NEWSLETTER
Come to the Open House on June 10thMay 30, 2006
I love the 80s. After a long winter, it's nice to look at Spring forecasts in the 80s and see vines grow a foot in a week. We also just got satellite radio which we have tuned permanently to 80s alternative. So if you stop by, be prepared to stay up all night trying to remember the name of that stupid song. In any case, we're going at it like mad as we shift from off-season and start to ramp up for the 2006 harvest. The details….
Open House Reminder – June 10th
Remember that our third annual Open House is on Saturday, June 10 th from 2PM – 6PM. Please RSVP at RSVP@crushpadwine.com with the number of people coming – we're trying to figure out how much food to get. We'll be showing off a few different fermentation techniques that we're trying this year. Also, we've had several customers volunteer to help – thanks! We could use a few more to help pour and guide people around. Ben the DJ will be back.
Label & Bottling Update
If you have a cab or merlot from 2004, or a white or pinot noir from 2005, and you haven't been in contact with Jenny Doll about your label, please drop her an email at jenny@crushpadwine.com. Although we recently hired a third graphic designer (welcome to David Bennett), we're still behind the eight ball as we have around 100 wines that will be bottled over the next three months. For you statisticians, that brings us to around 200 unique labels.
Zazzle Yourself
Our Crushpad t-shirts have been so popular, that we thought “what if our members could create t-shirts from their own labels?” How cool would that be? So, here's the deal… if you are interested in adapting your label to a t-shirt, then send an email to shirts@crushpadwine.com with any text that you want on the back. We'll then take some portion of your logo/label that looks good on a t-shirt and the text you provide and create a t-shirt design on zazzle.com. Then anyone you know will be able to go and order your very own winery t-shirt. Pretty cool, huh.
Harvest Blog 2006 Starts Up
As we enter our pre-harvest mode, we're restarting the harvest blog. This year, we're going to add a second blog – the Cellar Blog. Kathy, Alex and Ty will update everyone on what's happening in winery operations, covering topics such as topping, racking, bottling, lab work as well as less glamorous things such as sanitation, venting CO2 and why pizza tastes so good after a 14 hour workday. You can check out the Crushpad blogs by going to www.crushpadwine.com and clicking on the Harvest Blog link on the left.
Crushnet Update
As some of you know, Crushpad was started as my great escape from the software industry. After 15 years of tooling around with technology, I thought I'd shed it for good. But there really is no escape and in no time at all we found ourselves with a team of software developers creating Crushnet. And for those you who have built software before, you won't be surprised to hear that it's late… about a month behind schedule. Now I'm used to being eight months behind on a four month project, so I'm not feeling so bad. But the punch line is that we pushed Crushnet beta back to June 10 th. I promise to update our beta testers as we get closer.
Crushpad to Pour at Pinot Days – June 25th
This year Crushpad is a sponsor of Pinot Days (www.pinotdays.com) which is being held at Fort Mason in San Francisco. We'll have a large section set up to go through the complete pinot noir production process. Pinot Days is the event to meet the best pinot producers from California and beyond. If you are going, make sure to come by the winery a couple days ahead of time and grab your Crushpad t-shirts to wear.
Monthly Wine Styling Sessions
Starting on Friday, June 23 at 7PM, Crushpad will begin monthly sessions on various wine styling topics. Before harvest we'll be covering cabernet, whites, and a special session on the ins and outs of lab work hosted by our very own Kathy Nani. We'll kick this off two days before Pinot Days with – you guessed it – a dry run of our session on Sunday at Pinot Days. If you're around, please stop by or tune into the Crushpad Cam.
Please Send Us Your Group's Info
We are working to put together more group events such as private group tastings. If you have multiple people participating in a barrel, we really would love to get their contact info (at least names and email addresses). Please, please, please send the information. We probably have 1,500 people participating in winemaking yet we only have 1/3 of those contacts. This is really important to us, so please let us know.
2006 Barrel Sales Continue
June starts our busy season from a sales perspective… several vineyards have sold out, but we still have 20 great vineyards available. Dave Gifford (dave@crushpadwine.com, 415-864-4232) is the guy to talk to. Get in while the gettin's good (I grew up in the South, I can say that).
...Michael