What It Feels Like to Sell Your Wine Shop
What Now? Now What?
Truth be told, I think we thought we were going to get old and retire and maybe even die at Bay Grape. We definitely had cute visions of us at, like, 70, probably in Norwegian sweaters and wire-rimmed bifocals, checking up on our kids—the heirs—and asking if they really thought that Grüner Veltliner belonged on the shelf there. Speaking of, did we get the Knoll allocation yet this year? We’d probably point out a few corners that could use some dusting, wave benevolently at some decades-running regulars, and then shuffle down to lunch and tai chi at Lake Merritt while the kids ran the shop. I think this is how, when we opened Bay Grape 11 years ago, we thought our lives would pristinely look at some time in our distant future. I failed to realize that people change—that I would change, that my priorities would profoundly shift, that the world would evolve in unfathomable ways, and that I’d eventually come to resent the dream job we lovingly built up together from scratch.
Most of that is subject for another day (a book?!) and more therapy. Today, I want to tell you about what it feels like to sell a wine shop.
But not just any wine shop.
Our wine shop. The wine shop that I once-upon-a-time thought I’d work in forever. The wine shop that, on days when I was really feeling myself, I honestly believed was the greatest wine shop in the whole entire world.
I feel the pain in the right side of my back, where the bottom inside of the shoulder blade points toward my spine. It’s a sharp stab and a dull ache, somehow both at the same time, and its pitch rises in shrill harmony with my swiftly escalating feeling of aimlessness and worthlessness. It is new—or maybe just newly noticeable, now that I have the time and space to observe it. It is either from sleeping in a funny position, from overzealously pruning the lemon tree, or from hunching over my computer in bed yesterday. But I am equally convinced that it is the physical manifestation of grief that is racking my body now. It is the palpable discomfort of simultaneously wanting so badly to do something more, something different, anything other than what I was doing the last 12 years… and also at the same time desperately craving the ability to peacefully slip back into my old, well-worn and memorized shoes.
This morning, I check to see if the Buyers have changed the Bay Grape Instagram password yet. They have not. I double check to make sure I deleted all 12 years of DMs (did you know you have to painstakingly do this by tapping each of them one by one?!), especially the weird hellos sent in 2014 by long-lost childhood friends or the mildly off-color early Pandemic days’ comments Michelle and Kat meant for me personally. They really should have texted, in retrospect.
Our last two Instagram posts announcing the final, official hand-off of Bay Grape garnered a combined 1267 people likes. “Not bad,” I muse, involuntarily assessing my worth by the count. There are 73 comments, mostly of congratulations, a few of sadness, and a handful that really give me the feels. “Legends. Never forget what you did here.” I choose to give equal observation to the disarming number of people who have not congratulated us… have not said anything… who are just carrying on without a care or any outreach to us at all. It hits me that many of those I misunderstood as friends may have just counted on us as accomplices, aids in their abetting. I wonder how often I will get invited to dinner anymore.
I tap to delete names of old friends I’d forgotten, of up-and-comers we collaborated with, of former inspirations and people I know in one context now but had forgotten or didn’t realize I knew in another back then, so many years before. People who have made amazing inroads whom I worry I didn’t give proper attention to when they were first coming up. People I know well now and didn’t realize were fans from the start. Those we’ve fallen out of touch with and whose soured relationships I regret, and those I’ve become closer with whom I wish I’d gotten to know sooner. Businesses who have come and gone. Employees who have come and gone. I review the love and support and wonder why I was always so focused not on that but instead on the haters. There weren’t hardly any haters, it turns out.
