How a Winery Operates Predicts Its Health Better Than Its Size, Region, or Sales, New InnoVint Report Finds

The third annual State of Winery Health Report, built from 541 winery professionals, distills what sets the healthiest apart into five habits any winery can adopt.

PORTLAND, Ore., July 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- InnoVint, the leading winery operating system, today released its 2026 State of Winery Health Report, the third annual benchmark of how wineries rate the financial, operational, and cultural health of their businesses. Built from 541 winery professionals surveyed primarily across the United States, the report finds that what separates the healthiest wineries from those struggling is how they run the business.

The report lands at a hard moment for the industry, and it offers winery leaders a more actionable message than most: the factors most closely associated with a winery's health are ones within its control.

Key findings from the 2026 report:

• A winery doesn't have to be growing to be profitable. Wineries with flat sales turn a profit nearly as often as those growing, 57% versus 58%. What drives profit is how the business is run: roughly 75% of wineries with strong operations turn a profit, compared with 26% of those struggling operationally, regardless of size or region.
• The industry is under pressure but resilient. Confidence in overall health has softened for a second year, from 56% in 2024 to 42% today, yet 82% of wineries report stable or growing sales, and nearly 7 in 10 are profitable or expect to be within two years.
• Knowing your numbers pays. 75% of wineries are confident their wines are priced right, but only 56% know their profit on an individual wine, and half set prices without knowing per-wine margin. Those that track profit per wine are more than twice as likely to be profitable.
• Culture lifts the entire business. Among wineries with the strongest cultures, 82% rate their operations good or excellent, versus just 15% of those with the weakest. Culture is also the year's softest spot, with 69% rating it great or exceptional, down from 81% in 2024.
• Applied AI is starting to separate winners. In its first year measuring the technology, the report finds 60% of wineries already use AI, most often in sales and marketing. Those using it across three or more areas are more than twice as likely to report a real benefit.

"What struck me most is that a winery's success has less to do with what it can't control, and more to do with what it can," said Ashley Leonard, CEO and Founder of InnoVint. "Regional trends, inventory position, and budget mattered far less than we expected. What separates the wineries doing well is how they run the business."

The report groups these findings into five habits of a healthy wine business, each describing how a winery is run rather than what conditions it operates in:

1. They run lean and profitable.
2. They really know their numbers.
3. They run tight, connected operations.
4. They intentionally invest in culture.
5. They are woven into their community.

"We work alongside more than two thousand wineries, so we see every day that the ones thriving are rarely the biggest or the best located, they are the best run," Leonard added. "This report puts numbers to what we see in the field, and the encouraging part is that these habits are within reach for any winery, whatever the market does next."

The 2026 report is organized in two parts: a narrative section detailing those habits, and a full data section that benchmarks every survey question by winery size, region, and role. The complete report is available at no cost here.

About InnoVint

InnoVint is the leading winery operating system, trusted by more than 2,000 wine brands of every size. InnoVint's all-in-one platform brings production, inventory, compliance, and costing into one simple system, giving wineries a single source of truth from vineyard to bottle. With tools tailored to how wineries actually work, InnoVint helps teams stay organized, reduce manual tasks, understand true costs, and make better decisions at every step. InnoVint's mission is to help wineries run healthy, resilient, successful businesses. To learn more visit www.innovint.us

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SOURCE InnoVint Inc.