NEWSLETTER

Two Harvests In One

September 30, 2007

Last month we said that we'd get in 80% of our fruit in September. The week after I wrote that, the weather cooled and it got a bit wet and as we sit here on the last day of September, we've actually got less than 20% our fruit in. But the recent warm weather has put things back in gear and now we're going to get over 100 tons of fruit per week for the next four weeks. And the fruit we're getting in looks fantastic. We used the slow month to work out the kinks (after finding them of course) in our new facility, but we're now ready to rock.

Shiny New Equipment Really Works
After raising money this year, we promptly went out and bought a whole bunch of winery toys with the intent of stepping up winemaking like we do each year. This includes a vibrating sorting table, a cold room, a large tube in tube heat exchanger, a new high-end destemmer, gentle pumps, a state of the art winery lab, and a bunch of other stuff that, well, works. We are getting much cleaner fruit, fermented at controlled temperatures with excellent extraction, and with acids and alcohols that are spot-on. There are going to be the best wines in our history, fo' shizzle.

Crushpad Logistics Center is Live
We recently signed the lease on a new 15,000 sq ft warehouse a few blocks away from the winery. This is the new Crushpad Logistics Center – an environmentally controlled warehouse where we'll store, pick and pack finished case goods. This frees up a lot more room in the winery for making wine and gives this important part of our business the flexibility it needs. This is part of our commitment to beefing up the ecommerce, warehouse, fulfillment and compliance capabilities for Crushpad Commerce.

Crikey, That's a Lively Pump
We mentioned last month that we're creating a new media section on Crushnet and it's up and running. We're still populating it with vineyard updates, winemaking instructions, client profiles, etc., but I have to say that it's awesome. What we do is so visually rich and that's often lost in text, so it's cool to see a lot of this get onto video. By the end of harvest, we expect to have a huge library of winemaking content. You can even see our winemaking GM Mike Zitzlaff do his best impression of Steve Irwin and wrestle a peristaltic pump.

Recent Media: Food & Wine, Time Magazine
Check out the most recent issues of Food & Wine and Time Magazine for coverage of Crushpad. Food & Wine has a great three page article written by Chip Brown (an extremely accomplished writer even before his story on Crushpad!). We've had some other good media coverage recently and have some network television coverage coming up soon (more news next month. Check out the News & Event section on the crushpadwine.com website for more info.

Stu's Boot Camps
The Stuart Ake (stu@crushpadwine.com, he's the one looks like a grown up version of Simon, the tall, bespectacled Chipmunk) Boot Camp and Tour calendar is starting to get full. Stu is leading mostly daily tours during harvest, so even if you're not making wine with us you can see every part of crush crammed into an hour or so. The boot camps are held a couple times per week and are more in depth with hands-on involvement. They're filling up really fast, but if you'd like to find out abou them contact Simon, er, Stu.

Great Syrah and Cabernet still available
If you're still thinking about making wine this year, we have some Napa cab and Santa Barbara syrah available. Remember the quality of 1997 wines? I think that's what we'll be seeing from this year. We made a few late season additions and if you get in during the next 2-3 weeks, you can get involved from the beginning. Otherwise, maybe we'll see you in another year. Contact Dave Gifford (dave@crushpadwine.com, 415-864-4232) to get going.

...Michael