Amity, Ore. ? At a case or so a minute, the bottles come rattling off the filling and corking machine at Amity Vineyards.

Jerry Gherardini wipes them off and puts them neck-down in cases that must be labeled and stacked on pallets. The machine yearns for more empties. The full ones keep coming.

The pace seems endless, and this day’s run is about 4,400 bottles of off-dry Riesling. It should take six hours.

But Gherardini isn’t looking ahead to a vacation.

He’s taking one.

The Chicago pharmaceutical chemist and basement winemaker is on a Vocation Vacation, the brainchild of Brian Kurth of Portland. The program is designed for people who want to try a “dream job” without risking their regular one.

Clients can choose among such outwardly attractive jobs as innkeeper, brewmaster, winemaker, horse trainer, cheesemaker, raceway manager, hunting and fishing guide, professional gardener, pastry chef or chocolatier, at locations across the country.

He is talking with more wineries, cattle ranchers, a sportscaster, a major distiller of Scotch whiskey, golf pros and fashion designers and would like to add news photography.

Kurth said he came up with the idea while he was stuck in traffic on his Chicago commute and started thinking about his lifestyle.

He lost his job in 2001 in the dot-com meltdown and spent six months touring the country.

“I was asking myself, ‘So what life would I rather lead if I had a choice?'” he said. “I thought that in business many people are too nervous to just leave, but they do have vacations, time to get out of their cubicles, to test the water.

“I found a lot of people were apologizing for the jobs. They’d say something like, ‘Well, I’m an attorney but I’d rather be a …’

“We’re featuring dream jobs, jobs anyone can learn to do with a little initiative,” he said. “Not fantasy jobs, such as a rock star. You may not be qualified to be a rock star.”

Leisurely learning

It matches changes in how America puts up its feet.

In its 2004 travel outlook, the RoperReports NOP survey, which tracks a range of vacation trends, found that 64 percent of the 1,000 people it polled said the chance to learn new things was “very important” in planning leisure time, up from 51 percent a year earlier. Relaxation came in at 69 percent, down slightly from the previous year.

Kurth, 38, launched the business in January. Packages range from $599 for something simple to about $5,000 for the week in Alaska with an outfitter. Programs are flexible, but most last about two days.

He said he aimed at smaller companies because their owners tended to be more passionate about what they do.

“People who love what they do are more willing to share it,” he said.

Barbara Dau, who operates the St. Bernard Bed and Breakfast in Arch Cape, Ore., on the north coast, took in two women from Chicago and Milwaukee.

“They were slightly disillusioned,” she said. “The two were fabulous, charming, well-poised, just the type of people I would want to represent my inn. But they were surprised by how much work it was.

“The atmosphere here creates a fantasy world,” she added. “But down in the bowels of the place, you’re doing laundry and chopping onions.”

She said people often came through her inn and said “I’ve just dreamed of doing something like this.”

“You want to tear our your hair and say ‘You have no idea,'” she said.

But Dau said she would happily mentor more of the curious.

Warts and all

Winemaking so far is the most popular choice in the program, Kurth said.

Kurth said he wanted his clients to see their “dream jobs,” warts and all.

Gherardini did more than just wrestle wine cases.

“Yesterday we tested for titratable acids, we checked for sulfur dioxide and residual sugars,” he said of his stint in the winery’s lab. Owner Myron Redford showed him some of the ins and outs of caring for vines.

“I can feel it in my arms, I can tell you that,” Gherardini said on a break from helping on the bottling line. “And I’m going to feel it on the flight home.”

He said the vineyard, fair-sized for Oregon near 10,000 cases a year but tiny by California standards, was far more sophisticated than his basement operation.

He said he could see becoming “a gentleman winemaker, if there is such a thing.”

Winemaking has exploded in Oregon, especially around the postcard-perfect hillside vineyards at Amity. When Redford began 30 years ago, there were 10 wineries in Oregon. There are 260 today, and Kurth is trolling for more to be mentors.

Kurth hopes people will see beyond the glamour.

“The fishing and outfitter package involves a trip to Alaska,” he said. “They don’t just guide. They set up tents, they cook.”

Kelly Shafer, a Fort Worth, Texas, writer, spent time with a horse trainer at Four Mountains Ranch near Portland.

“It was wonderful. I’d do it again, but it gave me a clear picture of how much work is involved,” she said of the experience, which involved everything from hands-on horse time to mucking out stalls.

She loves horses and vacations where they are when she can. She noted that the owners started small, with one horse, and grew from there, but with five children and four dogs at home she isn’t sure about trying it herself yet.

“For me, it’s something I might be able to do someday, but I can’t right now,” she said. “It was a chance to test-drive it.”

Calculated risk

Kurth said nobody had jumped to a “dream job” as a result of his fledgling program, and he wouldn’t want them to just on a whim.

“Be smart. Take calculated risks, but don’t be foolish. This is a tool to start the process,” he said.

He said some women bought packages for their husbands.

“Women tend to be a little more holistic than their husbands, who are more concerned with being a provider,” he said.

Two women, both financial advisers, recently finished a package with a cheesemaker in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. A nuclear pharmacist, looking for a break from dealing with cancer patients, is coming to work with a professional gardener at the Oregon State Garden or Portland’s test rose garden.

Gail Haskett, of Vancouver, Wash., used the program as a surprise gift for her husband, Steve, who has been cranking out award-winning home brew from his garage for years.

“I arranged for my husband to become brewmaster for a day at the Full Sail brewery in Hood River,” she said.

She said he picked up some ideas but found commercial brewing too chemistry-oriented.

She said she kept giving him clues, but wouldn’t tell him what was coming.

“I told him it involved water. He doesn’t like water; he was terrified that I had arranged for windsurfing or something,” she said.

When they got to Hood River, she said, Kurth had left a brochure that said, “Congratulations, you are going to be a brewmaster for a day.”

“It was the best gift I’ve ever given him,” she said.