What a hectare of vineyard costs, from Vosne-Romanée to the Central Valley

France (SAFER, 2024)

Pauillac about €2.5 million a hectare, down 17% on the year; Champagne AOC average €1,121,800, Côte des Blancs €1,631,700; Côte de Nuits grand cru in the millions and unquotable at the top; generic Bordeaux about €8,000 and falling in the generic-Bordeaux crisis; Côtes du Rhône about €10,000 for the regional appellation. The AOP average excluding Champagne was €93,800, down 3.9%.

United States

Prime Napa $300,000–500,000 an acre ($741,000–1.24 million a hectare); secondary Napa $120,000–340,000; Carneros and Sonoma below that; Willamette Valley $40,000–120,000 an acre; the Central Valley a few thousand. Units matter: American figures are per acre, and a hectare is 2.47 acres.

Italy and elsewhere

Barolo's top crus have been reported at €1–2.5 million a hectare, having been ordinary farmland within living memory; Bolgheri €250,000–600,000; Montalcino similar; Chianti Classico €80,000–200,000. Rioja €40,000–120,000. Mosel steep sites are cheap for their fame — €150,000–400,000 at the best — because they cost so much to farm.

What drives it

Three things: the price of the wine the land can make (the capitalised value of future bottles), the impossibility of making more of the site (appellation boundaries, cru maps), and the buyers — luxury groups, insurers, families — for whom a trophy vineyard is a store of value rather than a farm. Champagne is the exception that proves the rule: with public grape prices, its land is valued as an income asset, and the yield is low single digits.