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Harvest Recap

Greg Kitchens — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 23:41:52 +0000

It has been a while. Well, the 2011 harvest was a really intersting one. There was not much heat this year so our ripening was all over the place. Now that the dust has settled, I am very proud of our efforts. Working with our growers and requiring a lot of patience, we let the fruit hang. We even let it hang through two different bouts of rain in the case of some of our reds. This all poses a risk (rot, mold, etc.) but the payoff is making better wine. I believe that we came out sucessful in one of the toughest harvests to date. You all have a lot of 2010 vintage wine to consume before you will see any of this 2011. So enjoy the fruits of our effort and we will get the next vintage ready to impress your palate soon.

Happy Holidays from your winemaking team at Don and Sons.

Paso Robles Visit

Greg Kitchens — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:45:07 +0000

This past weekend, I took a trip down to Paso Robles, CA to check out our fruit down there. Paso has had a long cool growing season but the temperatures have been steady. The fruit is still ripening evenly and the canopy (leaf coverage of the vine that shades the grapes) is still green and going strong. In a couple of weeks, our Cabernet Sauvignon will be ready to pick. The pictures below are from the Meeker Vineyard. This vineyard sits on rolling hills on the north eastern side of Paso Robles. We get Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Sirah, and Tempranillo from this site. The fruit and views are looking beautiful.

Napa Valley Harvest Morning

Greg Kitchens — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:19:33 +0000

It was a great sight from one of our Napa Valley Vineyards this morning. I was just north of Yountville as the sun was rising and the sky was dotted with balloons. Not a bad way to start the day.

Eco-friendly vineyard practices

Greg Kitchens — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 03:17:28 +0000

We feel very fortunate to work with great growers. Great growers grow fantastic fruit responsibly. They don’t overuse pesticides or use practices that could be harmful to the surrounding environment. They understand that there is a flow of life that needs to be balanced with insects, animals, and in this case amphibians. I got to thinking about this yesterday in one of our blocks of Sangiacomo Pinot Noir just south of Petaluma, CA. I was tasting the fruit in this block when this little guy caught my eye. This tree frog would not have been here in the vineyard if the vineyard was over sprayed for pesticides. So here’s to great growers who grow awesome grapes with a conscience.

Breakfast on the Sonoma Coast

Greg Kitchens — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 14:44:39 +0000

A couple of days ago, I stopped by the Sangiacomo Vineyard in the Petaluma Gap on the Sonoma Coast to visit our two blocks of Pinot Noir. It has been such a cool year, I wanted to get a feel for how the fruit was maturing. To my surprise, the fruit was much further along, had great rich fruit character, and wonderful bright acidity. Another 10 days hang time will really bring it around. Our new Sonoma Coast programs will only get better as we tap into vineyards like this one. Power and finesse.

Harvest has started, 2011 fruit is hitting the crushpad

Greg Kitchens — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 22:08:25 +0000

The 2011 harvest has just started for Don and Sons with the crushing of our 2011 Wilson Vineyard Pinot Noir early this morning. We will send updates as we continue the insanity. Wish us luck.

A Day Filming in Clarksburg

Michael Peck — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:33:51 +0000

Last week, we dragged our two winemakers, Greg and Michelle, along with Donny Sebastiani, out to Clarksburg to shoot several videos in the vineyards. We’re currently working on a new mobile site for The Crusher, which you’ll be able to get to by scanning a QR code on the new back label. We couldn’t be more excited to share our amazing, photogenic winemakers with the world, as well as talk a little bit about our new experiments with natural yeast fermentation.

Enjoy the “behind the scenes” photos below!

The CrushUp is coming!

Michael Peck — Mon, 23 May 2011 17:57:29 +0000

If you haven’t heard the buzz yet, it’s coming. We’re throwing four simultaneous tweetup events–dubbed The CrushUp–in three different time zones, with our winemaker Greg Kitchens tasting five The Crusher wines and tweeting about them via Twitter/TasteLive. Whether “tweeting” isn’t your thing, or you’re a TweetDeck pro, all four events should be a great time. Free wines from The Crusher and free appetizers!

Check out the invite below, send it to your friends, and click the link to RSVP to the event nearest you– our Chicago CrushUp is almost maxed out!

http://donandsons.eventbrite.com/

http://www.facebook.com/crusherwine

Bud Break in Napa and Sonoma

Greg Kitchens — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 15:12:33 +0000

After all the rain we have had this winter and early spring, the past few weeks have brought us some much needed sunshine. This weather has stirred the vines to come back from dormancy to start their vegetative growth. This is what we call bud break. The vines carry all the necessary cells for growth of canes, leaves, and grape clusters in what are termed buds. A bud looks like a little knob on the grape vine. After the previous harvest, in the fall, the leaves fall off the vines and the vine go to sleep for the cold winter months. In the winter, growers go through the vineyards and prune back the grapevine to leave a few buds per cane (or grape branch) to prepare the vine for growth the following year. And that is what we are seeing now in the pictures linked. You can see the pruned branch with the vegetative growth coming from the bud. These buds are starting to break through and show leaves and branches starting to grow out. The grape clusters wait until later in the season to start their growth once the vine is healthy enough to support it. Overall, this growth tells winemakers that we should go on vacation soon because harvest is once again around the corner. With that said, I am out of here. Your winemaker, Greg.

Great Consumer Feedback

Michael Peck — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:23:25 +0000

Does anyone out there follow The Haggler, the series of NYTimes articles chronicling horrible tales of customer service injustices and cold corporate bureaucracies? This story is the opposite of those stories.

A fan of ours in Roswell, Georgia wrote us a letter in early January. We’ll call him Rob. Rob had an issue with an in-store mail-in rebate of ours–he purchased several bottles of our wine over the course of 3 months, but he didn’t see that the rebate required that all purchases be made at the same time to be eligible. Naturally, he felt pretty upset–duped by the fine print– and he wrote both Publix (his local grocery store) and Don & Sons in Sonoma to voice his grievances.

After writing him a letter in reply and giving him a call from our GA sales guy extraordinaire, Sam Miller, explaining the situation and personally insuring that he would receive his rebate as promised, he wrote us a second letter:

“I do not recall ever receiving a more thorough, impressive and professional response to a letter of complaint than I received from Publix and Don Sebastiani & Sons. Bravo to all of you!”
“I know from experience how difficult it can be to write a point-by-point response to a complaint without sounding argumentative, and I was most impressed by the thoughtfulness which [sic] went into Mr. Peck’s letter to me.”

While we don’t always get it right, we certainly work hard to take care of our fans. Thanks for the kind words “Rob”!