Crushpad Update

Categorized | California, General

Posted on 08 September 2011.

September Newsletter
September 8, 2011

All Together Now

As most of you know, we’ve been doing a fair bit of moving house over the past 18 months. This made for lots of extra work with employees distributed all over the place – we’re actually still doing bottling in Napa, even though everything else is in Sonoma. However, by around the end of the month, we’re finally going to have everyone together again as bottling moves to Sonoma. No more shuttling barrels around or hour-long trips to check capsule colors! 100% of all winemaking activities are under the watchful eyes of our winery and design teams. Very psyched. It almost makes up for the fact that I no longer have a permanent desk because an employee who shall be unnamed took it when I was away on vacation – Please don’t tell me we’re outgrowing our space here…. Here’s what’s going on…
2011 Harvest Party on Saturday, September 24th
Two weeks from this Saturday, from 1-4PM at the winery in Sonoma, we’ll be hosting our harvest kickoff party. You can RSVP here. With this being such a late year, we’ll probably be processing some of our first whites and Pinot Noirs of the season and you can see the winemakers do their stuff while wandering around our beautiful new winery, chomping on whatever Hayden has in store for you! Stu will also be up to some shenanigans with live fermentations (he won’t tell us what), but that’s certain to be fun. And our tasting room is open in its pre-construction mode so you can see the current look as well as illustrations of what it’s going to look like fully kitted-out.

Harvest 2011 Is Starting – Get In On It With Your Own Barrel
We’re just starting to see the initial fruit this week (a bit of Sauvignon Blanc) and then Pinot and some whites will start in a couple weeks. With a long, cool growing season to develop flavors, the fruit is looking awesome this year although the yields are generally pretty low – anywhere from 15% to 30% lower than a normal year. That creates a lot of concentration so we’ll see some very dense, inky wines from 2011. However, it also means there’s much less fruit (it’s a very, very different world from just last year). So check out the vineyard list and then contact Rodney Gagnon (rodney@crushpadwine.com) while we still have a few barrels from some of our top vineyards.
Bordeaux 2011 is Also Getting Underway
You may have recently received an email from Stephen Bolger about 2011… we’re crossing our fingers that the year turns out to be a trifecta for us (after our first two years – the awesome 2009 and 2010 vintages with eye-popping prices for classified growths). Here’s your shot at becoming a vigneron. Contact Stephen (Stephen@crushpadwine.com). Rodney made a barrel from Bordeaux while he was an intern there last year, so you can also chat with him about the experience and the quality of wine… he’s a big fan.

(Pre-Construction) Tasting Room is Open
Having finally received all of the approvals from the numerous regulatory authorities, we decided to not start construction right in the middle of harvest! However, we have opened it up and are pouring some of our commercial client wines as well as hosting educational seminars. Please stop by if you’re in Sonoma. We’re working away on the experience stations that we will be putting in the tasting room as well. In the meantime, I at least wanted introduce the experience station host, Grapey… also known as Dr. Grapenstein for our first experience (he’s over on the right).

Oh, and Don’t Forget the Hobbit Project!
We’re making a bit of Riesling in The Mosel. Check it out here and grab a case: The Hobbit Project.

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