After two decades in the business, Passaggio Wines is joining the ranks of California wineries forced to end operations.
“After 20 incredible years in the wine business, I’ve made the very difficult decision to close the Passaggio Wines tasting room at Jack London Village at the end of October,” owner Cindy Cosco said in an Instagram post last week.
The Sonoma County producer will close its tasting room after seeing a steady decline in sales, Cosco said. The winery stopped production last year. Cosco estimated that the wine tasting room has seen a 40% decline over the last few years, including revenue losses from patrons canceling their wine club memberships.
“The numbers just don’t work,” Cosco said. “You just can’t bring enough revenue to support what you’re trying to do.”
The tasting room hosted an array of events, including live music as well as birthday and anniversary celebrations.
Cosco got her start in the wine industry in San Francisco in the mid-2000s. In 2007, she joined a shared winemaking facility in San Francisco as a lab manager, according to Passaggio’s website. The following year, Cosco established Passaggio with 50 cases of her flagship wine.
In 2014, she moved operations to Sonoma and opened Passaggio’s first tasting room, which she later relocated to its current Glen Ellen location. The winery’s website says Passaggio produced 1,700 cases of sparkling, white and red wines annually.
Passaggio is far from alone, as other California wineries have announced closures and operational changes recently.
Last month, California’s oldest family-run winery, Gundlach Bundschu, filed for bankruptcy protection.
Earlier this year, family winery Gallo announced plans to lay off more than 90 employees by the end of January 2027 and close a Napa Valley winemaking facility.
Constellation Brands announced in February that it would lay off 212 workers at its Mission Bell Winery in Madera. The publicly traded company, which owns Robert Mondavi wines and Modelo and Corona beers, is shifting its attention toward its expanding beer business.
Several overlapping pressures, including trade disruptions and falling demand, have placed winemakers in a tricky position. According to the Wine Institute, an advocacy group that represents California wineries, California wine exports to Canada fell 78% in 2025, a $357-million loss in export value. Although the steep decline has stabilized, the total export numbers have not completely recovered yet.
The International Organisation of Vine and Wine, an industry trade body, said U.S. consumption fell 4.3% last year partly because of a reduction in alcohol consumption among younger people and a wider selection of alcoholic beverages.
Cosco said she has been hit by the trend.
“You’ve got mocktails, cocktails in a can, different things that the younger crowd is drinking,” Cosco said. “It’s not just wine and beer anymore. Wine has been diluted on the shelf.”
Cosco hopes to retire after Passaggio’s closure, but she said the entire wine industry will have to adapt to compete with new products on the market.
“The industry is going to have to do things different,” she said.
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