Published by crushpad at Feb 08, 2010 - 2 Comments and counting

We are pleased to tell you about an incredible opportunity for Crushpad and our community. After six years operating in the city, Crushpad is moving from its San Francisco warehouse into a true winery on Napa’s Silverado Trail.

We are moving into a winery in the Oak Knoll district called Silverado Trail Wine Studio. The winery is owned by Premier Pacific Vineyards (PPV), a high-profile vineyard development company that also happens to be our largest supplier of grapes. This is a great partnership for both companies and for our clients as I explain below.

The winery itself was built around 1980 and is surrounded by a 25 acre vineyard. Nobody will mistake the winery for Opus One, but it’s nice, large enough for our needs and provides a great forum to do what we do. Whether it’s fallout from the economy or just dumb luck, we’re getting a presence on a major thoroughfare in Napa without the $10-$20 million it normally costs. Throughout February, we’ll be doing some minor upgrades such as paint, landscaping and, of course, a new Crushpad sign. We should be up and running the first week in March.

In many respects, this move doesn’t change that many things for all of us. You still work with the same Crushpad team, make every decision and can participate as much or as little as you like. OK, so you’re surrounded by rows of vines instead of a humming PG&E electrical substation, but otherwise it’s quite similar. So what are the benefits of moving?

A Deeper Experience for You
This is the primary motivation for the move. While we have worked hard to provide as much access to the winemaking process as possible, our efforts to provide experiences outside of the winery have been limited. So many of you have expressed interest in getting more involved in areas such as the vineyard. Not only are we going to add classes on viticulture (we’re surrounded by a vineyard), we are also arranging sessions with well-known winemakers, grape growers and other folks in the business such as our barrel and cork producers. On a side note, Crushpad Napa will be open 7 days a week.

A Tasting Room on the Trail
At the winery, we will be operating a tasting room where we will be pouring and selling wines made by Crushpad clients. For our commercial clients, this has been a dream for a very long time. Now that will see their wine sold in a high-profile tasting room on Silverado Trail. We will invest significantly to create a destination tasting room where wine enthusiasts can taste dozens of different wines made by small, passionate producers in quantities as little as 25 cases.

Facility for Larger Ferments
This is in response to the needs of our larger Crushpad Commerce clients who want to scale up their production while keeping their costs under control. Although the majority of our winemaking will still be exactly as it is in San Francisco - one barrel at a time – we now can help folks who want to grow their brands substantially.

Access to More Wine Enthusiasts
Something like 5.5 million wine enthusiasts visit Napa Valley every year. Our goal is to make them aware that the place to make your own wine in Napa is Crushpad. This will help us make more wine, pour more in the tasting room, host more blending sessions and otherwise keep our business humming.

What do we give up?
For a number of you, this move puts more distance between you and Crushpad. I do recognize there’s something quite nice about stopping in to check on your barrel before you head out to dinner. On a personal level, my four block walk to work is now an hour drive and most Crushpad employees will have a similar commute. Some of you who visit more frequently just don’t have the interest or the time to make the trip to Napa. For you, we will work to minimize the impact by bringing barrel samples back to San Francisco upon request and we will still be shipping out of our San Francisco warehouse. We will also be operating a small office in San Francisco for some non-client facing employees who won’t be immediately moving to Napa.

We have thought long and hard about this move and feel that it results in an improvement for the vast majority our clients and, like many once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, we had to jump on it now, before we get into the thick of our 2010 harvest year.

We have created a set of FAQs (http://www.crushpadwine.com/faqs/napa) which contain many of the details, but here’s how this will play out over the next few weeks:

Throughout February, we are moving barrels and equipment to Crushpad Napa. We plan to vacate our 3^rd Street location by the end of the month or early March. All of the current phone numbers and email addresses will continue to work. We will continue bottling in San Francisco for much of February and then we’ll be bottling out of Napa starting in March. The last week of February leading up to the Mashup (which will still be in San Francisco) will be a tough week for winemaker communications, so please have a bit of patience. We will start our 2010 vineyard allocations on February 26^th.

We’re excited – and a bit nervous as well. This is a big change of venue for all of us. However, we’re convinced that this is ultimately a great move. Note that the next several days will be a bit nutty, so my response time may lag, but I’m very interested in your thoughts.

Thanks for your continued support, …Michael

Waits-Mast on Nightly News

Published by noah at Feb 05, 2010 - Comments? None yet

Last night one of our very own, Waits-Mast Cellars, was featured on the evening news for their awesome wines. Check it out.

