Frequently Asked Questions - Sonoma
Where is Crushpad moving? As of April 30, 2011, our new winemaking and administrative offices will be located in the historic Sebastiani Winery near downtown Sonoma at 389 4th Street East, Sonoma, CA 95476. Our phone number will remain the same: 707-637-8821.
Why is Crushpad moving to a new winery? Over the past seven years of making wine, Crushpad has expanded from a community winery for San Francisco-based hobbyists to a company that has created over 5,000 unique wines for clients from all corners of the world, including over 100 Commerce Clients. In 2010 we realized a major goal of being closer to wine country with our move to the Silverado Trail facility in Napa Valley. After a year of making wine there, it was clear we would need a larger winery space to support our expansion and at the same time ensure that our clients have as much winemaking access as possible. Moving our headquarters to the Sebastiani Winery represents a major milestone in our evolution. It is a world-class facility which will give us our own dedicated space and greater control over the winemaking process.
The new winery will give you more in-depth collaboration with our winemaking team, additional opportunities for hands-on involvement, and much more control over the production of your wine. We've always made it a priority to offer the most cutting-edge winemaking equipment, and the new winery will give you more access to the best tools available to make wines of the highest quality possible.
We are also hard at work building a dynamic, 1,500 square-foot Visitor Center with interactive multimedia educational stations, a VIP room, and a tasting bar where Commerce Clients can showcase wines to tens of thousands of potential retail customers every year. Our goal is to open this by mid-summer.
Sebastiani's beautiful, historic winery and its central location near downtown Sonoma have made it a major destination for tourists and wine lovers. This year we will be expanding the reach of our Passport program to assist you with everything from booking a car and hotel, to securing reservations at the hottest new restaurant.
How will Crushpad's move to Sonoma enhance a client's ability to collaborate with winemakers? Sebastiani offers a larger production facility and an infrastructure to give you more access during the winemaking process than was possible in Napa Valley. Because of the additional space and the more sophisticated design of the winery, we are now in complete control of the winemaking process. The result is more opportunities for you to interact with the winemaking team. Some of these include:
- Grape Sorting: Removing unwanted berries to ensure only the best fruit goes into your wine
- Inoculation: Initiating the wine's fermentation by “pitching yeast” into the must
- Cap management: Punching down grape skins to extract color and flavor
- Pressing: Extracting red wines to desired color, flavor and tannin levels into barrels for aging
- Barrel Samples: Tasting wines to track the wine's development
- Blending: Perfecting your wine's desired aromas, flavors and textures
- Bottling: Filling the bottles and finalizing your wine with a cork and label
How will the Visitor Center work? The new Crushpad Visitor Center will feature educational stations, with automatic wine pouring stations and touch screen technology to introduce visitors to wine growing and vinification. The experience will be supported by a well-trained team of wine specialists dedicated to educating the public on the various vineyards and varietals that go into each wine. The Visitor Center will also serve as the ideal location for Crushpad events, seminars and crush camps, as well as a potential space for Commerce Clients to host events. We will encourage all of our clients to take advantage of the Visitor Center's VIP private room for meetings with their group and our winemaking team, and the main fireplace lounge for socializing with fellow winemakers over a glass after a long day of winemaking.
Will the move change the vineyard sourcing? Sonoma offers substantial advantages when it comes to sourcing fruit. Its central location offers us easy access to Sonoma County's diverse growing regions, as well as other AVAs in Mendocino, Napa Valley and the Central Coast. This will enable us to source fruit from even more diverse sites while maintaining the freshness of the grapes. We have added six new vineyard sources in 2011, and we anticipate another half-dozen additions over the course of the growing season.
Does Bill Foley now wholly own Crushpad? No, but Foley Family Wines, an award-winning portfolio of wineries and hospitality properties founded by Bill Foley, recently became a principal investor in Crushpad. In addition to owning Sebastiani, Bill Foley is also Chairman of the Board of Directors for Fidelity National Inc. He recognized Crushpad as being a strong complementary brand with a solid 7-year track record and a talented winemaking staff. He also strongly believes in the importance for wine lovers to be connected to the winemaking experience, which he is now supporting through a new investment and access to Sebastiani's winery. Other recent investors include Gap executive Bill Fisher, wine industry veteran Jean-Charles Boisset, and Durell Vineyard owner Bill Price.
What happens if I want to continue making my wine in Napa? While we enjoyed our brief tenure on the Silverado Trail in Napa, the opportunity to expand to Sebastiani offered too many benefits to pass up. However, we have no intention of abandoning Napa. We will continue to offer our clients the option of making wine in Napa Valley in the facility of our longtime partner Bin to Bottle. Our winemaking team will work in tandem with the Bin to Bottle team to ensure each wine produced meets Crushpad's exacting standards of excellence.
