Grape Growing Cost Calculator

Enter the area of vines you wish to include in this cost calculation. Make sure you enter the area in hectares.

You can select your whole vineyard or just one block or variety, but note that the fixed costs (eg insurance, rates, maintenance) may be over-estimated if you choose only a small part of your total vineyard, as they are not being allocated across your whole vineyard.

Enter the total tonnes produced in your chosen season for the same area nominated above. You can select an estimated or target tonnage, an average from previous seasons or your actual tonnage from last (or an earlier) season. Follow through with the same season (previous, average or future scenario) for remaining questions to ensure costs are consistent.

Note the check field will show you the calculated yield (tonnes per hectare) based on the area and tonnes entered. This cannot be edited.

Select one of the operating models that most closely reflects your situation:

• ‘Owner operator' means you do all work on the vineyard yourself except harvesting
• 'Employees' means you employ one or more people directly to do the vineyard work (except harvesting)
• 'Contractors' means you use contractors to do all operations. The model assumes that harvesting is always done by a contractor, regardless of the model.

If you choose ‘owner operator’ then the model does not assign any costs for your labour in carrying out vineyard activities like spraying and slashing. 

If you choose ‘employees’ then the model calculates labour based on the estimated time to complete different activities and the hourly labour rate. The time depends on the activity and the row and vine spacing for the region.

Costs for activities in the above two options also include fuel and chemicals. 

For ‘contractors’, a contractor rate is calculated based on the time taken for each activity. This rate includes equipment and fuel but not chemicals.

Vineyard activities, and default number of passes, included in the model are:

The number of passes for the main operations can be edited manually later on if desired.

Type of season refers to the amount of disease pressure. The type of season can be either ‘high disease pressure’ (requiring multiple pest and disease sprays) or ‘low disease pressure’ (no systemic fungicides or botryticides). 

The model assumes 5 sprays in a low disease pressure season (5 sulphur and 3 also including copper). For a high disease pressure season, one botryticide spray and 3 ‘systemic’ fungicide sprays are added, as well as two additional copper applications (combined with the sulphur).

To keep the model simple, you can adjust the total number of fungicide sprays but not the composition. 

3 herbicide sprays are included in each type of season. This can also be edited later. 

Enter the amount of your own water that you applied to your vineyard (or the block identified above) in megalitres and the amount of temporary water that you applied to the same area. The check field will show you the calculated total water use per hectare.

The purchase price of temporary water is estimated in the model based on the region selected. This field can be edited later if you want to use your actual costs.