We thought we would put together a list of frequently asked questions for those of you visiting the blog for the first time. Hopefully it will provide you with a little more detail about the Covered Bridge Cellars business model and what we have in store for the future.
How can I buy your wines?
Signing up as a Charter Member of our mailing list is the easiest way to ensure you can purchase our inaugural vintage wines when they are released. If you haven't already done so, please click here to reach the sign-up page.
Can I visit your tasting room?
No, we are a "virtual winery" in that we don't own any buildings, vineyard land, barrels, winemaking equipment, or any other fixed investments of any kind. In fact, we don't even live in
So where do you live and what do you do?
We live in Waltham, MA just outside of the city of Boston. Casey manages a foundation and Jeremy works as an equity analyst. We both are part-time students in the MBA program at Boston College. We also make wine in our basement.
Ok, in a nutshell, how are you going to make wine?
Our partnership with Crushpad provides us with access to fruit from almost 50 vineyards in California, Oregon, and Washington. As a Crushpad Commerce partner, we purchase the grapes and they produce our wine in small lots to our specifications at their state of the art facility in San Francisco. We get harvest updates throughout the year and have access to real-time stats via the Crushnet website once fermentation is underway. To view the latest graphs click here.
Who is your winemaker?
Our consulting winemaker at Crushpad is Chris Nelson. He has particular expertise working with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. We worked with Chris earlier this year on putting together our wine plans and we expect the end result will be superb.
What else does Crushpad do?
After the wine is aged and bottled it is stored in Curshpad's temperature controlled warehouse for us until it is sold. Crushpad handles the fulfillment & shipping, accounting, tax collection & payment, regulatory paperwork, and anything else you can think that falls under the back office.
What is left for you guys to do?
With Crushpad handling the production and back office functions we are free to focus our energy on building solid relationships with our current and future customers.
What are your future plans?
Right now we're keeping things small and want to grow the business at a sensible pace. The long term goal is to create a portfolio of four to five differentiated brands that showcase the awesome vineyard sources available to us through our partnership with Crushpad.
What is the first brand of the Covered Bridge Cellars portfolio called?
We haven't unveiled it yet. Our designer at Crushpad is still refining the final label design for us. As soon as it is ready, we will put it on the blog, as part of a post that will detail its evolution from mock-up to final design.
