Rohit Kumar held the bucket and watched for splatters as Glen Johnson and Tom Wiitalla hoisted a plastic pan full of aromatic purple grapes up to the crusher.

Kumar’s reward was a sluice of Merlot skins and juice, the makings of the next vintage for the Boeing Wine and Beermakers Club.

Club members converged on a locker at Snoqualmie Ridge Storage for the annual crush, divvying and then squashing 1,500 pounds of Merlot grapes. Customers on weekend errands to their lockers passed the open-air operation on Saturday, Sept. 25, as engineers and number-crunchers plied a more ancient art.

“These are decent,” pronounced crushmaster Kevin Neal, tasting a sample of the Vantage-grown crop. “It was a cold year, but the grapes have ripened up nicely.”

Club members will have a better understanding of the 2010 crop’s potential after they get the mix of crushed grapes and skins, or must, further along in the process.

Club members order their own grapes, then weigh and distribute them. Some members take part in the communal crushing. Others prefer to crush their own.

The must is fermented for a week or two. Then, skins are pressed away, leaving the juice that will eventually be wine. Club members will bottle the finished product as early as next summer, but others wait as long as two years, based on their own style and preference. The finished Merlot will be a lush, full-bodied red wine.

The club is open to Boeing employees, spouses, relatives and retirees. It’s a fairly exclusive bunch.

“There’s a lot of people who would like to get into the club,” Neal said. “You have to have a link to Boeing.”

Creative outlet

The club is a relaxing outlet for Boeing’s brainy types. A large percentage of members are engineers.

“There is a creative side to it, but there still is a discipline,” Neal said. “They get to exercise the other side of their brain.”

This is the first year that the group’s crush has been held in Snoqualmie. Ridge Storage owner Sherwood Korsjoenn said the club is a good customer. His business, at the mid-point between Boeing’s Western Washington base and vineyards in Eastern Washington, is ideally located.

“We’re kind of in the hourglass,” he said.

The club’s crushings draw looks from other customers during active months.

“Our customers enjoy seeing what’s going on,” said Korsjoenn, who joked about owning the “Snoqualmie Ridge Winery.”

Worth the wait

When the crusher was switched off, Kumar hauled a garbage-can-sized container full of must to his car.

“This is just the right amount for me,” said the Boeing finance department employee. Kumar is still learning the craft.

“It’s easy to go to a store and buy wine,” he said. “When you make it, it’s very different.”

While buying wine in a store is faster, the year-long wait for handmade wine brings its own satisfaction, members said.

Dave Yingling of Everett planned to press the grapes at his yard.

“That’s when it gets really messy,” he said.

Fruit flies fill his home for weeks, but it’s worth it.

“The end product is good wine,” he said.