Decant SF, a wine bar and retail shop in SoMa, will close on June 20.
Jen Fedrizzi/Special to the Chronicle
A San Francisco wine bar that aimed to be a community gathering spot for South of Market residents is closing.
Following a string of challenges with its location, including construction and theft, Decant SF, the queer-owned, bottle shop-bar hybrid that opened in 2019 in SoMa, will close on June 20.
“It’s definitely very disappointing,” Decant co-founder Simi Grewal said, noting that the final straw was the months of construction in front of the store. The city’s $54 million Folsom-Howard Streetscape Project, which was designed to improve traffic safety, has significantly impacted foot traffic to Decant. This made it difficult to pay their rent, and Grewal said her landlord was only willing to make minor concessions. “We’ve been trying very hard to find a middle ground with our landlord. We offered all kinds of different workarounds.”
Decant, a partnership between sommeliers and friends Grewal and Cara Patricia, sold wines exclusively from sustainably-farmed vineyards and prioritized ones from women-, LGBTQ+- and BIPOC-owned wineries. The space, at 168 Folsom Street, stood out from other Bay Area wine shops and bars with its focus on accessibility and wine education, offering frequent events and classes; five different wine clubs (plus a tinned fish club); and a wide selection of affordable bottles. “It’s not about drinking what wines are trending on Instagram, what someone at the cool new restaurant says you’re supposed to be drinking,” Patricia told the Chronicle in 2019. “It’s about you deciding what you love.”
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Decant faced its share of hardships throughout its seven-year run, starting with the Covid-19 pandemic within a year of opening. “The neighborhood was so dependent on people from the tech industry,” Grewal said, and suddenly, nobody was going into the office or out for drinks after work.
Decant SF co-owners, Simi Grewal (left) and Cara Patricia, pointed to a series of neighborhood challenges, including theft and construction, as factors in the decision to close.
Jen Fedrizzi/Special to the Chronicle
Theft was also a regular problem. In 2024, Decant was the victim of two incidents in two days. The first, which Patricia called the most “brazen” theft she had witnessed at the shop, occurred while she was working; she alleged that three men stole at least seven bottles worth $917, including three bottles of Laurent Perrier Cuvee Rosé Champagne and two bottles of Ruinart Rosé Champagne. The next day, while Patricia was walking back to the store after a police report, a customer left the bar without paying their bill, she said. She told the Chronicle at the time that she felt abandoned by the city and police.
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Patricia and Grewal considered relocating but decided to stay in the neighborhood and signed a five-year lease extension in 2024. The SoMa West Community Benefit District, a nonprofit, hired private security to patrol the neighborhood, and Grewal said “things were picking up” at the store, so they were “optimistic things were turning around.” Soon after, the city began its work on the Streetscape project, which entails replacing the 1880s water system and century-old sewer system and repaving the road. Grewal said construction vehicles and cones often block parking in front of the store, impacting business. “Had we known the scale of what was going to happen in front of our doors, we probably would have made a different decision,” she said about the lease extension.
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Decant was also feeling the effects of the Bay Area’s mass tech layoffs, Grewal said. In the past year, she noticed customers started “watching their disposable income,” and many people put their wine club memberships on hold. “Wine club membership dropped pretty dramatically in the past six months,” she said.
Grewal and Patricia tried to negotiate with the landlord, even proposing a revenue share, but couldn’t come to an agreement.
In 2024, Decant expanded to Napa, replacing wine bar Bay Grape’s Wine Country outpost, and bringing on a new partner for the space, Master Sommelier Gillian Balance. “I like the idea of being in a place where I can relax my shoulders a bit and hopefully not worry about my patio furniture being stolen,” Patricia said at the time. That Napa location will remain open.
During Decant SF’s final days, Grewal said, she’d “love for people to come and buy us out of everything we have.”
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