Crush: My Year as an Apprentice Winemaker

In Crush Nicholas O’Connell provides a behind-the-scenes look at the daily operations of some of the world’s most prestigious wineries on the West Coast. This insider’s view of the wine world includes the intense competition for the best grapes, the bizarre lingo of the tasting rooms, and the visionary winemakers who magically transform grapes into high-end wine. It is a world that includes not only romance and refinement but long hours, backbreaking labor, mind-numbing repetition, and fanatical dedication to quality. Such devotion resulted in the 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet that won the best red wine at the 1976 Judgment of Paris and transformed the U.S. wine industry.

O’Connell’s quest to master the art of wine making begins in his garage. From there he embarks on an apprenticeship at Betz and DeLille Cellar and other great wineries in California, Oregon, and Washington. He provides a first-person, ground-up view of a business not yet fully explored despite record interest in wine. O’Connell also includes conversations with some of the world’s most gifted vintners, including Warren Winiarski, former owner of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars.

Wine is surrounded by a seemingly impenetrable cloud of descriptors--＂wet dog,＂ ＂kumquats,＂ ＂cat pee＂--and a fog of pretention. Crush pierces this fog with colorful, concrete storytelling, in-depth portraits of famous winemakers, and a lively, down-to-earth description of the process by which wine is made: not in the critic’s mind but in the winery and vineyard.

Nicholas O’Connell is based in Washington State and is the founder of the Writer’s Workshop. He contributes to media outlets such as Newsweek, Food & Wine, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic Adventure. O’Connell is the author of five books, including The Storms of Denali: A Novel and On Sacred Ground: The Spirit of Place in Pacific Northwest Literature.