Wine Making: Learn How To Make Wine At Crushpad

CRUSHPAD BLOG

John Aver on VinVillage Radio

Published by noah at Jan 06, 2009 - Comments? None yet

As part of the ongoing series of profiles on VinVillage Radio, John Aver spent some time discussing his wine making journey with host Lynn Krielow Chamberlain. Have a listen as John discusses Aver Family Vineyards and the new San Francisco Wine Association.

http://snipurl.com/vvr-aver


The safest place for your money

Published by noah at Dec 23, 2008 - Comments? None yet

Last Friday barrel man ventured out of his corner of the cellar at Crushpad and found his way to Union Square and the Financial District of San Francisco.  In addition to bemusing small children, frightening the elderly and entertaining the homeless, he also found time to give sage investment advice to patrons of Wells Fargo, Fidelity Investments and Bank of America.  Namely he advised their clients to put money into Bailout Wine instead of depositing it in risky savings apparatus.


Menu for Hope

Published by noah at Dec 15, 2008 - Comments? None yet

For the second year we’re participating in Menu for Hope, an amazing food blogosphere fundraiser, appropriately benefiting the UN World Food Programme. Menu for Hope is essentially a big online raffle, with some pretty tantalizing prizes, put on by food bloggers around the world and organized by host Chez Pim. The virtual raffle tickets are $10 and can be applied towards any of the cool prizes.  They are purchased through a partnership with Firstgiving.com.

You can buy raffle tickets here.

From Pim’s website: “Five years ago, the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia inspired me to find a way to help, and the very first Menu for Hope was born. The campaign has since become a yearly affair, raising funds to support worthy causes worldwide. In 2007, Menu for Hope raised nearly $100K to help the UN World Food Programme feed the hungry.”

Crushpad’s prize this year is a private blending session for up to 10 people at our winery in San Francisco.  Gather a group of your most worthy friends and learn the ins and outs of blending with Brodeaux varietals sourced from top end Napa vineyards.  This is a hands on blending session where you’ll get to create your very own wine blends.  As a parting gift, we’ll also send you home with (1) Fusebox, our at-home wine blending kit.  (WARNING: these sessions have been known to cause feelings of happiness, bursts of laughter and may accelerate rapid growth in the creative regions of the brain.)  The code for this prize is: WB16

For a listing of the wine prizes the host is Alder over at Vinography.


Dude, Where’s My 401K?

Published by michael at Dec 09, 2008 - Comments? None yet

A few weeks ago, after staring wide-eyed at the drooping Dow charts all day, we decided that it really wasn’t much fun worrying all the time about something beyond our control.  But watching the stock market bounce around has almost become a sport.  So we decided to create a real sport out of it by seeing if we could somehow blunt the pain of declining retirement account balances by offering a great deal on wine whose price fluxuated inversely to our 401Ks… a great wine hedge.

After about 15 minutes of jumping around, coming up with stupid idea after stupid idea, we came up with Bailout (www.bailout.com).  Erwin, a designer who works for Crushpad out of his home in Cebu City, Philippines (he was employee #6 back in 2005), knocked up some quick visuals.  Alan shot some video and mashed up some other clips.  We created a price, figured out how derivatives worked and here we go.

Check it out.


All I want for Christmas is a Fusebox (the deal)

Published by noah at Dec 08, 2008 - 1 Comment so far

Fusebox is once again shaping up to be a great holiday product for us.  Just last week a small business owner, let’s call him Joe the Dry-Waller, purchased 20 Fuseboxes for his best clients.  It is not only a unique and much appreciated holiday gift but it’s also an engaging group activity for holiday get-togethers (twice as educational as Trivial Pursuit and 68% more fun than Monopoly)

Crushpad is now offering two fuseboxes for the price of $199.  Give them as gifts or keep one for yourself.  There’s no easier way to experience the art of winemaking into your home.


Connor | Brennan Pinot Noir in Chronicle Top 100 Wines

Published by michael at Dec 07, 2008 - Comments? None yet

This morning while reading the San Francisco Chronicle that I stole from my neighbor, I came across its annual Top 100 wines in the magazine and there’s Connor | Brennan in the list… and Crushpad even got a bit of love.  Congrats to Matt Reidy (he’s the guy that is around often with a clipboard and dressed in a blue Ben Sherman jumpsuit).  Here’s the link and review.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/wine/top100-2008/page?id=pinotnoir

2005 Connor | Brennan Cellars Amber Ridge Vineyard Russian River Valley Pinot Noir ($42) An auspicious debut from another urban garagiste: Investment manager Matthew Reidy crafted this fantastic wine at San Francisco’s Crushpad. Its earth and forest floor and mushroom note signal all the beautiful complexity of Pinot, with black cherry, orange zest and cranberry flavors rounding it out in a buoyant, higher-acid profile.