Bay Grape was the wine shop to rival all wine shops. It was built on a premise that sharing good food and drink offers invaluable and all-too-rare-these-days in-person opportunities for diverse members of our community to share experiences, stories, and laughter. It was built to democratize wine: specifically our motto was “make wine less douchey,” and we set out to change the literal and figurative face of the wine industry. When we opened Bay Grape on a block that one guest coined the “Sesame Street of Oakland” due to its diversity, we were a young white girl and a young brown guy, guileless and earnest and ardent, and we deliberately built our shop’s airy aesthetic, our team’s quirky multifariousness, and our global wine selection in service of genuinely welcoming every single person who walked by.
We tasted every single wine before we brought it in, building up meaningful relationships with the soulful producers and their butt-busting, valiant importers and distributors. Every bottle earned its shelf space, worth our recommendation because it was delicious but also typical for its style, made responsibly and with respect for our planet and people, and it represented a great value. I’ve never seen a wine selection as thoughtful, well-rounded, diverse, sustainability-minded, great value-oriented as ours at Bay Grape. Importantly, I also had free-wheeling access to it—any bottle I wanted, any night of the week, at my literal grubby and thirsty little fingertips. I drank well, and I drank often.
Also importantly, I was profoundly proud every single day of the products and services I got to offer. I was outrageously thrilled to have the privilege of lifting up small and intentional producers from around the world by placing their products on our shelves. I was truly honored to get to share their stories with curious guests, and I was extremely delighted when we got to be among the first “believers” in a young winemaker crafting really compelling stuff. It was so gratifying to get to help them build their brands and watch their followings grow over the years. It was equally, if not even more gratifying, to watch guests grow their knowledge of wine with us over the years. I remember more than a few who started their wine journeys with us, casually enjoying a few bottles, delving gently into deeper explorations before ultimately realizing their calling… we watched and sipped and learned along with them as they grew into full-fledged, real-deal sommeliers or winemakers or importers or educators. We tried to always cheer everyone on, and we tried to give as much of our time and knowledge and encouragement as we could to those who passed through our doors. I adored this work.
Of course, I also made so many mistakes. I had been taught next to nothing about business management or team leadership in my previous positions (never mind how to even read a P&L or file annual legal entity renewals), and “learning by doing” I now know inevitably means “learning by failing.” (I am still deeply ashamed by failure.) I was often confused and lacked grace, putting on a tough and certain girl-boss face—as one does—but feeling overwhelmed and under-appreciated pretty much every day, all day, for years and years on end. I believed self-care was for children and time off would invariably result in business losses. I paid myself less than my staff, and I valued myself less than everyone. The toll, I began to eventually notice, was coming up past due.
Over a decade after opening our first location of Bay Grape and four years after the second, I am truly proud of all we accomplished at that little shop, and I am also so fucking thrilled to finally be done that I can hardly contain my stoke. I am overwhelmed with joy at the community we created, and I’m also so far beyond burnt out that I don’t know if I’ll ever find my spark again. I am ready to scream from the rooftops that I can finally prioritize myself and my family, and I also want to sob into my pillow, racked with grief over loss, deeply mourning the fulfillment I once felt in service. It is everything, all at once.
I loved, desperately, everything we created at Bay Grape in Oakland and in Napa. I heave with big, ugly, snot-dripping sobs on and off today because when I think of the kinds of places in the world that I most want to encounter, the kinds of places I most want to exist and I most want to support on this entire planet, I think of Bay Grape.
In my grieving state, hoping for a distraction from my messy emotions, I accidentally see the headlines because my credit card on file for The New York Times belongs to the shop that I no longer own, and I am being asked to update it. Everything that was good and wholesome and soul-nourishing and meaningful to me in the whole world was at Bay Grape. Wine. Sustainability. Education. Equity. Community. Joy. I see the news, and I worry in a gut-wrenching way that it’s all slipping away. I am so profoundly sad that I couldn’t do more to save it.
