I'm incredibly thankful that my Dad planted a vineyard 20 years ago, because it doesn't really make financial sense to plant one on the current Bitcoin standard.
I came into Bitcoin and wine at about the same time, so both expanded my time preference. I saw winemakers living this expanded time preference, but I learned to think about it from Bitcoiners because we're talking about it all the time.
Now, as I'm entering my second Bitcoin epoch and my wine business is maturing out of its early phase, Bitcoin is unexpectedly RAISING my time preference when it comes to wine.
The ultimate goal of most high-quality wineries is to have as much estate-grown fruit as possible. That wine is where you can really create something lasting and magical, because you can begin shaping it long before there are even grapes on the vine. You can really connect with your terroir to create something unique. Those flavors are yours and they are impossible to recreate.
It's a great plan, but it takes a long time to get there. You're looking at four years and a pretty massive up front capital investment to prepare the land, install the trellis system, and allow time for the vines to mature and start producing grapes. Then you've got another two years of aging in your cellar before you even start to see a return on your investment.
Obviously, spending Bitcoin on this directly is a bit of a fool's errand if you're expecting a Bitcoin denominated return on your investment, so you've got to look to fiat rails. Even then, you're probably better off finding ways to get cheap debt to stack sats instead of planting vines, given the history of four-year positive returns on Bitcoin.
We're in this funny juxtaposition of time — between the death of the fiat world and the bright orange future we're all striving for. When that future comes, I think it will make sense to sell Bitcoin to plant vines, but until then, it's hard to justify investing long term in anything that's not the orange internet coin.
For all the frustration we have about certain people not understanding Bitcoin, I'm finding a little solace in the fact that it's good we're all spread out on the understanding curve. OG Bitcoiners are able to build their citadels because they already went through their sat-stacking phase and fiat winemakers are planting their vines not knowing that they'll end up selling most of their wine for bitcoin.
I find myself somewhere in the middle. I'm still stacking, still making wine, still trying to figure out which timeline I'm on. For now, I'm just grateful my Dad didn't have to decide between Bitcoin and Vines back in 2004.