Cooking for a Cause

Published by noah at Jan 25, 2010 - Comments? None yet

Next week on Feb. 4 we’re hosting a fantastic event here at Crushpad called Cooking for a Cause. You’ll be able to sample gourmet delicacies from around the globe and hear John Wood, the founder of Room to Read, tell you about how they help millions of kids in some of the most resource deprived parts of the world. It’s an inspiring story and if you’ve never had a chance to hear John speak, you’re missing out. These guys are doing some amazing, life-altering work.

The globetrotting food experience is being provided by Parties that Cook. Many of you who have been to their events in the past can testify that this means awesome food and tons o’ fun.

But the absolute best part is that all proceeds from Cooking for a Cause go directly to Room to Read.

Get your tickets here. Hope to see you there!

Wanna Work in Wine?

Published by noah at Jan 06, 2010 - Comments? None yet

Last summer we brought on four marketing interns to help us with some pretty important projects. I think all parties involved would tell you it was a smashing success. They contributed to real-life, mission critical initiatives across many departments in Crushpad and learned a truckload about many different aspects of the wine industry. Our interns got the hands on experience needed to get their foot in the proverbial cellar door. Crushpad was on the receiving end of lots of hard work and dedication from a bright group of people.

While we’re sad to see our first set of interns move on to paying gigs, it does open the door for us to bring on 3-4 new contributors to our team. The internship will be for six months and be mostly focused on marketing and business dev.

This time around we have some new industry shifting projects like Brixr.com and Tiny Bottles as well as exciting changes to our core Crushpad business. This Spring is sure to be one hell of a ride at Crushpad.

Interested? Check out the Crushpad internship posting. (note: these are still unpaid internships so you’ll have to be able to support yourself for six months)

Shaker Table Gently Bounces Cabernet

Published by noah at Oct 21, 2009 - 1 Comment so far

Here a quick video taken from the end of the shaker table today of some absolutely primo Neal Vineyard Cabernet from Napa. The shaker table is essentially a second sorting line, in addition to the conveyor belt line, that allows sorters to pull out jacks (the little green stem things) and sunburned berries after the clusters have been destemmed. It is only used on thick skinned grapes like Cabernet because it would tend to mangle thinner skinned varietals like Pinot Noir. The small Cab berries just bounce merrily down the line and into the t-bin to begin fermentation.

This fruit was so pristine it didn’t really need the second sort. The grapes almost look like blueberries in the bin.

The 2009 Fusebox Blend-Off Championships

Published by noah at Oct 19, 2009 - 1 Comment so far

You’ve heard of cookoffs, playoffs and at the ballot box even runoffs. This year we’re introducing a new kind of off and it’s a blend-off. That’s right a blend-off. As in a winemaking blendoff between ten illustrious wine bloggers. We hereby give you the first annual 2009 fusebox blend-off competition.

We’ve armed each of these dynamic competitors with one of our new at-home blending kits called fusebox create. The fusebox create comes with all of the components they will need to create their own bordeaux-styled blends including a guidebook, a graduated cylinder, pipettes, placemats and of course high-end Napa wines. Participants in the blend-off will use 2007 Cabernet, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc to experiment, tinker and make their perfect blends. Then, they’ll design a label for their new masterpiece by using Crushpad’s new online wine label designer. After they’ve finished, they’ll submit to us their final blend percentages and label designs to be judged. On November 9, the Crushpad winemaking team will pick a winner for the best tasting blend and our designers will choose one for the best label design.

In addition to the bragging rights of being champ of the inaugural fusebox blendoff and a stylish new trophy badge for their blogs, the winners will get a case of their own custom blended and custom labeled cuvée.

That is the cool thing about fusebox create; you can actually make your own wine. With this version of fusebox you can order custom cases of your wine after you’ve finished the blending session. The fusebox itself makes a great holiday gift but bottles of your own custom wine would make unique, high quality presents too.

Make sure to add these important bloggers to your daily reads if you don’t already follow them. Let’s see who’s the best of the best. (There are only 9 blogs listed here but two bloggers, Amy and Joe, on Another Wine Blog are competing separately.)

