Wine enthusiasts shopped at the Underground Cellar online marketplace not only to build their collections but because it would store their purchases in a climate-controlled warehouse in California’s Napa Valley. When the San Francisco-based merchant abruptly shut down and filed for bankruptcy last year, half a million bottles of wine valued at roughly $11 million were trapped in the warehouse known as CloudCellar, touching off a monthslong battle to free the red, white and bubbly that about 25,000 customers had already paid for, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Launched in 2014, Underground Cellar cultivated followers across the U.S. through its gamelike online platform that provided shoppers with frequent upgrades to higher-priced wine, “blowout” deals and coupons. To boost sales, the startup stored the purchased wine free of charge. Clients could receive shipments from their collections at no cost if they put together a 12-bottle package. After a battle with one of the company’s top lenders, which laid claim to the inventory, customers are finally getting their hands on some of the bottles, but it has been a winding journey and, for some, there were thousands of dollars in unexpected fees and shipping costs. “I did not think I was going to get any wine back. I pretty much assumed it’s all gone,” said Bradley Coppella, who lives in Philadelphia and had about 180 bottles of wine in storage, including a couple of bottles of Barolo that had been aging in the cellar since 2015. Underground Cellar shut down in April 2023 and filed for chapter 7 liquidation on May 1. The company had taken out an $8 million loan in 2022 from TriplePoint Capital, a lender to venture capital-backed companies. TriplePoint said in a filing with the Wilmington, Del., bankruptcy court that Underground had defaulted on the loan.
