Winemaker
Wind River Cellars
Husum, WA
Reward code: VVWMWR
Hilton HHonors® Points: 420,000

Have your favorite vacations involved touring various “wine country” regions? Searching for that perfect glass of wine or that perfect winery to tell all your friends once back home? Dream of spending weekends working in your own tasting room – educating guests on your own wonderful wines, instead of fretting about how fast a weekend slips away and sends you back to work? Winemaker Joel Goodwillie and his wife Kris Goodwillie of Wind River Cellars would love to mentor you in the art of making and marketing wine!

Joel graduated from college and worked in the marketing department for Gallo Wines and found that he enjoyed the wine business, but not on such a large, corporate scale. He actually wanted to work with the wine instead of just selling it. Kris has a degree in Recreation Management, which she finds useful in her part of the winery operation – partnering with outdoor companies in the area to bring sport and wine together.

Before creating Wind River Cellars, the Goodwillie's moved to southern Oregon and became operating partners in a winery. Realizing Joel has an exceptional palate and truly loves the wine-lifestyle, he and Kris tried to buy-out the principal stockholder, but to no avail. So in 1995, they moved to beautiful Husom, WA and purchased the Charles Hooper Winery – with full views of Mt. Hood - and renamed it Wind River Cellars. True Vocationers making their daily vocation a bit more of a vacation! In 1998 Joel and Kris released their first vintages and opened up a tasting room on the property.

Being beverage entrepreneurs, they now even have a highly successful line of hard (alcoholic) apple and pear ciders, Bad Seed Cider Co. . All the fruit comes from the lush gorge region.

While on your Vintner VocationVacations® dream job holiday, Joel and Kris will mentor you in some of all of the following activities:

• Wine Appreciation and Education
• Harvesting (October) – Picking, crushing, pressing grapes and… clean up
• Preparing the wine for bottling (November – May) – Clarification, cold stabilizing, fermentation, racking, topping barrels, wine blending and clean up
• Bottling and Labeling (April – September) – Setting up bottling, line, lab work, label layout, labeling, bottling and clean up
• In the field (April – September) – Leaf cluster thinning for wine quality, grape pest monitoring, soil and leaf tissue sampling, and general viticulture practice

The Wine Maker VocationVacations® holiday includes:

• Two days of one-on-one mentorship in your dream job as a Wine Maker
• The ability to take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®), an online personality assessment designed to identify interests and skill sets
• The opportunity to participate in a total of one hour of pre- and post-VocationVacation career coaching from an accredited, affiliated VocationVacations career coach
• A pocket-size VocationVacations journal so you can document your dream job becoming a reality
• Light lunches with your mentor

Available: All year based on mentor's availability with exception of holidays

Other activities and tourist destinations while on your VocationVacations adventure:

• Columbia River Gorge Explorer
• Portland Oregon Visitors Association
• Experience Washington
• Travel Oregon

Suggested Accommodations:

Hampton  Inn - East Portland

(Not included in the cost of your VocationVacation)

To redeem HHonors points for a gift certificate or a VocationVacation, call your nearest Hilton Reservations & Customer Care Office and provide the appropriate Reward Code and your HHonors account number.

Hilton HHonors membership, earning of Points & Miles®, and redemption of points are subject to HHonors Terms and Conditions.

Reservation, Cancellation and Rescheduling Rules and Conditions:
A $100 non-refundable fee is assessed if a VocationVacations experience is cancelled or rescheduled prior to 14-days of the scheduled VocationVacations holiday, based on the approved availability of the mentor to reschedule. A VocationVacation cannot be rescheduled and is non-refundable if cancelled within 14 days of the scheduled VocationVacations holiday. Written notification of cancellation or rescheduling is required in all cases.  Grounded Nomads, LLC dba VocationVacations encourages all customers to acquire travel insurance to cover any unforeseen expenses due to cancellation or rescheduling.