CRUSHPAD

Calling all wine lovers, group event seekers & those who enjoy doing something a little different... I introduce you to CRUSHPAD. This place, which is an actual winery, teaches you the art of making and blending wine. If wine blending isn't of any interest to you, they have a wine making courses and others to choose from. Most classes are about $35 a person and go for 2 hours. My team took the wine blending class after work one night and had a blast pretending we knew what we were doing. I've never been a sucker for chemistry, but I had a fun time blending different types of wine into beakers and tasting my blends until my taste buds approved. And what's wine without cheese, fruit, meat & crackers? They fully stock your trays so you can munch throughout your entire class - it's perfect.

Here were MY biggest learnings:

• Wine "out the barrel" is rarely ever good, though better if you blend different ones together.
• I can't smell "a full bouquet," "oak," "cherry," and whatever else connoisseurs can smell when they sniff wine.
• Having snacks and wine around you during a class are very distracting.
  

Oh and one more thing, you can even get your blends bottled and delivered to your home with personalized labels. Very cool.