Crush
My Year as an Apprentice Winemaker
In his vivacious memoir Crush, journalist Nicholas O’Connell recounts his recreational winemaking exploits in Washington State.
For fifteen years, O’Connell has been making red wine under the label Les Copains (“The Friends”). Wine grew from a hobby inspired by his junior year abroad in France and his honeymoon trip to the Napa Valley into an obsession. He buys grapes rather than growing his own and produces eight hundred bottles a year.
Devoting one year to the intensive study of winemaking, this amateur pondered whether to go professional. He set off to visit American Viticultural Areas of the West and meet the “founding fathers” of the industry. He volunteered under Bob Betz, who holds a Master of Wine distinction, and toured Oregon. At Robert Mondavi’s California winery, he was in awe of how one man became responsible for “making wine and food a central part of American culture.”
Believing that wine represents an ancient blend of art and science, O’Connell marvels at how myths, traditions, and ceremonies surround the drink, a simple but “wondrous and measureless mystery.” In contemplating flavor profiles and pairings with cuisine and developing intuition about cultivation and harvesting practices, a person can end up “sounding like a medieval alchemist,” he notes.
“Grapes, like people generally, have to suffer to achieve their potential,” O’Connell writes. Many might think of winemaking as “a romantic activity, but there’s a lot of drudgery to it.” Indeed, the book covers both the highs (a bottling party; Robert Mondavi tasting his wine and being complimentary) and the lows (a flat tire on O’Connell’s truck “The Beast”; a fruit fly infestation at his house at fermentation time).
Crush is a lighthearted paean to winemaking as a unique pastime “combining the ephemeral and the eternal.”
Reviewed by
Rebecca Foster
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
