Since 2023, wine, ghost story and history lovers have dared to be scared with the Fox School of Wine’s annual Haunted Mines Wines Tours. The event, which is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 30, this year, will start at Bob Wells Plaza lot and participants will enjoy wines paired with five historica l sites, said Certified Specialist of Wine Kirsten Fox, an executive sommelier and Fox School of Wine headmistress. “When deciding the locations, we knew they all had to be places where a bus could go, because we will take a luxury coach to get to the stops,” she said. “And there will not be any hiking, because this is basically a city tour.” Fox thought long and hard about which wines to pair with each stop. “I love pairing wine to circumstances, locations and personalities,” she said. “I obviously love wine and pairing it with food, which I do all the time, but the characteristics of a situation can sometimes connect you with a wine in a different way, so you remember it better.” So when the tour stops at Miners Hospital, the group will enjoy a pinot noir from Sonoma County, California. “Pinot noir is the healthiest of the red wines,” Fox said. “It has higher levels of resveratrol, an antioxidant, than other wines. So if you’re drinking wine for health, this is one of the ones to select. I hope to deliver the education in a way where you will remember the wine better than if I just spew, ‘tastes of cranberry and raspberry and back flavor of nice earthy flavors.’” The group will not only learn about the wines and the town’s history. It will also hear some local ghostly lore from a group of wacky characters, who serve as tour guides, according to Fox. “We are introducing a new character, Thibodeaux Fibula, Tib Fib for short, this year, because one of the key stars who plays Cyrus the Ol’ Prospector, is not in town this year,” she said. “Tib Fib is a local merchant who owned a store on Main Street, and even though he’s dead, he’s come back to help lead this tour.” Fibula’s backstory includes a long history of providing tools and supplies to miners, Fox said. “So he has some background on what helped the miners do their jobs,” she said. Fox School of Wine’s Haunted Mines Wines Tour features an array of characters who serve as guides. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Fox School of Wine Another guide is the Man in the Yellow Slicker, which is taken directly from the pages of Park City’s own ghostly history. According to legend, the Man in the Yellow Slicker, or the Man in the Yellow Raincoat, is the ghost of miner Jake Smith, who was murdered over a claim dispute. The ghost is considered by some as a harbinger of disaster and was said to have appeared to miners before the Daly West Mine explosion in 1902. Some bad blood between Fibula and the Man in the Yellow Slicker bubbles to the surface during the Haunted Mines Wines Tour, Fox said. “The dispute may have come from a warranty on the raincoat or something,” she said with a laugh. “We’ll see what happens this year.” Last year, the Man in the Yellow Slicker, who made his Haunted Mines Wines debut, accidentally landed in the center of an incident that involved Park City police, Fox said. “We had him waiting on Main Street to scare Cyrus, and apparently the officers were nearby,” she said. “So when the Main in the Yellow Slicker started banging on a bus, the officers seemed to have a problem with that, and the Man in the Yellow Slicker got interviewed by Park City’s finest.” In addition, the tour will feature the Nearly Dead Saloon Girls, Fox said. “They are there to pour the wine during the tour, and they participate in some of the stories we tell, and they deliver the side stories that don’t usually come out of the other guides,” she said. The Nearly Dead Saloon Girls have changed since their debut in 2023, according to Fox. The Nearly Dead Saloon Girls are tasked with pouring the wine and telling stories that complement the scary tales that are told during the Fox School of Wine’s Haunted Mines Wines Tour. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Fox School of Wine “The first year we did this, the Nearly Dead Saloon Girls appeared in costumes that you would usually see inside bars,” she said. “Unfortunately they got very cold on the tour. So, the next year they got creative and started wearing skeleton-designed Under Armor.” The lead guide is a character named ForMal de Hyde, Fox said. “We call him the Undertaker,” she said. “And like the other guides, we had our staff, not me, come up with their backstories. We did that because I wanted them to add their own personalities to these stories.”  The cost of the Haunted Mines Wines Tour is $189 per person, and the price includes: $20 donation to the Park City Museum. 2 ounce tastes of five wines. A snack bag with four paired nibbles. Luxury transportation. A tasting card. The Haunted Mines Wines Tour is an offshoot of the Fox School of Wine’s Mines Wines Tour, which Fox, whose family was involved in mining, began in 2017. “I would call myself a reluctant entrepreneur and say that desperation is a powerful motivator,” she joked. “I was getting a divorce, and in the middle of one night after my husband decided to leave, I sat up from a dead sleep and said, ‘Mines rhymes with wines.’” Fox, who used to be a destination management sales manager, latched onto that epiphany and called some of her clients the next day. “I knew what we needed to find fun things to do with corporate groups in Park City, and I had read a book called ‘Nail It Then Scale It’ that was written by some guys from Brigham Young University,” she said. “One of the first things they talk about is if you call your best clients with an idea and they say, ‘How much, how fast, how soon?’ it’s a good idea.” Within a month, Fox scheduled her first Mines Wines Tour. “We had no food, and we had tiny, plastic cups that were unrecyclable, which was awful,” she said with a laugh. “The tours look a little different now. We streamlined things and the quality of the service has improved.” Fox and her staff haven’t made many changes in the Haunted Mines Wines Tour because of the lessons they learned through the regular tours. “We just basically added fun ghost stories, and things locals would be interested in,” she said. “My team also loves to dress up. So, we’re all about Halloween, and we encourage people who sign up for the tour to come in costume, too.” Fox School of Wine Haunted Mines Wines Tour When: 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30 Cost: $189 Registration: tinyurl.com/ykpphms4 Web: foxschoolofwine.com The post The Haunted Mines Wines Tour taps into local lore and vino education appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less