Napa Valley train lets passengers solve a murder mystery while wine tasting
Find out ‘whodunit’ while getting sozzled
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Your support makes all the difference.A new event lets guests solve a murder while wine tasting onboard a vintage train – Orient Express, eat your heart out.
The Wine Train, which whizzes through California wine country, has launched a murder mystery package that sees travellers transported back to the roaring Twenties (costumes heavily encouraged).
Passengers exchange clues and gather evidence from potential suspects over a three-course dinner, with dishes including Sonoma greens to start, followed by main courses such as brown sugar glazed pork tenderloin and gemelli pasta with mushroom confit and sugar snap peas.
Each course comes with suggestions for tailor-made wine pairings available for purchase (it is the Wine Train after all), from a Jamieson Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon to a Stags’ Leap Winery chardonnay.
The drama unfolds throughout the three-hour journey, with the main premise involving a suspicious death at Mafia Don Lou Zar’s juice joint.
Jealous lovers, rival Mafioso and undercover feds abound as diners seek to get to the truth.
Trains run on select Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays between 13 April and 9 November, starting from $216pp (£166).
Originally a rail line built in 1864 to take visitors north to the resort town of Calistoga, the Wine Train travels a 36-mile round-trip journey from Downtown Napa to St Helena and back.
Wine aficionados can get a fix closer to home by checking out the first underwater winery in Croatia.
The Edivo Vina winery in Drače, about an hour north of Dubrovnik, is offering visitors the chance to slip on a wetsuit for a visit to its “underwater cellars” - including bottles stored in a sunken ship at the bottom of the Mali Ston Bay.
The winery is owned by Ivo and Anto Šegović and Edi Bajurin, who take divers under the sea and explain how and why their Navis Mysterium, or “sea mystery” wine is stored this way.
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