Nick O'Connell- Crush

Join Nick O'Connell at Village Books and Paper Dreams for a lively, down-to-earth exploration of the world of wine!

In CRUSH: My Year as an Apprentice Winemaker, Nicholas O'Connell provides a behind-the-scenes look at the daily operations of some of the world's most prestigious wineries on the West Coast. This insider's view of the wine world includes the intense competition for the best grapes, the bizarre lingo of the tasting rooms, and the visionary winemakers who magically transform grapes into high-end wine. It is a world that includes not only romance and refinement but long hours, backbreaking labor, mind-numbing repetition, and fanatical dedication to quality. Such devotion resulted in the 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet that won the best red wine at the 1976 Judgment of Paris and transformed the U.S. wine industry.

“It’s an engaging read for anyone who starts feeling that crazy itch that they’d like, someday, to make their own wine—or for anyone who loves wine.”

--Ray Isle, executive wine editor of Food & Wine and wine and spirits editor for Travel + Leisure

“Nicholas O’Connell’s level of experience is phenomenal: his decades of making wine, his writing style, and his obsession with making wine. This feels like once-in-a-lifetime work because it includes twenty-plus years of living, social drinking, and learning about wine. It is a memoir mirrored by winemaking. It is humble and humorous. Nothing else touches it.”

--Mike Medberry, author of The Dark Side of the Moon and viticulturist at Frog's Tooth Winery

“I’d wager there aren’t many wine lovers who haven’t fantasized, at least for a minute, about making their own wine. Nicholas O’Connell helps you scratch that itch without having to deal with swarms of fruit flies or take-their-time fermentations. O’Connell has taught writing for decades, and his considerable skills show in his vivid account of turning grapes into wine.”

--Dorothy J. Gaiter, senior editor of Grape Collective

Nicholas O'Connell, M.F.A, Ph.D., is the author of Crush: My Year as an Apprentice Winemaker (Potomac Books, 2025), The Storms of Denali (University of Alaska Press, 2012), On Sacred Ground: The Spirit of Place in Pacific Northwest Literature (University of Washington Press, 2003), At the Field's End: Interviews with 22 Pacific Northwest Writers (University of Washington Press, 1998), Contemporary Ecofiction (Charles Scribner's, 1996) and Beyond Risk: Conversations with Climbers (Mountaineers, 1993).

He has contributed to Newsweek, Gourmet, Saveur, Outside, GO, National Geographic Adventure, Condé Nast Traveler, Food & Wine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sierra, The Wine Spectator, and many other places. He is the publisher/editor of The Writer's Workshop Review and the founder of the online and Seattle-based writing program, www.thewritersworkshop.net.

*Feel free to call Village Books & Paper Dreams for further assistance at 360-671-2626!*

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