By late 2022, Ben Justman had put every spare dollar he had into his winery and into Bitcoin, and he was running on empty. The BTC he'd spent two years stacking was worth less than the debt he'd taken on to buy it. Then came the capitulation to $16,000. Any Bitcoiner who paid for his wine in sats during that stretch, he still remembers by name. That's how he got through.

Three years later, his business is growing while the rest of the wine industry shrinks. He's dropped farmer's markets, dropped tasting-room tourists, and oriented the entire operation around one kind of customer. The Colorado sommelier who once wrote him a fan letter still drinks the wine. So does a slowly growing list of Bitcoiners who found him through podcasts, word of mouth, or a bottle of something called Higher opened at a dinner party.

Who Is Ben Justman?

Ben Justman is the founder of Peony Lane, a small-production natural winery in Paonia, Colorado. He's 28, a second-generation winemaker, and an unlikely one.

He grew up in Austin, Texas until his family moved west when he was 8 so his father could build a farm. The property sat at nearly 6,000 feet in the West Elks AVA, where nobody was seriously growing wine grapes. His dad cut out a block of apple trees and planted 3.5 acres of Pinot Noir in 2004, right after the movie Sideways came out. A winemaking friend who'd agreed to buy the grapes eventually told him they weren't mature enough, then offered to teach him to make the wine himself. His dad, who by Ben's own admission has no real sense of taste or smell, ended up producing wine that a Colorado sommelier loved enough to write a full-page handwritten letter and eventually move to Paonia.

Ben took a different route first. He finished a geology degree, moved to Denver, and started a corporate job he describes as hating his life at 25. The rate cut cycle of 2019 was already rattling him. He could see his savings account yielding less than inflation and knew something was off. Then he moved into a house with a friend who was deep into Bitcoin. Six hours a day of Bitcoin podcasts while he helped build his own house, and he was in.

He made the jump to the winery the same year. He took on roughly six times his net worth in debt, most of it from his father, to keep the vineyard running and start making wine under his own label. He was 25 and still learning.

What Makes Peony Lane Different?

Peony Lane is, by most accounts, the highest-elevation wine production in North America. California growers bragging about being at 1,000 feet above sea level. Ben farms at 5,700. The altitude does real work. Intense ultraviolet exposure thickens the skins. Hot days and cold nights concentrate acidity. And the land itself is a former river bottom with thousands of years of mineral-rich topsoil deposited over river rock, which forces the vines to root deep.

Everything is dry-farmed. No drip irrigation. Ben's argument is simple: if you're pumping a grape full of water, you're diluting it. The climate is arid enough that the vineyard rarely sees the fungal pressure that plagues wetter regions, which means almost no spraying. A few applications of sulfur per year for powdery mildew, some chicken manure on the new vineyard, and chop-and-drop prunings. That's it.

He doesn't put the word organic on the label. Part of that is Bitcoiner skepticism toward institutional certifications. Part of it is he just doesn't feel the need.

In the cellar he holds to the same minimal philosophy. The wine industry allows more than 70 additives in a bottle, most of which never appear on a label. Ben uses wild fermentation, doesn't filter, doesn't fine, and adds only trace sulfites at bottling for stability. "The number one feedback I get is I just feel clean after drinking it," he said. That's the pitch, really. Wine that doesn't make you feel bad the next morning.

The lineup reflects the land. Estate Pinot Noir is the signature, the only red variety that's fully proven itself at altitude. He also makes Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Syrah, and Tempranillo from grapes he sources at lower elevation, plus a Bitcoin-themed blend called Higher. The 2023 Estate Pinot is the first full-production vintage since a catastrophic October 2020 freeze that killed every vinifera grape in the state. He thinks it's the best wine he's ever made.

Why Does Peony Lane Accept Bitcoin?

The honest answer is that Bitcoiners kept the business alive.

Ben had gone all in. He pulled his Roth IRA and bought Bitcoin near the $60,000 top. Took a loan from his sister to buy more. Ran 0% credit cards for a year to fund his life while funneling every extra dollar into BTC. He was already several years deep into the debt he'd taken on to launch the winery. When the market fell through the floor, the math got ugly fast. "The scary part was when the total amount of Bitcoin that I'd ever bought was worth less than the debt," he said. Until then, he'd always had a get-out-of-jail card: sell the BTC, pay off the loans, start over. At the bottom, that option disappeared.

"I remember thinking, this is it. I have to buy the bottom," he said. "The only way I can buy Bitcoin in the future is to sell wine for it. And so thankful for the people who paid with Bitcoin to buy wine at that price."

That's the turn. From there, Bitcoiners started buying so much wine that he could reorient the business around them. He dropped the tasting-room tourist channel. He stopped chasing farmer's markets in ski towns. He accepts Bitcoin through Zaprite on Lightning, converts a chunk of yearly fiat sales into BTC as treasury, and has put the whole operation on what he calls a Bitcoin standard.

There's a reason this works beyond pure loyalty. "Bitcoiners buy from other Bitcoiners and are super value aligned," Ben said. "They want to spend their money, vote with their money, on people and things that are driving the world they want to see forward." And a wine that shows up on a Bitcoiner's table often becomes a quiet orange pill for whoever is drinking it. Someone asks where the wine is from. The answer involves Bitcoin. The conversation starts.

"Bitcoin is a mark of high quality," he said. "If someone's willing to give you their Bitcoin, you probably have a high-quality product."

He has also made peace with staying small. "In the wine world, you kind of have two choices. You can go big or you can stay small. In the middle ground, you die." A Bitcoin treasury lets him choose small on purpose.

How Do You Earn Bitcoin at Peony Lane?

You earn Bitcoin at Peony Lane through the Bitcoin Rewards platform on every order. Here's how it works:

1. Shop at peonylanewine.com and pick your bottles.
2. Claim your Bitcoin rewards. Opt into marketing during checkout to receive your sats by email, or look for the claim link on the order confirmation page.
3. Refer friends for a bonus. Share your referral link and you both earn on each purchase.

You don't need to pay with Bitcoin to earn rewards. Any payment method works, and paying with Bitcoin at checkout stacks even more. Wine club members earn an additional 5% back in Bitcoin on every order on top of the standard reward, which adds up fast if you're working through a few bottles a month. Peony Lane is one of many brands on the Bitcoin Rewards marketplace where you can earn bitcoin shopping at small businesses just by spending normally.

When asked what he's making, Ben doesn't really answer with a tasting note. "This is my life. This is my land. This is my family's heritage," he said. "I get to bottle that essence."

Low time preference. High elevation.

See also: Earn Bitcoin at Salt of the Earth →

Podcast Appearances

• The "What is Money?" Show — The Dollar is Rotten: A Winemaker's Journey to Bitcoin
• The Bitcoin Frontier — Why I Fired My Fiat Customers
• THE Bitcoin Podcast — Wine & Bitcoin: Ben Justman
• Value Stack — Natural Winemaking, Risk-Taking, and Low-Time-Preference Mindset
• The Bitcoin Business Podcast — How Bitcoin Is Reshaping the Wine Industry
• Thriller: A Bitcoin Documentary — Peony Lane with Ben Justman