A whole vintage, traced step by step
From crush to cellar — and the season that gets you there
One vineyard block becomes a ton of fruit, becomes a fermenter, becomes a barrel lot, becomes a bottling. Between veraison and the TTB filing it gets sampled, picked, pressed, racked, topped, blended, and moved dozens of times. Here is that whole season, one lot at a time — and how Crush keeps the math (quantity, composition, cost, and AVA designations) conserved at every step.
Start Free TrialOne lot, start to finish
Follow a single block of Cabernet from the last weeks of ripening to the bottled case. Every operation along the way writes an immutable snapshot — so months later you can still answer "what was in this vessel, where did it come from, and what can the label claim?"
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1
Late summer · the vineyard
Veraison to the pick decision
The season starts in the vineyard. Each block is mapped once with a GPS fence, and from those coordinates Crush resolves the full set of AVAs that contain it — not one "primary" appellation, but every overlapping region. As the fruit ripens, the crew records Brix, pH, and TA samples from the field, each one tied to that block's vintage. Watching the curve against previous years is what makes the pick call — and that block's varietal, vintage, and appellation set are already on file before a single grape moves.
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2
Harvest · the crush pad
The weigh tag: fruit becomes a lot
Fruit arrives and gets a weigh tag — the grape reception record. It captures the tonnage, the block it came from, and the vintage, and it inherits that block's AVA set automatically. This is the origin of the lot's composition: a real, measured quantity of fruit carrying its varietal, vintage, and appellation. Everything downstream is computed from here — nothing about the wine's identity is typed in twice.
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3
Fall · crush & ferment
Crush, ferment, press to cellar
The fruit is crushed into a fermenter; the new wine is pressed off and racked to tank or barrel. Each move is recorded as an operation, and each operation conserves quantity: what leaves one vessel, minus measured loss, is exactly what arrives in the next. The wine left in the press pan or the hose isn't quietly dropped — it's booked as loss, with its real cost following the volume out.
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4
Winter to spring · the aging cellar
Racking, topping, and additions
Through the aging season the lot is racked off its lees, topped to replace the angels' share, and dosed with additions like SO2. Every one of these cellar operations is logged on a phone, right at the tank, in seconds — and the lab's chemistry for that vessel sits on the same page, so the winemaker decides on current numbers. The moment an operation commits, the vessel's current contents and composition update.
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5
Spring · the blending bench
Blending: where the math has to be exact
Blend 60% of one tank with 40% of another and the new wine's composition isn't an estimate — it's the exact, quantity-weighted consequence of the two inputs. Varietal percentages, vintage percentages, AVA percentages, and cost all combine automatically. That is what makes a label claim defensible: when you say "Napa Valley" you can show the wine clears the 85% AVA rule, and "Cabernet Sauvignon" the 75% varietal rule, straight from the operations you recorded. Want to test a blend before it's in the tank? The free wine label checker runs the same 27 CFR Part 4 rules on any grape × AVA grid.
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6
Summer · bottling
Bottling: the product inherits everything
At bottling, the finished product inherits the full composition and cost history of everything that flowed into it. The case count, the blend percentages, and the per-bottle cost all trace back through the season to that first weigh tag. Crush checks the wine's exact composition against the varietal, vintage, and appellation you intend to print, so you bottle knowing the label clears.
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7
All period · the back office
After the season: the report writes itself
Because every operation left an immutable snapshot, your TTB 5120.17 report (the old Form 702) is computed from the season's actual work — grape receipts, transfers, losses, taxable removals — not reconstructed from whiteboards. Every line item drills back to the operation behind it, and a snapshot freezes the filed numbers for good. For the excise side, the free TTB excise tax calculator handles Form 5000.24 with the small-producer credit. A label audit becomes a lookup, not an archaeology project.
Why nothing falls through the cracks
Most cellar software stores the numbers you type in. Crush computes them from the operations themselves and refuses to commit anything that doesn't balance.
Quantity is conserved
Wine in equals wine out, plus measured loss — tracked to four decimal places of a gallon. If an operation doesn't balance, it won't commit. You can't accidentally create or lose volume between crush and cellar.
Composition follows the wine
Varietal, vintage, AVA, and cost move with the wine proportionally on every transfer and blend. The result is computed exactly — never estimated, never retyped — and real cost follows volume even into loss.
History is immutable
Every committed operation writes a permanent snapshot. You can see exactly what any vessel held at any point in the season — which is what makes the compliance reports and label claims trustworthy after the fact.
Walk through each part of the season
Feature
Vineyards & Harvest
Map blocks, track ripeness, and bring fruit in on the weigh tag.
Feature
Cellar Operations
Record every rack, transfer, blend, and addition at the tank.
Feature
Lab Management
Chemistry and maturity samples on the vessel and block they belong to.
Feature
Back Office & TTB
TTB 5120.17 reports — still known as Form 702 — that trace to real operations.
Free map
US AVA Map
Every official AVA, and why a vineyard is usually in several at once.
Free tool
Wine Label Checker
Test any blend against the 75% varietal and 85% AVA rules.
Trace your next vintage from crush to cellar
Set up your tanks in an afternoon and record your first operation on a phone at the tank. Composition, cost, and compliance keep themselves accurate from there.