I am cold and lonely, a blank calendar page void of meetings blurring the parameters of my day like the morning fog dissolving the edges of the trees across the street. I watch the cars outside hurrying the children to school, rushing the adults to offices and appointments while I decide, perhaps it would be a good idea to put on real pants. My jeans are too tight in that area by the zipper that has been a constant problem the past two years, and my husband and kiddo—whom I told everyone I was quitting the shops to spend more time with—are both driving me fucking nuts with their attitudes and bickering, so as they leave without remembering to close the garage door, I do not tell them goodbye, or to have a good day, or that I love them.
I pause before pushing the button to close the garage. I decide to count how many bottles of wine we have on-hand, stacked there by the bikes in the corner. This will determine how long before we have to go shopping somewhere else and pay full retail price and be worried that we won’t like the bottle after all or be disappointed that it didn’t end up pairing well with the curry tonight. There are just over five cases. So we will need to do that in two months and four days. And then, forever after. It is too close for comfort. I am depressed, and I am so petty. This is what I worry about: not having free access to booze.
I check my email. There is none. I click over to the permanently open tab on my browser that displays my staff schedule. There are no more time off requests to process. Ever. I close the tab. I realize I should delete the bookmark. I do not.
There is a tendency humans unfortunately have to reminisce over the good old days, and to also never know they are the good old days when they are happening. I have been doing this a lot lately: excessively reminiscing over the good old days of Bay Grape—the days with Kamaria and Delia and Zach and Sam, the curious and fun and delightful days—and wondering if that was as good as it gets, if indeed the grass is always greener, if I had everything, in fact, but I was greedy and selfish and I walked away when I should have stayed. I wonder if I am just a lazy quitter.
Back at my desk, my jeans are really digging into the poochy part of my stomach that I cannot stand, and I remember how exhausting it is to put on real pants every day. I remember like it was yesterday (and, well… it was): It is exhausting wearing them uncomfortably, self-consciously, at work all day while wondering if everyone else is noticing how my stomach bulges at the zipper area. Plus, frankly? I need to fart. But everyone keeps asking for things, so I can never get a second alone to unzip and exhale for just one hot minute. I can also never finish a single task I started, the team and the guests and the partner are all getting mad at me for not properly prioritizing them, and every day feels more precarious and urgent and harried and horrible. Sales are down. Staff is short. I operate in eternal panic mode. The sparks of fun, creative joy I feel when I have a brilliant idea to host a forward-thinking event with illustrious guests and cool crudités with trendy miso dips that pair perfectly with really fucking thoughtful wines are invariably stamped out by a river rush of panic because there is not enough time in the day to craft enough soulful, artfully shot Instagram posts about it. I never get the filters right, and despite my excellent caption writing, the algorithm damningly diminishes each post’s reach, so now only 12 people saw it and none of them bought tickets and the miso dips required an advanced minimum order and it is going to be so embarrassing to host Javier when only four people are going to show up and SHOULD WE JUST CANCEL?! Also my staff just called out sick, and someone DM’ed me that miso dip somehow actually constituted cultural appropriation. I am about to crash into cancellation. Speaking of crashing: Did I tell you the one about how I realized I didn’t have car insurance for four years? Huh! Who knew. Not me; I was too busy holding in my farts and reconciling inventory discrepancies and trying to get in touch with Waste Management for an off-schedule pick-up because some dipshit saw our recycling bin overnight on the curb and decided to dump his old VHS tapes and dirty baby diapers into it. Have I told you how many times I’ve sorted other people’s waste out of our businesses’ recycling bins?
That was part of it, though, right? That was part of the legitimacy, the credibility: Our shop was tangible, physical, hard evidence that I was doing something worthwhile and worthy. It was a place people could walk into, could touch and feel and acknowledge that I was doing something REAL with my life, that I was doing something measurable that mattered for our wine industry, that was meaningful for our community. It also gave me an excuse (okay, AMPLE excuses) that I could point towards when things were hard or when I was lousy, and I could say: “This. This is why I’m having trouble. Do you see how I have all this literal shit to deal with?” I would hold up the dirty diapers and the VHS tapes. Brick and mortar hospitality is not for the faint of heart, and I carried it around like a badge of honor to show the world that I deserved respect and admiration. I was worthy.
