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The wine industry is cyclical.

Booms become busts. Shortages become oversupply. Prices rise, vineyards get planted, markets change, and suddenly everyone is asking: how did we get here?

But perhaps the more important question is: did we see it coming?

In this conversation, Toby Langley and I unpack the Turrentine Wine Business Wheel of Fortune, and what it tells us about supply, demand, inventory, timing and the decisions businesses make when the market turns.

Because in wine, by the time the signal becomes obvious, it can already be too late.

So how do you read the signs?

And how do you know whether you're looking at a genuinely valuable business, or simply one that's benefiting from being in the right part of the cycle?

This is my second conversation with Toby Langley, and it's all about cycles, timing and surviving the business of wine. A huge thanks for Toby for joining me.

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I’ve spoken to Giles Cooke before on the Cellar Door Podcast, usually about his successful Thistledown.

But this conversation is a little different.

I must warn listeners that some of the themes in this conversation are heavy, including loss, mental health and suicide.

Behind Giles’s Our Fathers label is a story that I found genuinely moving. It’s a wine project that came out of an extraordinarily difficult period in Giles’ life, the loss of his father and mother, and then his own brush with mortality.

And rather than doing what most of us might do after a run of events like that, Giles decided to make some wine.

But Our Fathers isn’t just a wine with a good story attached to it. All of the profits go to charity, with the project increasingly focused on mental health, suicide prevention and supporting people who are doing it tough.

So, while is a conversation about wine, but it’s also about loss, purpose, resilience and the idea that something good can come out of something pretty bloody difficult.

A massive thanks to Giles for joining me on the Cellar Door Podcast.

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What makes a wine business worth buying?

You might think it's the vineyard. Or the winery. Maybe it's the brand, the wine sitting in the cellar, or the customers who have been buying it for generations.

But what if one of the biggest things affecting the value of a wine business is actually the person who owns it?

To answer these questions I reached out to Toby Langley of Langley and Co. Toby has spent decades working with buyers and sellers of wine businesses, and he has a fascinating perspective on what actually creates value in this industry.

We talk about mergers and acquisitions, why people sell, what buyers are looking for, succession, vineyards, inventory, foreign investment and the changing economics of Australian wine.

And perhaps most importantly, we get into the question every wine business owner eventually has to confront: if you wanted to sell your business tomorrow, what would someone actually be buying?

Here is my conversation with Toby Langley, and a massive thanks to Toby for joining me, on the Cellar Door Podcast.

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