Dirty South	http://www.dirtysouthwine.com/
Pulling the Cork	http://pullingthecork.com/
Another Wine Blog	http://www.anotherwineblog.com/
A Good Time With Wine	http://agoodtimewithwine.com/
Windy City Wine Guy	http://windycitywineguy.com/
Purple Teeth Diaries	http://purpleteethdiaries.com/
Savvy Taste	http://savvytaste.blogspot.com/
Cellar Mistress	http://cellarmistress.blogspot.com/
Nor Cal Wine	http://www.norcal-wine.com/

Social Winemaking for a Great Social Cause

Published by noah at Oct 15, 2009 - Comments? None yet

Our largest winemaking group to date is probably in the hundreds. Gary Vaynerchuk made a Vayniac Cabernet with a bunch of crazy Vayniacs in 2007. But today, with the launch of The Fledgling Initiative, we’re going to try social winemaking on a grander scale by inviting the tens of millions of people in the Twitter universe to follow along with, and at some points participate in, a social winemaking project. Not only will this project produce some seriously good wine, it will also benefit the outstanding non-profit Room to Read.

Here’s the skinny:

We’ve partnered with Twitter and Room to Read to put the Fledgling Initiative together.

The Twitter employees are making a limited edition Pinot Noir and Chardonnay at Crushpad using some of the best vineyards in California. We’ll document this process with lots of fun and educational winemaking videos, photos and information that we’ll publish on Twitter @fledgling.

We’re asking everyone to pre-buy some of this wine and follow along with the project. The wine is only $20 and $5 goes to Room to Read to promote literacy in some of the most resource deprived areas of the world. They create award winning local language books, build schools and provide long term scholarships to girls where they’re needed most.

In addition to the great content we’ll be publishing, there will also be events that everyone can participate in, like the world’s largest barrel tasting in the spring. The tasting will simultaneously take place in person at Crushpad San Francisco, at Tweetups in select cities and online.

We’ve got some other crazy ideas up our sleeves as well so please pick up a few bottles, join us for the ride and help promote a great cause.

It’s just a little rain

Published by crushpad at Oct 13, 2009 - Comments? None yet

We’ve received quite a few inquiries about the current weather and its impact on the grapes that are still out there. Here’s a quick summary of how we determine how much we freak out when it rains.

First of all, we look at the severity and length of the rains. 6″ in two days is much more concerning than a sprinkle.

Then we look at the weather after the rains. If we see some nice, cool weather with lots of winds, then that makes us feel good. If it’s just more rain, then bad. If it’s still and very hot after the rains, this can also be bad as it sets up an environment for mold and rot.

We also look at the fruit and canopy. If we’re looking at loose-clustered varietal, such as Cabernet or Syrah, then we tend not to be freaked out as water doesn’t tend to get stuck in the clusters. Tight-clustered varietals such as Pinot, Chard and Zin can be concerning as water gets stuck in the clusters and provides a home for nasties to develop. Wind can help a lot, as can an open canopy in the fruiting zone (that means there’s not a whole lot of leaf coverage around where the clusters are - this opens up for wind and sun to dry).

There are other factors, such as whether there is already mold/mildew pressure in the vineyard which we’ll often find in very wet years. Again, this tends to be more problematic in tight-clustered varietals. OTOH, sometimes a little bit of botrytis in a white wine can be a very nice thing.

As much as I hate to admit, logistics also comes into play. If the winery is full-up then one tends to view things as less destructive. If you’ve got room to ferment, then you become chicken little.

All in all, it’s clearly not an exact science. You weigh the risk of picking fruit too early where you end up with green/undeveloped flavors and harsh tannin that often requires under-extraction in the winery with the risk of being forced to pick right after the rains and ending up with waterlogged fruit and rot that needs to be sorted out.

Having said all this, in our six years with dozens of California vineyards, waiting out the rains seems to work in most cases. Let the rain pass, get some nice California sun and wind to dry out the vines, and let the ripeness continue and pick it when it’s ready.

What do Twitter, Crushpad and Room to Read have fermenting?

Published by noah at Oct 12, 2009 - Comments? None yet

This Thursday we’re going to announce something very special with Twitter and Room to Read. We’re pretty jazzed about this project as it will present many firsts for Crushpad and make a huge impact around the world. You probably already know Twitter, unless you’ve been living under a rock, but you should also get to know Room to Read. Room to Read promotes literacy in some of the poorest areas of the world. They create award winning local language books, they build schools and they provide scholarships for girls where they are at risk of being left behind or overlooked.

We will be announcing our partnership at their events in Tokyo, Austin and San Francisco on Thursday October 15. We’ll also be auctioning off some very limited edition wine. If you can make it to any of the events it would mean a lot and you’d be helping a good cause.

For Tickets

San Francisco: https://www.roomtoread.org/SSLPage.aspx?pid=500&chid=6

Austin: https://www.roomtoread.org/SSLPage.aspx?pid=514&chid=6