Best Inventory Visibility Software for Oregon Wineries

What the 2025 census says

The Oregon Wine Board's 2025 Vineyard and Winery Census, released on 2 July 2026, describes an industry contracting on both sides. Oregon wineries sold 4.9 million cases, down 16%, worth $812 million, down 11%. The harvest fell 25% to nearly 97,000 tons, with Pinot noir 58% of the crop, and the state lost 77 vineyards and 33 wineries. A majority of surveyed growers left fruit unharvested, most often because a contract was cancelled.

The channel detail matters more for inventory than the headline:

• Direct-to-consumer fell only 3.4%, the most resilient channel.
• Oregon wholesale fell 13%.
• Out-of-state wholesale fell 20%.
• Exports fell 29%, mainly because of the near total loss of access to Canada, where most provinces stopped selling US alcohol in 2025.

The average price per case rose about 5%, so the wine that is selling is selling at a higher price. Sales also grew in Mexico, Sweden and South Korea, small markets but useful signals. The volume that disappeared was mostly in wholesale and export.

Why this is an inventory problem

A winery's stock is not in one place. The same vintage sits in the cellar or a bonded warehouse, in the tasting room, in reserved club allocations, at an Oregon distributor and at distributors in several other states. When channels move together, a rough split by last year's percentages works. In 2025 they moved apart.

That creates two failure modes at once. Wine allocated to out-of-state distributors or to Canada before the market closed sits unsold, sometimes at the distributor, sometimes back in the cellar. Meanwhile the channels still selling, the tasting room and the club, can run short of the wines their members want, because those cases were committed elsewhere when the plan was made.

Neither shows up in a single cellar count. It takes a view of stock by location and commitment, compared with how fast each channel is selling.

The higher average price per case adds a further wrinkle. If the wines still selling are the higher-priced ones, the risk is concentrated in entry-level bottlings sold mainly through wholesale. A winery that reviews stock by SKU and channel will usually find that most of its excess sits in two or three wines, which makes the problem far more manageable than the total suggests: those wines can be repriced, moved into club offers, or cut from the next bottling plan.

If you want to see your own stock split that way, book a 30-minute conversation through the Vintaflow contact page.

A worked example

Take an illustrative Willamette Valley winery with 6,000 cases of its current Pinot noir. Last year it allocated 35% to direct sales, 25% to an Oregon distributor, 30% to distributors in four other states and 10% to a Canadian importer.

The Canadian 600 cases have nowhere to go. Distributor reports show the out-of-state accounts selling about a fifth slower than planned, while the tasting room and club are on pace to sell their allocation two months before the next release.

With stock and sell-through by channel in one view, the winery can act in the spring rather than discovering the problem at the next release: move part of the Canadian allocation to the club and tasting room, hold the out-of-state distributors to what they are depleting rather than what they ordered last year, and look for new wholesale markets for the rest. Without that view, the club runs short in autumn while the cellar still holds unsold cases.

Planning the next vintage from this one

The census also shows the supply side adjusting. Tons crushed fell 23%, average yields dropped from 3.31 to 2.81 tons per acre, and growers reported selling below cost, cutting yields and removing vines. For wineries that buy fruit, that means more choice at the next harvest. For estates, it means the 2025 vintage is smaller than the one before it.

Both make the same point: the size of the next vintage should come from realistic sales by channel, not from vineyard capacity or last year's contracts. A winery that knows how much of its current release each channel is actually selling, and how much stock each will still hold at harvest, can set grape purchases, bottling runs and release sizes against real demand. One that only knows its total case count tends to repeat last year's plan and add to the stock that is already slow.

What to ask your distributors for

Out-of-state wholesale fell 20% in 2025, so the distributor relationship is where most of the uncertainty sits. Three requests make the biggest difference:

• Depletions by SKU and account type, monthly at least, so you can see whether a slowdown is in restaurants, independent retail or chains.
• On-hand stock by SKU, so you know how many weeks of your wine each distributor is holding before you ship more.
• Their plan for the next two quarters, so an order that is smaller than last year is expected rather than a surprise.

Most distributors already produce these reports for their larger suppliers. Asking for them in a consistent spreadsheet format each month is usually enough; it does not need a system integration on either side.

What good inventory visibility looks like for a winery

• Stock by location, cellar, bonded warehouse, tasting room and each distributor, by SKU and vintage.
• Commitments separated from available stock, so club allocations and distributor orders are not counted twice.
• Sell-through by channel, from the tasting room system, club records and distributor depletion reports.
• Coverage rules per channel, so each channel has a target and a maximum, and the winery is alerted when one drifts outside them.

Where Vintaflow fits

Vintaflow lets wineries set safety stock multipliers, minimum order quantities, target coverage and maximum coverage by product and location, so a reserve for direct channels or a cap for a slow distributor can be written into the plan. It calculates reorder points and target inventory from demand and shipping constraints and provides inventory alerts and replenishment suggestions when a location moves outside its range. It can operate from xlsx or csv uploads without requiring an ERP.

Point-of-sale, club management, compliance and fulfilment systems stay as they are. For the Canadian side of the story, see how wine distribution works in Canada, and for the distributor view, inventory visibility for California wine distributors.

Practical steps

1. Pull stock by location and vintage from the cellar, tasting room and every distributor that reports it.
2. List every commitment for the current vintage: club shipments, distributor orders and any export orders now stranded.
3. Compare each channel's sell-through with its allocation, using the last three months rather than last year.
4. Set a reserve for direct channels large enough to cover the club and tasting room until the next release.
5. Allocate wholesale by depletions, not by last year's orders, and find a home for stock once bound for Canada.
6. Review monthly until channels settle, and record what changed and why so next year's allocation starts from evidence.

To map your current vintage across channels, book a conversation with Vintaflow.