 Financial Results (net sales $9.14B; beer ~91%; wine & spirits ~$824M), 2026. https://ir.cbrands.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/336/
14. VinePair (reporting AAWE / Wine Handbook data), "These Are the 25 Largest Wine Suppliers in the U.S.," 2024–2026. https://vinepair.com/booze-news/americas-25-biggest-wine-suppliers/
15. Silicon Valley Bank, 2026 State of the U.S. Wine Industry (tasting room/club share 53%, up to 78% regionally). https://www.svb.com/trends-insights/reports/wine-report/
16. Sovos ShipCompliant, "2026 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Shipping Report" (volume -15% to 5.4M cases in 2025). https://sovos.com/shipcompliant/blog/dtc-wine-shipping-2025-mid-year-report/
17. Silicon Valley Bank, Benchmarking the Premium Wine Industry (2024 gross margin 59.1%, pretax margin -2.6%; ~50% profitable vs. 76% in 2021). https://www.svb.com/globalassets/content/trends--insights/wine/benchmarking-the-premium-wine-industry.pdf
18. Gallup, Consumption Habits survey (share of U.S. adults who drink ~54%), reported via Robb Report / Morning Ag Clips, 2025. https://robbreport.com/food-drink/wine/california-winemakers-removing-acres-vines-1237351654/
19. TTB, Wine Labeling Requirements (COLA, appellation, varietal, health warnings). https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/wine/labeling
20. TTB, Tax Rates; Winegrape Growers of America, "Federal Excise Taxes" (still wine ~$1.07/gal; CBMA credits). https://www.ttb.gov/taxes/tax-audit/taxes-and-filing/tax-rates
21. STAT News, "Surgeon general calls for labels warning of cancer risk on alcohol," 2025. https://www.statnews.com/2025/01/03/surgeon-general-calls-for-labels-warning-of-cancer-risk-on-alcohol/
22. BeverageDaily, "EU wine sector reels from Trump tariff blow," 2025. https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2025/04/03/eu-wine-sector-reels-from-trump-tariff-blow/
23. Nasdaq / Constellation Brands, "Constellation Brands Completes Divestiture of Mainstream Wine Brands to The Wine Group" ($846.5M), 2025. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/constellation-brands-completes-divestiture-mainstream-wine-brands-wine-group
24. The Duckhorn Portfolio / Butterfly Equity, "Butterfly Completes $1.95 Billion Acquisition of The Duckhorn Portfolio" (December 2024). https://www.duckhornportfolio.com/assets/client/File/BrandAssets/DWC/Butterfly_Transaction_Close_Press_Release.pdf
25. Farm Progress, "California on track to raze another 40,000 acres of vineyards," 2026; Vinetur, "California Vineyards Accelerate Removals," 2026. https://www.farmprogress.com/grapes/california-on-track-to-raze-another-40-000-acres-of-vineyards
26. Gladstone Land Corporation (LAND), "Farmland Portfolio" (permanent crops including winegrapes), 2026. https://www.gladstonefarms.com/farmland-portfolio