Local winemakers use professional expertise
By Megan Ma, Town Crier Staff Writer
 joe hu/town crier Los Altos native and Crushpad employee Ana Denmark shows off barrels of wine in Crushpad’s San Francisco winemaking facility. |
For Los Altos resident and wine enthusiast Gary Curtis, buying land in Sonoma County to grow a 1-acre vineyard was to have remained a passionate hobby at best. A self-described “businessman by day,” Curtis hired a vineyard manager to maintain his grapes, and invited his friends and family to gather and pick the vines each fall.
But making wine out of his garage using rented equipment quickly grew expensive and time consuming. So when Curtis heard about Crushpad, a winery that helps small urban winemakers create their own custom wines, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to move his operation.
“It was exciting to find a place where they could help me make wine without much capital. Michael Brill, founder and CEO of Crushpad, has made the process very pleasurable,” said Curtis, who makes varietal Pinot, varietal Zinfandel and a field blend of Cabernet Merlots.
Curtis said he’s expecting a bountiful harvest this year that he hopes will yield close to four tons of grapes or approximately four barrels of high-end wine that can stand its ground among the crème de la crème.
Since February 2004, when Crushpad opened in San Francisco, the hip urban winery has been committed to bringing high-quality winemaking technology and expertise to passionate wine lovers who don’t want to trek to Napa for an authentic experience and quality product. The staff of 20 wine gurus, “cellar rats,” monitors fermentation levels and other details. Business professionals focus on small-lot production of custom ultra-premium wines. Their customers include novice wine enthusiasts, restaurants and professional winemakers.
Fermentation Frenzy in Los Altos specializes in renting wine and beer-making equipment and ingredients for local vintners and brewers. For many locals, it’s a hobby that harkens back to an early European tradition, but is definitely not a passion limited to a privileged few, said owner Phil Montalbano.
“It’s a professional person’s hobby, but you don’t have to be rich to do it,” he said. “From the historical perspective, it’s an idea that extends from wanting to pass the tradition on through the family. But some people just want to learn.”
Montalbano said he advises customers who come from as far as San Francisco on which local vineyards offer grapes for sale and how to set up the equipment.
On a grander scale, Crushpad hopes to launch winemaking into the mainstream, Brill said. Not everyone in this pleasure business needs to don a cashmere sweater or own a chateau to be recognized as the real deal, he said.
“You go back 10 years, and there was such limited access to winemaking. It was only when people with more passion than money started doing it in unconventional places that really kicked off the … movement,” he said.
Brill is a passionate wine enthusiast who got his start in a rather homespun way - making wine in his garage with close friends. The next step seemed obvious - raise money and expand the business into an area where no wine lover had ever ventured before, he said. “There was no online community for winemaking and no credible mass-customized winemaker,” Brill said, and he was up for the challenge.
The lack of an affluent and luxurious ambience is what makes the Crushpad experience “less mechanical, more raw and not the least bit intimidating,” Brill said.
To enter the 16,000-square-foot warehouse between the Mission and Potrero districts, you literally step off the sidewalk and enter a large room with various pieces of elaborate and strange-looking equipment. The inconspicuous warehouse often thumps with indie rock as staff members bustle about testing sulpher levels in cabernets, bottling wines and boxing cases of Cabernet, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Syrahs and more.
The crew expects close to 80 tons of fruit this year from growers throughout the state. The scene will be akin to “controlled chaos” Brill said.
Brill, a former software executive, said the “whole range” of his clientele - who hail from 35 states and Japan - can attest to the fact that wine enthusiasts are a diverse bunch. From 20-somethings who pool money to create a barrel for the sheer cachet to commercial oenologists selling thousands of cases of wine, Crushpad treats all serious wine lovers equally, he said.
For wine enthusiasts who want to turn professional, Crushpad offers storage, order processing and direct shipping for their clients.
The company interacts with its customers through a host of Internet services including real-time updates for remote customers.
Customers receive alerts when their fruit is ripe for pressing and can travel to Crushpad to share the action. Clients unable to make the trip can watch the vibrant purple and magenta crush over a Webcam.
Some of the locals who have particularly busy lives balancing work and children are often less involved than those like the “mildly obsessive” couple from the Midwest who fly out to help crush grapes and mop the floors during each fall harvest.
Next week, the Crushpad staff expects a harvest of more than 80 tons of fruit from wineries across California.
“Some (customers) are creating a legacy they can hand down to their families; some are building little cabuls of wine or have corralled a local community around their hobby,” Brill said of his customer base.
Last month the CEO of a Japanese company celebrated his company’s IPO with a small batch of Cabernet for gifts. He flew from Tokyo. The overdressed businessman surveyed the expansive warehouse with its oft-slippery floors and changed from a suit to T-shirt and jeans, Brill said. “He spent the whole week working 10- to 12-hour days cleaning and mopping the floor.”
Crushpad provides a rare opportunity for wine enthusiasts to design their own wine labels with the aid of professional vintners who market high-end wines from $5,000 to $10,000 a barrel. Each barrel yields about 300 bottles.
The concrete cellar is equipped with the same elaborate winemaking essentials as its large-scale Napa Valley counterparts. The resulting high quality wine is stamped with a personal label that designer Jenny Doll can help to create.
“It’s not about my aesthetic, but about listening to the customer to see what they’re trying to achieve,” Doll said.
Another, less obvious aspect of Crushpad services is that the winery eliminates the hefty paperwork and regulatory issues that can overwhelm individuals who want to make and sell their own wine, Brill said. Winemakers need to be licensed in order to bottle their own wine for personal consumption or for sale, and this can require some fancy footwork, Brill explained.
The biggest boon for the continued growth of the business came last year when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed California winemakers to ship to additional states. The regulatory shift worked in Crushpad’s favor and opens doors for Crushpad to ship to the 35 states where their customers live.
For those interested in a cheaper, homemade approach to winemaking, you can make a bottle of your own wine for as little as $6 per bottle, said Nancy Frere, a vineyard manager for two Los Altos families. But she’s also convinced that small-scale winemaking in this area can be challenging, she said.
“This is considered a premium growing region. One of the challenges for noncommercial growers is that it’s an old fashioned, labor intensive formula,” she said.
It’s hard to determine just how many residents are growing grapes because unless they’re selling commercially, growers aren’t required to register with the state.
Los Altos Hills resident Steve Hicks said that despite the optimum soil and weather conditions for growers on the Peninsula, it’s a tough practice that can demand an extra bit of patience.
On the other hand, it can be a “bulletproof and rewarding” hobby once you “get things going,” he said.
For more information on Crushpad, call (415) 864-4232 or visit www.crushpadwine.com. For more information about Fermentation Frenzy, call 949-2739 or visit www.fermentationfrenzy.com.