Tom Cleary on Vin Village Radio

Published by noah at Dec 04, 2008 - Comments? None yet

Tom Cleary of Bohemian Vineyards was recently featured on Vin Village Radio talking Russian River, Pinot and Crushpad.

Have a listen to Tom here.


Wine Taxonomies - We’re bigger than Corks, Parker and Syrah

Published by michael at Dec 01, 2008 - Comments? None yet

One of our favorite bloggers (and wine industry PR blackbelt), Tom Wark, recently published his 2×2 matrix that classified many things wine-related in terms of impact and permanence.

Tom Wark Wine Industry Matrix

Crushpad, the only winery listed on the Fermentations blog entry, ended up in a pretty good position… although Tom had his work cut out for him by combining so many disparate items in a single chart.  It reminded me of one of my favorite taxonomies from the Chinese encyclopedia Borges:

Types of Animals
(a) belonging to the Emperor
(b) embalmed
(c) tame
(d) sucking pigs
(e) sirens
(f) fabulous
(g) stray dogs
(h) included in the present classification
(i) frenzied
(j) innumerable
(k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush
(l) et cetera
(m) having just broken the water pitcher
(n) from a long way off, looks like flies

Let’s see Tom put that on a 2×2.


After the Crush

Published by alan at Nov 20, 2008 - Comments? None yet

You’ve seen your wine through crush and fermentation, what comes next?
The almost frantic activity of harvest, crush, and fermentation have past, so what comes next? The wine is resting in barrel but not quite ready to settle in for winter. The activity slows down drastically now that the wine is in barrel but there are still things happening to the young wine. The final few grams of sugar, if any sugar remains, are being consumed by the remaining yeast culture. And for all red wines, and many white wines, the conversion of malic acid to lactic acid by the introduction of a malic culture is underway.

Mike Z explains where we go from here.


Cap Management - Red Wine and Sub-Caps

Published by alan at Nov 18, 2008 - Comments? None yet

How to keep grape skins in contact with the fermenting wine to extract tannins

The level of color and flavor extraction you get during fermentation is critical to the quality of the finished wine. Color is extracted primarily before, or early in the fermentation process. To get the proper tannin extraction to balance the fruit component you must manage your cap (grapes/skins that float to the top) carefully while you are at the point in fermentation where you can extract the proper types of tannin. Some wines require a greater amount of skin contact with the wine to achieve the proper balance, so for some fermentations we submerge the cap under the fermenting wine. Kian Tavakoli explains the process.


Fusebox on Rodeo Drive

Published by noah at Nov 13, 2008 - Comments? None yet

Nestled between Jimmy Choo and Tiffany on Rodeo Drive is one of our favorite new wine shops, Wine Valet.

They have a small but exceedingly well selected stock of wines and also provide some cool services like home wine tasting parties, cellar consultation and auction services.  Now they also carry Fusebox and are the exclusive LA based retailer of Fusebox for the holidays.  Fusebox was one of the most popular wine gifts available last year so big things are expected.

We’re stoked to have Fusebox in such a fashionable zip code.

wine valet and fusebox

wine valet and fusebox


Crushpad Featured in U.S. News Article on “Personalized Production”

Published by Patrick Hurley at Nov 10, 2008 - Comments? None yet

Interesting article in U.S. News & World Report about the “shift to personalized production” and customization, with lots of examples — including Crushpad.  Read it here.


Crushpad Customer, Tim Carl featured in St. Helena Star

Published by Patrick Hurley at Nov 07, 2008 - Comments? None yet

This has been a big few weeks for Crushpad Commerce customers in the news.  Keeping the hot streak going, Tim Carl and his Knights Bridge brand were just featured in the St. Helena Star newspaper. Tim joins a chorus of others who are praising 2008 as a “great vintage with a lot of potential for both balance and intensity.” You can read the article here.

Knights Bridge Winery website


Picking Bohemian Vineyard

Published by alan at Nov 07, 2008 - Comments? None yet

Just in time to beat a potential late season frost, the crews are out picking Bohemian

Bohemian Vineyard is way out in the cool end of the Russian River Valley. They tend to have greater frost pressures in spring and fall since the cool location means LONG hangtime for these grapes. And there’s the reason these grapes are some of our most sought after fruit. This long growing season means grapes that are full of complex flavors.


Game Farm Vineyard

Published by alan at Nov 06, 2008 - Comments? None yet

Rocky soils define this Eastern Napa Valley vineyard

Game Farm vineyard is off Silverado Trail directly below the Rector Creek Dam in the Oakville district of Napa Valley. Much of the topsoil to create the dam was stripped off the valley floor and the rocky moonscape left behind was then planted to Cabernet Sauvignon. So while these vines are on the valley floor, the well drained “soil” has more in common with a rocky hillside location than vines growing in the loamy soils you expect in the valley. The rows in some portions of this vineyard look almost as if they were planted down the middle of a cobblestone street.