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Company lets you test drive a vocation during your vacation. Date published: 8/13/2009
BY CATHY JETT People are always telling Chris Pearmund that they'd love to have his job. "I must hear that three or four times a day," said the managing partner and executive winemaker of Pearmund Cellars in Broad Run. Customers sip some of his award-winning viognier, spend a relaxing afternoon at the winery, and start daydreaming that this is the life for them, he said. Now, thanks to an innovative new program, they can experience that life for real--without committing to it. Pearmund recently enrolled his winery and its two siblings in VocationVacations, a 5-year-old tourism business that lets people test-drive careers in everything from running a restaurant to captaining a catamaran, even becoming an actor, antiques dealer or animal therapist. "I had seen what they were doing, and thought it was very cool," Pearmund said. "It's very much what we're about. We're very much on the educational side of things." He applied to become a mentor several months ago and was accepted. What participants do at Pearmund Cellars and the nearby Winery at La Grange and Vint Hill Craft Winery will depend on the time of year and what career they're interested in pursuing in the industry. "There's more to running a winery and making wine than the product itself," said Pearmund. "We'll teach them a bit of everything, including wine production, management and economics as well as the mechanics of the industry." Getting the chance to sample a different career while on vacation is something VocationVacation founder Brian Kurth began daydreaming about 10 years ago during his long commute to his job with a dot.com startup in Chicago. Bored and staring at taillights, he wondered what it would be like to become a dog trainer, a marketer for a winery or to work in the tourism industry for a few days. "I thought that, obviously, there was some company doing this," he said. "This was in the days before Google. I did some research, and found there wasn't really anything." Kurth ended up arranging his own internship as a dog trainer, but found he was spending more time cleaning up after his charges than training them.
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