America's Next Great Winemaker

June 30, 2009

This winemaking stuff is hard. It's not the actual winemaking, but all the work around it that makes me think that toiling away in a cube might not be all that bad. The past month has seen us scrambling to prepare for the September launch of The Winemakers on PBS and with it, a 10,000 case production of the winner's wine. That's about 400 times larger than our typical production. The wine is safely in bottle now (although we just found out that the 120,000 labels that were overnighted are wrong so they have to redo them [on their dime]). And just to remind us that our job is never done, the show producers just announced Season Two!!! We're going to show a sneak peak on July 27th. RSVP here. Here's what else is up...

A Special Offer for Chateau Teyssier's Phenomenal 2008s You may remember that we are housed inside of St. Emilion's Chateau Teyssier. Every time Stephen Bolger (our guy in Bordeaux) tours a new Crushpad Bordeaux client, they taste the Teyssier wines made by owner-winemaker Jonathan Maltus and fall in love (with the wine that is; I'm quite certain Jonathan is taken already). I'm so sick of Stephen telling me this that I've "convinced" him to work with Jonathan to make the new 2008s available to Crushpad clients and friends at some ridiculously low prices. These are 92-97 point Parker wines made in small lots and, truth be told, half of my motivation for doing this offer is to get the wines myself! Check out the full offer.

Making Your Own Barrel of Bordeaux Once you've secured your Teyssier wines, contact Stephen Bolger or Dave Gifford and get your Bordeaux on for this year. We've had clients sign up from France, Switzerland, England, Finland, Estonia, Korea and the US in what is a picture perfect growing season. We've sourced fruit from some great sites with our viticultural team making sure we're getting the most of them. Check out the Crushpad Bordeaux site for more information.

Sparkling Wine is On! Given the very strong response we received from the last newsletter, we are going ahead and making a blanc de blancs sparkling wine this year. With Chardonnay from Split Rock Vineyard (source of David Rossi's 94 point Wine Spectator Pinot), we are working with a partner winery to create a couple styles of sparkling. You can buy as little as a 1/4 barrel (6 case) allocation @ $28/bottle. Contact Dave (dave@crushpadwine.com) or check out some of the other special offers we're working on. Note that we're only making around 200 cases total, so please respond asap.

Fundraising Program Gaining Momentum We're now in a "controlled release" of our new Fusebox Fundraising program (previously known as Affiliates). This enables private organizations and non-profits such as La Jolla Playhouse to easily create their own wines and store, and receive proceeds from the sale of these wines to their members. We're working on organizations with as few as 200 members and up to 20,000 members at this point. This program is now headed up by Pamela Topper (pamela@crushpadwine.com) who is up to her eyeballs, but is very keen on bringing more organizations on. If you or someone you know is affiliated with a non-profit and they want to raise more money, have them contact Pamela.

Crushing the Community Last year we launched Community Crush - a program that brought together residents of various San Francisco neighborhoods to create a neighborhood themed wine. It went so well that we are adding neighborhoods and we are extending the concept outside of San Francisco with Community Crush Chicago. If you'd like to find out more or join a group, go to the Community Crush website and enter your contact info. We'll add you to the group.

2009 Barrels from California are Available We're seeing great weather in California this year. Fruit set is excellent across pretty much every site - in stark contrast to last year where we saw 50% reductions in yields. This allows us to be more selective in how we drop fruit in order to maximize quality of grapes and thus the wines. So if you haven't gotten your 2009 order in, please contact Dave Gifford (dave@crushpadwine.com, 415-864-4232). You can also check out the 2009 vineyard list here.

Contratulations to Fulcrum Wines 94 Points Wine Spectator www.fulcrumwines.com Get on David Rossi's list for the next vintage

Welcome August Truth www.augusttruth.com Pinots and Chards

Welcome Milliarium milliariumcellars.com Pinot Noir

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