Jeff Lefevere posted a great cartoon over at Good Grape yesterday that I’ve included here. But the point of his post really hit home with me since I live 2,000 miles away from Napa and Sonoma.
What is interesting about taking advantage of a hub airport in a major Midwestern market is that I can get on a plane and be having lunch in Napa Valley the same day. Telecommunications, particularly VOIP services like Skype, means I can have a local Sonoma phone number and conduct video conferences with clients. Being on instant messaging clients like AIM means I’m just a few seconds away if I’m in Minneapolis or Healdsburg.
But the point of “geoarbitrage” is I can live in a large house in the country, send my kids to the best public schools in the U.S. and have money left to stock my wine cellar. Our house in Sonoma would probably sell for almost $2 million and what we could afford for the same mortgage payment in Napa would be about 25% of the square footage we have here (forget the 1,500 bottle wine cellar, etc.).
All this means that I can work for the same rate or less than resident wine consultants and have enough money to be on-site in California, Oregon, Washington or New York when necessary. I’ll be out for a week in Northern California starting on April 23, so if you’d like to meet, just call me or send me an email.
Yes, I really like this geoarbitrage thing 
Cartoon by Jeff Lefevere from Good Grape: A Wine Manifesto
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