Crushing good time at winery

The woman with curly gray hair was on her way home from the dump when she stopped by Coeur d’Alene Cellars on a whim Thursday.

Not only did she get to taste wine, she got to see it being made.

Winery co-owner Sarah Gates said she’s often asked by visitors if they can help stomp the grapes. While there are no bare feet involved in crushing grapes at Coeur d’Alene Cellars, the atmosphere is no less festive.

“It’s a harvest party,” winemaker Warren Schutz said. “This is the most fun. This is where you’re really making the wines.”

Classic rock music blared throughout the warehouse Thursday afternoon as volunteers stood around the giant steel presser, sampling the murky-looking juice of the chardonnay grapes by dipping wineglasses into a collection bin.

Earlier in the day, the volunteers – wine enthusiasts and loyal customers – picked through tight clusters of chardonnay grapes plucked from the vine a day earlier in Washington’s Columbia Valley.

By Thursday evening they were expecting to have pressed 3 1/2 tons of grapes. The winery will crush about 60 tons this season, General Manager Kimber Gates said.

“These are people who love wine and love winemaking, and they show up to listen to music and make wine,” Gates said during a lull Thursday afternoon. “It adds this feeling of community.”

The juice was pumped into barrels Thursday, where it will ferment until May, when it’s time for bottling. It will be a year from now before the 2006 chardonnay is ready for retail.

Coeur d’Alene resident Steve Cantrell helped bottle last year’s vintage. This season he volunteered his help crushing for the first time.

“I love their wine,” he said. “We liked their wine so much, we had to come down and see what it’s like.”

Gates said wine club members, like Cantrell, “add an element that exponentially improves the quality of the wine.”

“They just provide the energy for what we do,” she said.