In the wake of the SVB collapse, some 400 wineries in Sonoma, Napa and beyond are grappling with what comes next. Their money is safe, but that’s not the only thing worrying them.
Siduri Wines and Clarice Wine Company founder Adam Lee was on a plane, midair over New Orleans last week, when he heard the news that his bank of 26 years was in trouble.
But it wasn’t anger or fear that gripped him. Yes, he was nervous. He had a $70,000 balance with Silicon Valley Bank, the leading bank for California wineries, which collapsed Friday, creating the biggest bank failure since the Great Recession in 2008.
But the overwhelming feeling, Lee says, was sadness and even worry about losing the critical and wide-ranging support the bank had offered him and others in the industry. Working with a bank with a Santa Rosa branch and a dedicated wine division of nearly 30 years meant those bankers cared about Lee’s day-to-day. They showed up, harvest after harvest, to sort grapes and feed the crew. His kids babysat wine division head Jed Taborski’s kids.
“It was a relationship,” says Lee, who sold his Healdsburg winery, Siduri, to Jackson Family Wines in 2015 and started Clarice Wine Company in Windsor in 2017. “I think that’s what’s going to be lost in this whole thing.”
On March 10, things had seemed even more dire. When the news broke, wine businesses big and small, from Napa Valley’s CADE Estate Winery, which has four wineries, multiple vineyards and counts Gov. Gavin Newsom among its investors, to Maker, a women-owned Bay Area canned wine company, were swept up in the unprecedented financial crisis, with many wineries scrambling to make payroll.
Now, it seems, the money won’t be lost. Like many in his situation, Lee immediately established an account at another bank and linked the two so he could transfer his money “if anything went haywire.
