While for some, autumn may not be the happiest time of the year, it is also the period when everyone gets back to work to define the budget and the investment plans after the lazy summer days. And even though leasing may not go too well with the autumn winds, it is of significant importance to the winemakers who need to finance or upgrade their equipment to more modern, efficient and sustainable models. Be it the pruner of the grape picker, the barrels or finally the glass bottles, once the grape starts to mature, leasing intervenes in all phases leading to the harvest.
A barrel has many lives. Used first to craft tannic wines, it gives a nice, woody flavor to Bordeaux and Sauternes, and helps age Armagnac to vintage … At the end of its life, the barrel reinvents itself and can be used for constructing a boat, giving a rusty décor to a bar or even for skateboarding. Which goes on to show that “nothing is ever lost, nothing is ever created, everything is transformed”!
These multiple uses of the barrel perfectly embody the concept of the usage economy: ensuring that the user pays a fair price for the product, while simultaneously finding a second or even a third life for the product. Where conventional loans stop, leasing takes over and finances the real economy allowing SMEs and midcaps to maintain a steady cash flow. In addition to financing, leasing offers the flexibility of adapting to the fluctuating environmental conditions during the last couple of months preceding the harvest, allowing the winemaker to acquire more or get rid of unneeded barrels, depending on the harvest.
If unneeded at one place, the barrels then travel the world, go from one castle to the other, across several appellations, cross the oceans and even continents to bring that subtle note to Scotch whiskey, to the excellent port wines of the Douro Valley in Portugal, or the famous bourbons produced in the US, in Kentucky or Oregon. In a way, these barrels also take our taste buds along for the ride by delivering liquor that is of very premium quality, yet subtle… isn’t that the dream?
Autumn is therefore for our companies anything but a time of things falling apart, it is a period of effervescence similar to the bubbles of a classy champagne.
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