B.R. Cohn Winery is one of 10 Vintage Wine Estates properties that will be affected by the mass layoff.Major California wine conglomerate Vintage Wine Estates, which announced Wednesday it has filed for bankruptcy, plans a “mass layoff” of all of its employees, according to government filings.
Vintage, the 15th-largest producer of wine in America, will eliminate 377 positions across 10 locations in four Bay Area counties per a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice filed with California authorities.
The notice, which the company is required to file per federal law, stated that if its bankruptcy filing is approved, and if a buyer or buyers are approved to purchase the company’s assets, Vintage would “cease operations and all Vintage Wine Estates employees, at all locations, would be terminated.”
“While we are hopeful that a buyer would hire some of the company’s workforce,” the notice read, “we cannot be certain that will occur.”
The layoffs are anticipated to take place as early as Sept. 27 or within 14 days thereafter, according to the notice.
In Napa County, layoffs would affect 27 employees at Calistoga’s Clos Pegase and Girard wineries. In Sonoma County, 86 employees would be let go across B.R. Cohn Winery, Kunde Family Winery, Viansa Winery, and Sonoma Coast Vineyards. Additional layoffs would occur at Laetitia Vineyard & Winery in Arroyo Grande (San Luis Obispo County), Ace Cider in Sebastopol, Vintage’s Santa Rosa headquarters, and a production facility in Hopland (Mendocino County).
Vintage has already made significant cuts to its workforce, reducing it by 7% in 2023 and at least another 15% this year. This massive reduction comes after the company said it expects commercial operations to “continue largely business-as-usual,” despite the bankruptcy filing.
In addition to filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the Santa Rosa company, which went public in 2020, announced its intention to voluntarily delist from the stock market. After debuting at $9.68, Vintage’s bid price fell below $1 last year and has remained under 20 cents since the beginning of June. The company, which announced it had over $300 million in outstanding debt last December, also recently sold one of its wineries, Cosentino in St. Helena, to help pay off its obligations.
