Retreats: Teams of the Vine

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Oh, it's also fun, and you get to take home your custom-blended bottle of wine.

One of her programs is wine aromatics, in which groups explore the characteristics of distinctive varietals, learning how to identify the wide range of aromas and flavors inherent to wine. This program helps groups develop the ability to taste the differences in wine and to communicate those differences to others.

Teams Blend and Bond

The wine-blending program turns teams into winemakers, negotiating over the mixing of selected varietals to come up with a favored wine blend. Asked about accommodating nondrinkers, Drady says, "We can do lemonade blending for those who don't drink, because it's actually roughly the same process. Everybody still gets to work together."

Other programs include food and wine pairing, a wine appellation workshop and a "world tour" of varietal personalities. Each program is customized to meet the client's needs and can be delivered as a workshop, a reception or even as part of a Wine Boot Camp, Drady's creation and her "baby."

Wine Boot Camp is an intensive daylong or multiday event in which recruits get hands-on experience, touring a winery and vineyard and perhaps participating in a crush or learning how to pick grapes, along with conducting several of the aforementioned programs. "Over the years, I had been to some team-building stuff like ropes course. Ick," observes Drady. "As a wine-sales team trainer, I would bring groups to California to learn about wine and work a crush.  They started calling it wine boot camp, and this merged with my team-building ideas." 

Drady says that she believes, Affairs of the Vine is unique in its focus on wine education events as a team-building tool. Her minimum fee is $1,500 and goes up on a per-person basis from there.

"A lot of the planning process is figuring out what the client really wants out of the experience. But we get results," she says. "Ninety-five percent of the time, I can deliver what the corporation is looking for, whether it's just fun, relations with vendors or internal team building."

Business is good. She's writing 30 proposals a week and closing 85 percent of them; the company has lots of repeat customers and a global client list that includes Amgen, Barclays Global Investors, BNP Paribas, Cisco Systems, Comcast and Johnson & Johnson.

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