48Hours: Make your Own Wine at Crushnet

Sick of rising prices for European wine? Sticker shock is hitting wine buyers right in the wallet. Wines that ran $40 at retail not long ago are going for $60+ as distributors pass along the pain.  Browsing your local wine shop might not ever go the way of the dinosaur, but now you can hook up with your friends and design your own wine. Pick a vineyard, target alcohol and acidity levels, and even go for Taransaud oak barrels if you can afford it.

Crushpad offers soup to nuts solutions for enthusiasts to make their own wine…

Crushpad is a San Francisco winery where you are the wine maker. Crushpad provides grapes from the West Coast’s top vineyards, an industry-acclaimed wine making team and a state-of-the-art winery 100% focused on making wine in small lots. You choose your level of involvement and we do the rest. No matter where you live, you can now make your own “cult” wine.
Crushpad

Their Crushnet online wine community is a turnkey solution to winemaking.  Fans of Cabernet might want to climb Howell Mountain and source grapes that could best described as “Ink Grade”. These should stain your teeth…

This is a new vineyard for us this year. It was planted in 1990 and spans 200 acres of mountainous terrain. This is definitely one of the most visually exciting vineyards we source from. Much of the vineyard is beautifully terraced and it is all well-tended. The vineyard is actually planted to a quad trellis that ekes out about 2 to 2.5 tons per acre. We are sourcing from two different blocks in the vineyard - one that we share with, well, you wouldn’t believe it if we told you. But ask and we’ll grin ear to ear and swear you to secrecy. This is also one of the more technologically advanced sites, using “stress modules” to determine ripening and enables us to do multiple picks for optimal ripeness. Crushnet Ink Grade Vineyard

Commodity trader Roy Niederhoffer, brother of the famous Victor, picked out the Kiona vineyard for his Cab, but the summer heat might have you thinking white instead. And if you skip the oak you won’t have to wait three years to drink it either…

As in Bordeaux, sauvignon blanc tends to do extremely well where cabernet grows. And Rutherford produces some mighty fine cabernet. This vineyard (located, not surprisingly, on Galleron Road) was the source of our first sauvignon blanc made in 2006. Crisp citrus: grapefruit and lemon-lime combined with minerality and a hint of herbalness that makes Sauvignon Blanc a great warm weather wine. Crushnet Galleron Road Vineyard

Grab your friends, pass the hat to raise some money, and sign up to make your own wine at Crushpad. Agreeing on a name for your wine and designing your label could be the hardest thing about it…

More or less, customers can get as involved (or stay as uninvolved) in the process as they want, with limits on what untrained people can do. “You’ll be involved in the decision-making process, and to some degree in the actual process, assuming we can do it in a way that’s safe within the confines of the winery,” said John Tracy, cofounder of Sonoma Grapemasters, which is lining up its first clients for this fall’s harvest. Among the customers they hope to attract are small businesses or departments that would make a barrel of wine (about $6,500 to $7,000) as a team-building exercise. Wine Spectator

Wanna be a Winemaker?
WS

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