NEWSLETTER
We're Three Years Old!
March 9, 2007So we're a little late for the February update... but that makes us early for March! We ended February with a celebration of our third birthday (bottling, racking, blending and cake) and have finished up all of the early season activities including our grape contracts so we're ready to get going.
2007 Allocations Are Opening
We have finalized our initial 2007 vineyards and Dave Gifford will be getting the list out asap. As you'll see, we have added a number of really great vineyards to an already strong list (38 vineyards now). We've also extended our reach by going all the way up to Washington state to get Klipsun cabernet and merlot, and all the way down to Sta. Rita Hills to get La Encantada pinot noir. If you can't find something that blows you away this year, then you probably don't really like wine! ;-)
Commerce Roundtable - April 21st
On Saturday, April 21st, we are hosting our first roundtable with Crushpad Commerce members. With around 60 wine brands in development, Crushpad Commerce has become a huge force in our evolution. We are hosting a one day session that brings everyone together to go through nitty gritty of defining and launching a wine brand, and just how to sell wine both direct to consumer and commercially. There will be guest speakers and an exciting announcement that will be a boon to every Commerce member. If you would like to attend, please contact Dan Lintz.
Welcome Sharon Ludtke - Director, Design Services
After wine quality, the packaging is the most important element of your wine. And while we've had a dozen or so people working in winemaking, most of the packaging has been completed by Jenny Doll and an assistant designer (Hayley Partridge - she's the polite one with the English accent). Over 300 labels have been designed in less than three years - kudos to Jenny for creating more design than anyone in the history of the wine industry. However, our growth has really strained us and so we brought on some serious support in the form of Sharon Ludtke. We moved Sharon out from New York where she was most recently the Managing Editor of Fast Company magazine (Sharon held design and production management positions with Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, Business Week and other publications). She's already whipping us into shape so expect the back end of the process to get smoother in the coming weeks.
Reality TV: The Wine Makers & Crushpad
Doc City Productions, producers of the reality TV show "The Wine Makers," and Crushpad are joining forces to introduce the world of wine making and wine business to the millions of PBS viewers this Fall. "The Wine Makers" is a six episode, competitive reality TV series in the vein of "The Apprentice" and "Top Chef" that pits a dozen contestants against each other and the winner will launch their own 5,000 case wine company. We have around 2,000 of you guys making wine and 60 commercial wine brands (Crushpad Commerce) in development, so I'm excited to see someone leverage what we've all learned over the past three years. Check out the press release.
New York City Open House - April 28th
Although we were told it was insane to do this, we are having our first ever Open House outside of San Francisco on Saturday, April 28th in Manhattan. The idea is to recreate as much as we can from San Francisco and connect all of you in the Northeast that are making or thinking about making wine. Our events in San Francisco have been a blast and based on the characters (er, clients) I've met from NY/NJ/CT, this should be that much more fun. We're going to break it into two components - a customer-only tasting (where you can taste your barrels samples with others from the same vineyard), and then a free-for-all. RSVP here (and if you're game for helping out with the free-for-all, please put that in the notes).
Congrats to Vie Winery
Bryan Kane's winery - Vie Winery - has scored a 92 and an Editor's Choice award from Wine Enthusiast Magazine for his 2004 Last Leg Cuvee. What's especially interesting about this is that this a clear example of how blends are often far superior to the components. While the base wine (a Mendocino zin) in this blend was pretty good, Bryan took the initiative to push for something better. By working with a range of blending wines (we keep a bunch of blending around just for this purpose), he was able to come up with a fantastic wine. Congrats to Bryan and his success with Vie.
Move Update
Our move to a new 30,000 square foot winery is going to be at the end of March to early April. We don't have an exact date because there is a bunch of plumbing and electrical work to do, but it's at the American Industrial Center a mile or so south of AT&T Park... and baseball season is coming! We promise to provide more info when we've got it and we'll do our Spring Open House at the new winery. We're all looking forward to working above ground... after three years with no sunlight, we're going to go through a lot of Troll-Away spray to get people ready for the sunlight.
...Michael