Want to Work Crush at a Winery?
edited by Madelyn Miller, the TravelLady
 Working crush at a
winery is one of the most exciting work opportunities in the world.
“Crush” is industry slang for the harvest season, when fruit is crushed to
produce the juice that is then fermented into wine. Wine is an
industry that revolves around the land, the magic of soil, and a luxury
product that is fragile and yet has been known to improve over decades.
Like music, wine is an industry where math, art, and passion combine.
The wine industry has a lot of fans, and many of those fans would like to
be a part of it, if even for a few magical moments. Some wineries offer
internships or accept volunteers during the harvest season.
 “Many current winery
employees started out as harvest volunteers or interns, passed the
initiation of harvest, fell in love with the job, and stayed,” says Mary
Baker, author of 50 Tips for Cellar Rats: How to Get (and Keep) a
Great Job as a Winery Cellar Rat or Harvest Intern.
Baker, a winery owner herself, wrote the guide to educate aspiring cellar
rats, a popular term for winery interns. “People are coming to the
wine industry from a number of fields,” says Baker. “It’s not just for
college students. We get stock brokers, attorneys, dentists . . .
anyone who wants to try their hand at professional winemaking.” But
Baker cautions that the job is not as easy as it appears.
“First of all, be prepared to work hard, and to get cold and wet.
If you seriously want to work as a harvest volunteer or intern, prepare your
body and mind as you would for an athletic event.”
Just a few decades ago, winery internship opportunities were very hard to
find in the U.S., and pretty much locked up in Europe. The growth of
university enology programs created a supply of educated students offering
to work for experience, and the growing popularity of wine in America—a
popularity that really took off in the 1980’s—has created a supply of
willing volunteers who want to experience the bucolic lifestyle of being
part of a winery.
The growth of the wine industry in the U.S. has created thousands of new
wineries and wine brands, and therefore thousands of new job and volunteer
opportunities. International opportunities can be found in almost
every country in the world. There are even wineries in some Muslim
countries where alcohol is (supposedly) forbidden.
Many wineries use the harvest period as a way to evaluate future
full-time employees. According to Baker, wineries look for physical
and mental endurance, creative problem-solving, responsibility, innate
intelligence, and self-sufficiency.
“Self-sufficiency is a key mindset,” warns Baker. “An ability to
handle chains of activity or multiple tasks without supervision, and the
ability to self-check are also important skills.”
Although opportunities for winery work have increased, the number of
openings relative to applicants is still very small. Many wineries do
not accept interns or volunteers at all. Those that do offer only 1 to
3 positions per year, and these positions are highly sought after.
Baker points out that plenty of opportunities exist for determined
candidates. “You can have a lot of fun working for a winery,
especially the small to mid-size wineries where the owners are slightly
zany.”
In California, the
Venjobs website (Viticulture & Enology Department of the University of
California Davis) offers an extensive listing of internship openings early
each year.
50 Tips for Cellar Rats is available as a paperback guide or an
electronic guide at lulu.com.
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/50-tips-for-cellar-rats/11025186
Madelyn Miller is a travel and food writer who might prefer drinking the
finished product to working as a cellar rat. Read her stories on
www.travelady.com,
www.carladynews.com,
www.yogayaya.com,
www.chocolateatlas.com,
www.cocktailatlas.com,
www.coffeeatlas.com,
www.teaAtlas.c0m
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