Create Your Own Wine – Virtual Vintner™ Program

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of La Crema© winery for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.

Ready to make some wine? Sign up to be a Virtual Vintner

Last summer, Asheley and I took an amazing, unforgettable vacation to California’s Sonoma County and Napa Valley.  We toured wineries, sampled a whole lot of wine, and learned a ton about the wine-making process.  It was glorious.

We’ve become more and more interested in wine over the past few years, but didn’t really know a whole lot about it.  Varietal? Appelation?  What do I look like, a sommelier?!

But through our time in California, we learned enough to have a good basic understanding of the stuff.  At least I can go into a restaurant now and semi-confidently describe to the sommelier what characteristics of wine I typically enjoy, so they can recommend something.

That’s my beautiful bride Asheley in Napa Valley 🙂

So check this out.  Now the wine-making process is available to all of us, right at home!  La Crema has just launched the Virtual Vintner™ program, an interactive journey that educates us about grapes (if you want to be all fancy, that’s called viticulture) and wine, and gives us the unique opportunity to help in creating a new wine!

That’s right, we can help chart the course of a whole new wine for La Crema!

I literally just spent like an hour exploring through the Virtual Vintner™ website.  It’s full of so many fun facts about the history of wine, the wine-making process, and even flavor profiles and food pairings. There are fun videos and winemaking education from winemaker Elizabeth Grant-Douglas, interactive maps, quizzes and more…. I felt like I was right back on vacation learning on a vineyard tour!

And then La Crema let’s you play the part of wine-maker (again, let’s be fancy… the vintner).  You have the power to choose the grape varietal (what type of grape), the appelation (growing region), vineyard, fermentation process, barrel type, time spent in the barrel, and even the wine name and label design!

Don’t be worried if you don’t know a whole lot about all that wine jargon.  With the Virtual Vintner™ experience, they guide you every step of the way.  There’s a ton of great educational information to help you make your vintner decisions along the way.

I mean, come on, it’s tough not to be excited about this.  Like, we get to be wine makers.  That’s super cool.  And if that’s not enough incentive on its own, you can win a trip to Sonoma County for participating!  And who doesn’t want a trip to California?!  I’m pretty sure even people who live in California probably like to vacation there too… it’s so beautiful!

Head over so your voice can be heard… Sign up to become a Virtual Vintner now! Voting opened on August 11th, and popular vote will determine the path of the community-created wine, which will be released in the late Fall of 2015.

So let’s review.  You will gain winemaking expertise (which will come in handy at that next dinner party or restaurant visit for sure), have your voice heard in creating a whole new wine, and have the opportunity to be one of the first to purchase this wine!

So how about it? Become a Virtual Vintner!

Just remember… the legal drinking age is 21 years old, as always please drink responsibly.