Vineyard on the Internet

COLUMBIA Crest will help create the first-ever Crowdsourced Cabernet Sauvignon from the beginning stages of the vineyard up to bottling and selling the wine online. Within the next 18 months, the interactive website, CrowdsourcedCabernet.com, will allow everyone, from casual drinkers to wine aficionados, to participate in the process of winemaking, and determine how the grapes are tended, irrigated, harvested and blended through weekly votes. Participants will have access to weather analytics, season-by-season data, past data and time–lapse camera shots down to the individual grape. Columbia Crest head winemaker Juan Mu?oz Oca will be available to answer questions from the community to assist with the winemaking process.

“We know our wine supporters are a knowledgeable and discerning bunch, so we thought we’d issue them a challenge. For the first time, everything from fruit–thinning, to the harvest, to the final blend, and even the label will be in the hands of our fans; it’s a trailblazing adventure,” Mr Mu?oz Oca said. “The Crowdsourced Cabernet process will invite wine lovers to gain a deeper understanding and connection to the craft and skill of winemaking. Our fans will make the calls like when to fruit–thin, when to water, when to hedge, and even when to harvest. We will ferment it, barrel it, bottle it, and baby it until it’s ready to drink.”

An acre of reserve grapes at Columbia Crest will be used for the project. The grapes are the same ones that earned the Columbia Crest 2005 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon the No. 1 Wine in the World designation from Wine Spectator magazine in 2009. About 1,000 cases of  the Crowdsourced Cabernet 2014 vintage produced from the project will be sold online in the United States and in the Columbia Crest tasting room in Paterson, Washington, and will also be sent to leading wine publications to be rated alongside other premium wines.