Crushpad Wine & B. Napa Pt. I of II

May 13 2007

I was in Napa this past week for work. Well, actually, I’ve been in Napa for four of the last five weeks for work, this past week just happened to be the last bit of travel for a few weeks. When most people ask me about my trips out to Napa I would love for nothing more than to puff up my chest and regale them with stories of coming across that special Pinot, only 100 cases made, or bumping into a winemaking documentarian at a special restaurant, but the reality is much more like anybody else’s business travel—I work, and I sleep and that’s about it.

This week, though, I made rare exception to break out and do a couple of fun things in the evenings.

After a recent podcast in which Alan Baker (Cellar Rat and Crushpad Wines) joined Tim Elliott and me to talk some wine, I asked to join his Rat Pack group at Crushnet, a part of Crushpad Wine.

To see an introduction via YouTube:

Crushnet, for the uninitiated, essentially allows fractional ownership in the winemaking process—kind of a timeshare condo as opposed to buying the condo.

So, Alan, or anybody can make a barrel (25 cases) and then solicit friends to buy a case or more of wine to offset the costs.

Alan is making four barrels of Pinot—100 cases—from the Wentzel vineyard in Anderson Valley.

It’s a pretty good cash outlay for sure, for Alan and for participants in the Rat Pack. At $384 a case, or $32 bucks a bottle you hope for something more than simply taking a flier on a social winemaking experiment. According to Alan 82 of the 100 cases are accounted for and he’s hoping to sell the balance at retail.

82 people is a lot of opinion, especially when it comes to winemaking. Nothing good has ever come from committee decisions so the best you can hope for is an acceptable quaff.

Fortunately, after meeting up with Alan this past week at the new Crushpad Wine facility in San Francisco (just past Indiana street, adjacent to Illinois street, I should note for fellow Midwesterners) and doing barrel samples of the Pinot 2.0 project with his Rat Pack, I can say the wines are going to deliver … in a big way … far exceeding my expectations!

What’s really fun about this is the fact that wine is not only going to deliver in value but its going to have plenty of story behind it, as well. If the Crushpad story wasn’t enough it’s also organic, it has native yeast fermentation and there are only 100 cases of the stuff. It’s enough to not make you want to drink any of it.

In fact, Alan noted that one of the most crucial decisions came from a member of the Pinot 2.0 project—using native, ‘whatever is in the air is what’s going to ferment the wine’ yeast. So, perhaps some good does come from group dynamics.

Alan has made some really other interesting winemaking decisions including handling each of the four barrels slightly differently before they are blended together for a cuvee.

The first barrel is totally neutral in toast and is very silky showing a lot of cherry fruit flavors with a slight undercurrent of damp earth, and some light leather.

The second barrel of wine is in 100% French Oak. This barrel is a star showing fruit and integration that wouldn’t turn away anybody if it was fined and poured today. In a couple of months, as a part of a blend, this wine is going to be the backbone for the rest of juice.

The third and fourth barrel is a zebra barrel with 25% new French oak. This barrel shows a lot of zip with acids still rounding into form against the Dr. Pepper-like fruit background. Barrel three and four also show a little vegetal character based on the decision to keep 15% stems in each of these 1 ton containers during fermentation.

Zebra barrels are an interesting aspect of winemaking at Crushpad, too. Whereas traditional winemakers have the opportunity to put some fine into new French Oak and other wines into 2nd year or neutral barrels, Crushpad actually takes apart barrels and has a cooper reassemble them with pieces from different barrels so you can exert some new oak influence within the context of a neutral barrel—therefore you get zebra barrels with 25% French oak or more.

Overall, what a great experience—fulfilling my fascination with Crushpad wine by experiencing it in person, tasting wine in barrel, meeting Alan Baker, as nice and genuine of a guy as you’d hope to meet, a wine blogging/podcasting peer, and knowing that this juice was going to show up at my door before Thanksgiving ’07.

The only thing better might be to meet up and share some stories with a wine documentarian, which I did the next night. More on that in the next post.