Would you take advantage of a winemaking service or experience?

[Sean_Devaney]

Didn’t one of the earlier wine boards do this as a group? Can’t remember if it was eRP or wino-depot?

Yep, Gary Vaynerchuck. Some of us did more than others. I was intimately involved in the project. Met Gary on his wine cruise and offered to help.

IIRC westcoastwine.net also did this one year to make a Pinot. Greg La Follette was the winemaker and produced the wine from his facility.

[Al_Osterheld]

They did a bunch of different wines, the project was called Colloquy, and I think all the wines were 2001. Varieties include Pinot Noir, Syrah, Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon (may have only been used in blends). There were several different variations, eg, different oak and clonal variations with the Pinot, different oak treatments with Syrah, several Tuscan-style blends with the Sangiovese, Cab, Syrah.

-Al

[GregP]

Hi!

Question for the community:

A winemaking service offers you the chance to connect with and control the end-to-end winemaking process, including grape selection, the crush, fermenting, and the blend. At the end of the experience, as a customer, you will have created your own private barrel and bottled cases of your wine with a custom designed label.

If money were not an issue, would you take advantage of this service? Why or why not?

Appreciate any and all perspectives - thank you!

toi
Worked with Gary Vaynerchuck when he did this with 2007 fruit. It was an OK experience and the wine was only OK. Didn’t have any lasting power and was essentially dead at 5 years. So, would I do it again. Probably not. I went to the crush tasted the fruit that was going in but I don’t know enough to make these judgements.

Gary wanted me to make wine for his label at the time, he asked us to buy fruit, Syrah from Las Madres vineyard, which we worked with at the time. We bought and paid for fruit, barrels, etc, ourselves. Then had, hmmm…, OK, let’s call it a falling out for now, to put it mildly. Gary never paid for anything, to make the story short. Sounds like he cut too many corners trying to replace us.

---

As already pointed out, custom crush can be, and is, many different things to people. For some, being small, its the only way to make wine, and one really needs to be involved at each and every step to make end product shine.