Crushpad - Wine Built to Spec

I've finally rescued my puffy coat from its lonely spot in the back seat of my car, which means there's no denying it's Autumn. Most people (and I am no exception) decide at this time of year that the only reasonable way to combat the cold and drear is to considerably increase their wine consumption.  To this end, I'll be traveling to Eastern Washington this next weekend to celebrate the grape harvest at the Lake Chelan Crush Festival.

Virtual Vintner

Which brings me back to participatory retail and transparent supply chains, topics I posted on a couple of weeks ago. A new online business called Crushpad elegantly combines both ideas, allowing any old joe or jill off the street to make a barrel of their own ultra-premium wine.

With the online MyCrushpad interface, you guide every parameter of the wine making process, choosing grape variety, wine style, vinyard, harvest time, sorting and pressing method, aging time, and bottling and packaging. Since you're producing a whole barrel of wine (about 300 bottles), it costs between $4,500 and $9,000 to play, which translates to about $15 per bottle at the lower end. 

To defray the cost or make the 6-24 month process a community experience, Crushpad encourages families, friends, or colleagues to pitch in on a barrel.  The idea of a work group making a barrel of wine as an alternative to say a softball team, or a company bestowing a Crushpad barrel to a favored client seem like intruiging possibilities.

With Crushpad, intensive consumer participation makes supply chain transparency a natural part of the experience. With at least a couple of featured vinyards that practice organic viticulture, users have some control over the environmental impact of their wine. Crushpad could add some value to the experience by including labor practices (grapes are harvested by a migrant workforce) among the choices users can make.

All that said, the Hoole Intelligence Report hails Crushpad's radical experiment in participatory retail.  Now I've got my puffy coat on and I'm off to fetch a glass -- where my wine at?