Own Part of a Vineyard & Learn to Make Wine

Sitting in your sterile office (or, even worse, cubicle!) and fantasizing about a new career as a winemaker? Just when you thought all the best California wines come from Napa and Sonoma, along comes Crushpad, a winery in San Francisco that offers an innovative hands-on winemaking program for novices. Chances are even if you're a vino connoisseur, you're still a tenderfoot when it comes to actually making the wine yourself, but Crushpad will guide you from grapes to glass. Go it alone or gather a group and buy a barrel of your own wine. (Each barrel yields 24 cases.) You select the type of grapes, which are sourced from more than 50 of California's renowned vineyards, and work as much or as little as you'd like directly with the bona fide experts at Crushpad to make the wine that will fill your barrel. Age it as long as you'd like in the barrel type of your choice. Even if you can't check in regularly to oversee your wine as it ages, you'll stay fully involved thanks to regular e-mail updates and samples that the winemakers send. Just as so much of the pleasures of drinking wine comes from sharing it with friends, Crushpad makes winemaking a social affair. There are events, like the annual “Mashup,” when many of the recreational vintners gather at the winery to check up on their barrels and raise a glass. There's also a “Community Crush,” a soiree for customers who live nearby, a term that will have a broader definition with the next few years, since the company has plans to open up wineries in other cities in 2009. That's some block party! Price ranges from $5,700-$10,900 per barrel.