February 20, 2026 – Wine industry expert Craig A. Root and digital wine space expert Paul Mabray are teaching a one-session class in the UC Davis Continuing & Professional Education program on March 3, 2026 from 9:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. Called Tasting Room Design and Management, Root explains that the class will “make your tasting room more profitable and memorable with practical, experience-driven information you can start using immediately.”
Root, a wine industry veteran and tasting room consultant with 30+ years of experience, provides ideas for achieving tasting room perfection, including how to find and keep good staff. Learn how to create a profitable wine club and design your room with lighting and displays. Explore tasting strategies, special events tips and how to improve your tours and trade relations. Paul Mabray will be a guest lecturer speaking about social media, websites and other strategies to increase your business. This class is especially beneficial for people who are considering starting a tasting room or remodeling an existing one.
This is the 22nd year Root has presented this class. Alumni include many distinguished members of the wine industry. Root often hears that this class is the most comprehensive and beneficial his students have taken. He has helped develop more than 100 tasting rooms across the U.S., Canada, France and China. He also has performed dozens of analytic reports on current operations of tasting rooms in many areas.
Paul Mabray has been a powerful change agent in the wine industry for more than 20 years. He has been at the forefront of all significant digital trends for the wine industry, working with WineShopper.com and Wine.com when they entered the wine-digital space. He founded two companies that significantly changed the digital US wine landscape: first, by introducing winery e-commerce with Inertia Beverage Group, which later became WineDirect.com, pioneering winery e-commerce; and then by introducing social media and social customer relationship management with VinTank.com. He also created Pix (pix.wine), the world’s first wine discovery platform, and recently joined Pour Now, which has become the world’s fastest-growing platform for wine and spirits.
This one-day, live, online course is delivered via Zoom within CPE’s learning management system, Canvas. Course materials will remain available in Canvas for 21 days after the live session. The class costs $350.00. For more information and to register, go to: https://cpe.ucdavis.edu/section/tasting-room-design-and-management.
For more on Craig A. Root: https://www.craigroot.com/.