The Mad Crush: An Obscure California Vineyard and the Quest to Make One Great Wine

Introducing the expanded second edition of the cult winemaking memoir, now with 30 pages of added storytelling and a new afterword by the author.

In the summer of 1974, a young man named Bill Greenough found his way to a remote California canyon where a century-old Zinfandel vineyard had been lost to history. Toiling alone with nothing more than a pick and shovel, Greenough embarked on an audacious dream: to bring the abandoned vines back to life and start his own fledgling winery. He devoted the next 20 years to this herculean task, trading a monied Montecito upbringing for the life of a rural iconoclast. And in the fall of 1995, it all culminated in an unforgettable grape harvest, when an unlikely cast of characters joined Greenough for a season of folly, adversity and self-discovery. The Mad Crush is the true story of that headstrong vintage-and of a decades-long quest to make one great wine.