While everyone is focused on what Silicon Valley Bank‘s collapse means for the American tech and startup world, there’s at least one other industry that SVB played an important role in – American wine. That’s right, Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse also affects the wine world. SVB lent over US$4 billion to wineries and related businesses over the last three decades and maintains a division solely focused on the financial needs of wineries. As it turns out, wineries are like tech startups in several ways, most importantly because they need lots of cash to get started but won’t see profits for some time.
One of the few tangible ways those of us outside the industry can see this influence is their annual State of the US Wine Industry report — and the 2023 edition of the report was just recently released.