Help Margins Recover After Permitting Challenges

Hello Margins Community & Beyond,

Over the years, I have established myself as someone who is respected for being outspoken about the realities of running a wine production business. The past year has presented unforeseen challenges in the business, with slowdowns in the market coinciding with a drawn-out 17-month permitting and building process for our "wine cubby" tasting room, which delayed our opening until the rainy low season. Although the financial future for Margins looks bright now that the wine cubby is open, we will not be able to bridge the gap between the present and the future on our own. We've now hit a point where if we want to continue our missions, we need to ask for help.

The Margins brand holds promise with a strong mission to make affordable natural wines through a lens of utmost transparency, support exclusively organic farming, and provide opportunities in wine production to folks who wouldn’t typically receive them. In order to continue the work I am doing, I need financial support now from you, my community.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read our story. I appreciate your support of Margins and what it represents in the larger context of the wine industry as a one-woman-owned winery who inspires people all over the country to pursue their winemaking dreams.

Every single donation counts and is appreciated, no matter how small.

- Megan Bell

How It Started

When I think of all the things I’ve accomplished with Margins over the last eight years, I feel immensely proud of my scrappy 25-year-old self, who created a wine brand out of thin air, without the family wine industry connections or level of investment that is so rampant in the creation of small wine brands. The origins of Margins were simply my own experiences working internships throughout the west coast and internationally, which combined with my formal education in the UC Davis Viticulture & Enology program, allowed me to accelerate my wine production career faster than most.

I don’t spend enough time reflecting on how far we’ve (I’ve) really come since embarking on this project, first funded by a naively minuscule $10K Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. When I started, my goal was really just to make natural wines from underrepresented varietals, starting with a little bit of Chenin blanc, and see where that went. Only 4% of wineries in CA are owned by women, so the odds of success didn’t seem too favorable. I had no idea that being one of the first in the “Third Wave” of CA natural wine producers at an economically favorable time was going to allow the company to flourish in the capacity that it has.

A Mission for Better Grapes

During the first four or so years of Margins, I had a major grape sourcing problem. It was exceptionally difficult for me to find lesser-known grape varietals that were both farmed organically and available for someone like me to purchase. The vast majority of unique grapes being farmed organically were already contracted out to the (mostly men) involved in the First and Second waves of CA natural wine.

Being the resourceful little bugger that I was/am, I decided that the best solution to my grape sourcing problem was to make organic vineyards out of vineyard sites that were decidedly not. How to do this with no money, equipment, or land? Kindness, patience, understanding, and pestering. For five years, I worked to convince growers why they should be farming organically–so that I could buy their grapes, of course! In some cases, I acted as the guaranteed buyer for the entire vineyard, a welcome perk for small growers who might not want the headache of accommodating the preferences of many different clients. In other cases, I plugged the increasing popularity of natural wine and resulting demand for organic vineyard sources, touting the possibility of a large vineyard becoming a go-to source amongst numerous small natural wineries, resulting in vineyard name recognition and publicity.

Both of these strategies worked! By 2021, I had had a hand in the organic conversion of three different vineyards. And by this point, numerous growers all over CA had converted as well and organic grapes were much more common, so I no longer needed to single out vineyards for conversion. I began working with some vineyards that are “beyond organic,” employing regenerative farming practices including the use of animals and cover crops to bring nutrients back into the soil. It is truly a huge accomplishment on the part of CA grape farmers how much more available organic grapes have become in the last five years.

With plenty of organic grapes from stellar farmers to choose from, I turned my attention to new goals. In January of 2019 I began co-farming a small organic vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains with owner Larry Makjavich. The immense beauty of the site, combined with the fact that no one had ever used the grapes for commercial purposes before (Larry produced all the wine in his basement for home consumption), made this particular vineyard very appealing to me. I wanted to spend time there. I wanted to play a part in the hands-on management of vines, getting to know each row of plants and shepherding their fruits throughout the entire process of growth into the wines they would become.

Market Growth & Press

Margins was growing! We had distribution in about 10 states and interest from many more, without the inventory to supply them. We needed more physical space to increase production. I joined forces with another local winery in 2020 to permit and build the infrastructure for an old apple storage facility in Santa Cruz County to become a shared winery. Our permitting struggles as late-20s project management novices and other challenges that year were featured in the documentary “Living Wine,” which came out in 2022 and has been featured on hundreds, if not thousands, of Delta flights and can now be viewed on Tubi and Amazon. Even four years later, when I am walking around the winery I sometimes still stop in my tracks with the sustained surprise that we were able to pull off that project. Two 30-year-old natural winemakers with their own production space–unheard of!

Margins started to get some attention. We received press from the New York Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Travel + Leisure, Wine Enthusiast, Forbes, and Food & Wine, amongst others. It seemed this tiny company might end up succeeding, against all odds. After working up to seven part time jobs at a time and keeping myself on a payroll maximum of $1000/month for the first five years, I was finally able to put myself on a living wage salary in spring of 2021. For the first time since starting in 2016, Margins was the sole focus of my time.

Fostering a Community Space

What to dream about next? A tasting room where customers could come taste wine with us face to face! Natural wine was booming, I was consistently sold out of every product, and the future looked bright. I honed in on the ideal location for a satellite tasting room in Santa Cruz proper and began lurking in the area on a regular basis to look out for vacancies. In early 2022, the ideal empty storefront materialized. Bingo!

I had a vision of not only creating a beautiful space for community members to engage with us as one of only two woman-owned wineries in Santa Cruz County, but also to give back to the community by creating local jobs. I wanted to create a tasting room unlike any I had ever experienced before–one with a tiny, cubby-like feel–where the emphasis was on community, conversation, and collaboration.

Our wine cubby opened in December 2023, and we invite all of you to visit this next stage of Margins.

The Ask

Margins is still 100% owned and operated by me. Our various phases of growth have been funded over the years by many loans and the generosity of a few no-strings-attached contributors. In order to continue the work I am doing, I need financial support now from you, my community.