NEWSLETTER
We're In Our New Digs
April 19, 2007The move is officially underway. All of the barrels have been moved and most of us have migrated to our new 30,000 square foot location at 2573 3rd Street but there are a few holdouts who just can't seem to, well, clean our desks to move. One way or another, we'll all be in the new space by the end of next week. On a related note, I was just talking to a client who said that every time you double your company size, you have a new company. Well, we just hired our 30th employee (up from 12 a year ago), so I guess we have a new company. We're going to name it "Crushpad" and help people make a lot of really great wine. Think it will fly? OK, here's what's going on:
Welcome to Brian, Chris, Buck, Quintan, Jeff, Mike, Stu
The past couple months have been busy with new hires joining us weekly. We've got additional winemaking support, accounting, Crushpad Commerce, education and two more great software developers. We're still looking for a great VP of marketing and some help for Dave on account management... let us know if you know anyone! In any case, hopefully our new staff is going to help us catch up and even get ahead of the game - especially in the area of education and client winemaking control.
Weekly Events Start May 10th
We have been threatening to deliver on our promise of more education and more events for some time and we finally are starting. Under the guidance of our latest hire, Stuart Ake, we will be holding weekly, monthly and quarterly events. You'll be hearing from him shortly, but the weekly events will be regional tastings and wine planning sessions. The monthly sessions will be more substantial efforts focused on topics such as wine fault detection and sensory analysis. The quarterly events are things like the open houses and our annual Crushpad Invitational Golf Tournament (if we can make wine in a warehouse in San Francisco, we sure can hold a golf tournament there!). You'll be hearing more from Stu.
Winemaking Plans Are Beginning Next Week
On the topic of wine plans, if you have a 2007 wine, we are beginning wine planning sessions the week of April 30th. This year we will release a Wine Plan Companion ahead of time that contains supporting information about many of the more technical topics in the plan. It will give you a heads up in case you want to do any research before you work with a winemaker on your specific plan. You will receive a notification soon, but have a bit of patience as we have a lot of plans to get through.
New York City Open House - April 28th Reminder
A week from Saturday is our NYC "open house" at Studio 450 on 450 W 31st Street. We now have almost 400 RSVPs, but we've got a lot space, wine and food (not to mention cool new t-shirts) so we'd like a few more folks. If you know any wine lovers who are going to be NYC that weekend, send them here. Note that we have heard from a few people that had RSVPd but did not hear back from us. If you're in that category then we didn't get the right email address or the dog ate it... or something. So please shoot an email to Hayden Moulds to reconfirm your RSVP.
Pinot Days New York City - April 29th
While we'd love to sleep in after the open house, we've got other things to do. On Sunday from 1PM to 5PM at Javits Center is Pinot Days. If you're in town and you like pinot, there is absolutely no excuse to not go. Especially since Crushpad is a sponsor and is launching the New York Pinot Group... which could include you! This is going to be 150 people who participate in making a wine with guest winemaker Andrew Vingiello (of AP Vin fame) and one lucky couple gets flow to San Francisco during harvest. To do what? Why, work a week of hard labor, that's what. But it's going to be a fun group and at the end, you own a single case of a very cool limited production pinot noir.
Pinnacles Wine Festival - April 28th
For those of you in the Bay Area that weekend, head down to the Pinnacles Wine Festival where our own Tom Leaf will be pouring samples of pinot noir from Brosseau Vineyard in the Chalone AVA. It's always a great event and the Brosseau's B&B and the surrounding vineyard are beautiful.
Congrats again to Jean Edwards Cellars, Dain Wines and San Sakana Cellars
Last month Wine Spectator came out with new ratings for cabernet sauvignon and our very own Jean Edwards Cellars and Dain Wines both pulled in 92 point ratings.Unfortunately, both of these wines sold out very, very quickly (that tends to happens when you get the scores). Another winery to watch is San Sakana Cellars who have just released their line of 2005s and they sell out quickly. They've been getting great support on the wine boards and their wines were just submitted to a certain well-known wine reviewer... look for more info about San Sakana in the coming months. You should get on all of their mailing lists... now.
Crushnet 1.0 Release Date May 1st
We've had our beta release of Crushnet up for several months and are just finishing up the production release. We have overhauled the user interface, added a bunch of functionality and content (pictures and video) and are going through the final QA process now. If you have a Crushnet account, you will be notified of the new release. If you don't have a Crushnet account, it's free and easy to create.
Media Update
We've been getting some seriously good coverage in the past month. CNN just ran a great story written by Associated Press. This was accompanied by a fair bit of local television and newspaper. Check out the News & Events section on our site. But one super-exciting thing is that we were just interviewed by NPR's Linda Wertheimer today for Weekend Edition (which will run on the 21st or 22nd). I didn't really nail it, but it went well enough. I heard there were millions of listeners to this program. Cross your fingers for us!
2007 Allocations are Moving Along
We have had a great start to our 2007 season (lucky for us because 30 people need to eat). We still have fruit from most of our 2007 vineyards although some are sold out. If you haven't got your barrel commitment in, contact Dave Gifford to get going.
...Michael