This weekend someone asked me for the first time since the deal closed, “What do you do?” and I was deeply disturbed with my answer. “Oh, well, I used to own two wine shops and bars and a restaurant. I still have the restaurant. And… I write… I write about wine.” My fumbling was so lame. I *used* to own two wine shops? Who cares? I stammered, realizing that being a wine writer immediately cast me as less significant, less cool, less tangible and worthy, more self-indulgent and fluffy and obnoxiously precious. Whenever I hear anyone say “I write about wine,” I am careful to only roll my eyes when they can’t see me and to discretely save my gag reflex for later. A wine writer? Eeew. Even I can’t stand to read wine writing. What am I DOING HERE?
After I finish my tea, I try out a few other sample scripts in my head. “So, Stevie, what do you do?” I imagine a cool guest at a dinner party asking me.
“I’m writing a book. It’s about… why wine matters.”
Ew. So precious.
“I do copywriting and brand strategy for wine and hospitality clients.”
Meh. This one sounded like a legitimate job… but a boring one. It lacked the cool-kid mic-drop impact of “I own a wine shop and bar.” That one just hit. It carried cachet. People want to be friends with the girl who has a wine shop they can visit. But who wants to talk about copywriting for wine importers or brand strategy for RTD spritzes? (Unless you’re already a wine importer or you’re crafting a RTD spritz, in which case you’re one of 11 people already in my orbit and you’re secretly still kind of confused about why I sold my shops.) I wonder what is tangible in my work, now. I wonder if there is any there there.
It’s 10:00am. The fog has burned off, and it’s glorious outside—warm, cerulean skies filled with chipper chirping finches while the hills in the distance seem to glow they’re so green. I have a dinner reservation with friends tonight, and I’d like to help that pro bono church client with their website later this afternoon… but in between then and now, no one needs me.
No one needs me.
No one needs me.
I slip on my running shoes. This pair is brand new; I finally found time to buy them yesterday. The soles aren’t worn thin and there’s no frayed toe box awkwardly showing off too many years of wear and tear, way overdue for replacement. I lace them tightly, inhale wide and open, exhale slow and sure. I step over the threshold, down the stairs. I shake out the kinks and that ache in my shoulder a bit before easing into the fresh air, remembering my familiar, sure stride and an easy, relaxed pace. I am unworried about which direction to turn, open to exploring. I am sore, longing, grieving, sad, happy, alive, exuberant, unfurling. I am off to discover a new route.
I still remember coming across your writing about obscure varieties some 12+ years ago—Teroldego, maybe? Or was it Saperavi?—right at the start of our own wine odyssey. Reading it felt vindicating, like someone else out there saw the potential in these far-flung places and grapes the way we did.
I always admired Bay Grape from afar. It’s rare that a wine shop reaches past the community it serves, but you did. What y’all built mattered in ways that will long outlast the keys being handed over. But more than that, I admire this next step you’ve taken. Because letting go is hard, but it’s also brave.
I think what so many of us starting at that time are feeling, consciously or not, is that the wine industry—and the world—is shifting beneath our feet, which feels obvious, I know. The things we built a decade ago don’t need holding onto anymore. Not because they weren’t worth it, but because we aren’t the same people, and the world isn’t the same place. And I believe that means you’ll be ready when the next thing comes, whatever that may be.
I don’t think the spark ever really disappears—it just changes shape. What once burned bright in one place takes time to flicker back to life somewhere else. And when it does, it’s always different, and maybe that’s the best part.
And for what it’s worth, the world needs more wine writers who care as deeply as you do—who can share that enthusiasm in a way that actually connects. That matters just as much, if not more.
As someone who still sometimes clings to the “I used to…” identity I really feel this. Thinking of you and hoping your next steps feel better and better.