The owners of Galena Cellars Winery and Tasting Room at 227 S. Third St. in Geneva are permanently closing the business on Monday after being hit hard by the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Open since 2004, the family-run business is looking to expand its production footprint in its original Galena location while acknowledging that the effects of the pandemic have taken a toll on the satellite Geneva location.
Ellen Schlaman, 64, of Galena, the manager of the Geneva location from its opening until 2020, and who now serves as the winery’s design manager, reflected on the 18 years the store has been open and the forces that are shutting it down.
“I still work for Galena Cellars as my husband and I have now moved to Galena,” Schlaman said this week while helping close down the Geneva store. “I really enjoyed the community here. We were part of the Chamber of Commerce and worked with lots of store owners for many years. We will miss our customers and had such a great following. We did a lot of events and had a lot of laughs.”
Schlaman said a few factors have led to the closing including COVID-19 which she said “has hit a lot of people hard.”
“It hit this location particularly hard and we thought we were coming out of it but the result or the finding was that the owners decided to reel things in and bring everything back to Galena so that we can still provide quality wine,” she said. “We’ve outgrown our production facility in our Galena location at the vineyard and we really need to concentrate on that. In order to do that, they (the owners) had to make the hard decision to close this location.”
Customers like Ben McInturff of Chicago, who came for his final visit this week, said he has been traveling to the Geneva location “since it opened” and has a couple of favorite wines he enjoys more than just about anything else.
“We buy the sangria and a wine known as the Wedding Cake – we get lots of them and that’s why we’re out today,” McInturff said Tuesday. “We have relatives that live in Galena that are going to pick up wine out there for me now, but we’re going to miss it.”
Schlaman emphasized that two Galena locations remain “including our store downtown on Main Street and the vineyard which is six miles east of downtown Galena off of Ford Road.”
“Expansion of the winery hasn’t started yet and it’s pretty exciting even though it’s very hard to leave Geneva,” Schlaman said. “We have a large wine club membership and we really want to take care of our wine club members so expanding our production and rebuilding we’ll be better able to take care of them.”
Schlaman acknowledged those club members that remain here in Geneva won’t have the easy access to wine at the local store but notes “it’s the same as people who go to California and join a (wine) club and having wine shipped back to Illinois.”
“We have been offering shipping specials all throughout COVID anyway as a lot of people didn’t want to come in,” she said.
Communications manager for the Geneva Chamber of Commerce Laura Rush acknowledged the loss of a local business which she said was “a very integral part of downtown Third Street.”
“People loved to go there – myself included- and sample their wine and sit outside,” she said. “Every festival, they were always packed outside with people sitting out there. They adapted during the pandemic – they brought out igloos – they did everything that they could to just keep people coming in and the business running.”
Rush speculated that the wine shop likely faced many of the same challenges as other businesses in the past couple of years, including customers during the pandemic “who didn’t go out for entertainment” due to the virus or its impact on their spending money.
Rush said despite the closing this week, “on the plus side, with the other locations, the family can still go on with their business” and that the new vacancy in downtown Geneva will likely be filled soon.
“I have no idea who will fill this space and I hope it isn’t vacant too long,” she said. “It’s a beautiful location with a fantastic patio and Dodson Place locations do not sit vacant very long and I hope that’s the case with this one.”
While the wine cellar will be closing to the public on Jan. 31, it will remain open for members to pick up wine throughout February.
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
