Harvest Helicopter

Grapes baking in the hot California sun must be rescued from the sweltering heat before the crop is lost. Gondolas filled with fresh California Wine grapes must be air lifted from the vineyards to the winery. Four coptor pilots must operate their HCD (helicopter controlling device) in unison to guide the rescue chopper into position. The gondolas, filled with grapes, must be transported without dumping the precious cargo to the ground. The HCD will test your team's ability to communicate succinctly and efficiently when working under strict time constraints.

Cabernet Chaos

Teams compete against one another, frantically stomping real wine grapes as fast as they can. Each team must guide their magical elixir down a copper trough into a carafe riding on a cart. The cart glides along an 8' teeter-totter and rolls back and forth based on the balancing talents (or lack there of) of the team members. If the team can balance well, their carafe stops moving, thus making it easier to collect the flowing juice. With four people on the teeter-totter (two on either side), they'll need to work together to keep it balanced. Bonus juice is added through an ingenious system that rewards the team with better equilibrium.

Wine Bottle Label Design

Your family must design a label for your wine. You'll be given supplies to create a giant wine label. Your family will have to come up with an appealing logo, slogan and act out a TV commercial for your wine. You'll have to be witty and creative if you want to please the critics. Extra points are awarded to the team that incorporates their company's corporate culture.

Harvest Hijinx

It is harvest time and it's gonna get wacky. Getting all your grapes in from the vineyards has never been more challenging The warring families have figured the best way to foul-up the neighbor's fermenting process is to mix in some genetically altered grapes that impart a distinctly "fishy" flavor to their competitors' wine. The families will use a variety of special devices to dump these fish flavored grapes, but watch out, your neighbor is trying to do the same thing to your harvest.

Wine Cave and Sharpshooter Lookout Tower

There is an ancient tradition in wine making that little is known about, but is the source of great pride in the wine country. With an ample supply of corks, Popsicle sticks, tooth picks and glue guns warring wine families compete to build two things. The first is a wine cave that must stand up to the crusher; a dastardly pneumatic crushing device capable of decimating anything the teams can build. The second is the tallest possible Sharpshooter lookout tower. (The glassy winged sharpshooter is a nasty little bug that carries Pierces Disease that attacks the vines.) Each team's score is based on the height of the tower multiplied by the number of PSI (pounds per square inch) the cave can support. This competition will challenge your communicating, planning, engineering inventory management and teamwork skills.

Wine Roulette

This is an interactive, competitive wine tasting, where team members match six wines with six Wine Roulette cards. They taste their wines and then put a card in front of the wine that matches based on varietal, year and winery. When they are finished designating the wines, we unmask the first wine to see who was right. Those people that missed the first one can then rearrange their cards if they so desire. Many other wine tasting games are available.

Wine Country Shootout

The quest to be the biggest and best family winery continues, but this time you're armed and dangerous. Your team has discovered a competing family's winery…with a window open. Through the window you see glasses of wine zipping by to be tasted by critics from around the world. If your wine family members can knock the glasses over before they are served, the parched and disappointed critics will smear the name of the competitive winery like jam on toast in the next issue of Wine Spectator. So, what do you do? You load a specially designed wine-cork cannon and start blasting away the glasses being filled by the other family. Whichever team can get the most wine to the critics, wins.