Six Awesome Harvest 2019 Internship Opportunities


My Vintner Project Profile

Harvest 2019 is right around the corner! Which means wineries across the northern hemisphere are currently looking for extra help in the vineyards and winery over the coming months. We reviewed dozens of openings across job boards and social media and compiled this short list of six awesome opportunities currently available both in the US and abroad.
Punchdown Cellars (Santa Rosa, CA)
(Source: WineBusiness.com)
Punchdown Cellars is a premium custom crush facility located in the Russian River Valley AVA. Our 30 client wineries focus on producing top quality, small lot wines. While over half of our client production is Pinot noir, we produce world-class wines of all varietals. We focus on quality over quantity and take ultimate pride in the success of our client wineries.
Having multiple wineries producing a wide assortment of varietals under our roof, Punchdown offers a truly unique, fun, and exciting harvest internship experience. Interns will get the opportunity to work with a number of different winemakers, different grape varieties, and the resulting differing styles all in one harvest season.
We are looking for people who have harvest experience, who are passionate about wine, have a positive attitude, are detail oriented, enjoy tasting wine, and willing to work hard. Interns will assist in all facets of harvest work including cleaning and sanitizing equipment, sorting fruit, punchdowns and pumpovers, making additions and managing fermentations according to winemaker instructions, barrel work, and other winery-related tasks.
Punchdown is a great place to work vintage to further gain valuable knowledge about winemaking. Many of our interns have gone on to work full-time with our clients here. The people you meet while working at Punchdown will turn into great friends and good connections in the industry.
This position will start early August and will run through early November (depending on the season).
Click here for more information.
Red Newt Cellars (Hector, NY)
(Source: WineBusiness.com)
Hello All! Its time for us to start gearing up for the 2019 harvest!
Red Newt Cellars is seeking harvest workers for our high-quality, Riesling-obsessed winery in the Finger Lakes of New York. We are a small and young team (myself – Assistant Winemaker, Kelby – head Winemaker, and James – Cellar Master) that are focused on making the best Rieslings in the world, and making sure we have a fun time while doing it.
Happy to provide more information on all the standard accolades, etc., upon interest; but in the end, this is a position for anyone that wants to learn about Riesling – from multiple single vineyards through to the cellar. Everyone does everything and works together – very team oriented.
Positions would run from early September through mid-November, negotiable.
Please email a cover letter and CV to interns@rednewt.com
Domaine Roy & fils (Dundee, OR)
(Source: Instagram)
We are a small, dynamic winemaking and vineyard team in need of a meticulous and reliable individual. This is a great opportunity to work closely with the winemaking team and see all aspects of hands-on winemaking. We are looking for a hard worker with high attention to detail, a desire to learn, and a positive attitude.
Please email your resume to jared@domaineroy.com
Weingut Brand (Pfalz, Germany)
(Source: Facebook)
Like every year, we are looking for motivated people to help us bring in the harvest!
Who are we?
We are the brothers Daniel and Jonas Brand, the so called BandBros. We run our 20 ha family estate organically and produce natural wines (without added sulphites!!) in Bockenheim/Pfalz. Both of us are experienced and graduated winemakers. Working experience all over the world made us enjoy working with people from different countries.
Who are we looking for?
Pickers and helping hands for processing grapes – This is NOT a cellarhand job!
What will you experience?
- Picking grapes with our tream of Romanian and polish people. Which is always lots of fun and good conversation.
- Stomping and processing grapes in the evening
- In a daily change, helping Daniel in the cellar with measurements and pressing
- Taking care of fermentations
- Bottling our petnats
- Living with us on the winery
- All supported by electronic music
- Enjoying organic food and natural wine
- Having the best experience ever! See Pictures!
- End of Harvest rave in the vineyard
If this sounds like something you would like to experience, send us an email: work@brandbros.de
Arterra Wines Canada (British Columbia, Canada)
(Source: WineJobsCanada.com)
Nk’Mip Cellars; 2016 Intervin Canadian Winery of the Year recipient, is a successful joint venture partnering Arterra Wines Canada with the Osoyoos Indian Band. Featuring premium, award winning VQA wines in the south Okanagan we can offer an aspiring team player, a one-of-a-kind opportunity to immerse yourself into the heart of British Columbia wine country and provide hands on experience with premium VQA wine production.
We are looking for someone to join our team for the 2019 harvest season. We are an estate winery producing premium wines processing around 280 tonnes and are interested in someone who would take control of all routine lab analysis (we ship samples out that require spec analysis) as well as join in on the processing of the grapes and wine. Depending upon the day, an average about 10-30% of time to be spent on lab duties the balance in the cellars. As we are a smaller facility the position demands involvement with all aspects of harvest, sorting, cap management, inoculations, additions, racking’s, transfers, barrel work, and of course the inevitable cleaning and sanitizing.
We are an upbeat group, serious about making the best wine possible – but we still like to enjoy harvest. In addition, we are always willing to discover new methods of production that you may have experienced during your previous employment and will appreciate your feedback on tasting wines as they develop. As you would anticipate there will be various physical demands as well the need to occasionally work long hours and some weekends.
Preference will be given to those who provide a detailed application including a cover letter outlining your experience and industry ambitions.
Click Here for more information.
Erosion Wine Co. (Yountville, CA)
(Source: WineBusiness.com)
Erosion Wine Co. is hiring! We’re looking for hard working, fun, and passionate people to join our family. What’s the job? It’s a “Jack / Jill of All Trades”!
This is the perfect opportunity to be involved in all facets of what we do– winemaking, hospitality, and logistics. We will be making groundbreaking, adventurous wines, working with outstanding Napa Valley grapes and using incredible new equipment to make these fun wines. Plus, you’ll get bragging rights for being the first employees ever at Erosion Wine Co.! This is a great opportunity for you to forge your own path within Erosion Wine Co., and also for anyone who has dreamed of starting their own winery.
As a startup winery, we’re looking for people who are willing and able to do it all. During harvest, this will mostly entail working the crush pad, punching down / pumping over ferments, lab work, cleaning floors and tanks, among other glamorous and muscle building tasks. Shortly after harvest, we expect to open our Tasting Room, and we’ll need your help there! We’ll also need your help with packaging wine and shipping it to our club members. In mid-2020, we’ll try to grow up a bit and formalize job positions to best fit your talents.
We’ll consider anyone who has a great attitude, a love of learning, the ability to follow directions, a clean criminal and driving record, and a passion for wine. A love of beer doesn’t hurt, either.
We at Erosion Wine Co. believe that flavor comes first. Our approach is unique to the Napa Valley in that we create one-off wines in a non-stylistic, non-vintage, non-appellation, non-nonsense sort of way, and we put our delicious wine into cans. Cans! We think wine should be fun for us to make and for our customers to drink.
Instructions: If you’ve read up to this point, congrats! Please include in your application a short statement of an experience you’ve had that changed the way you think about wine. Also, please let us know in a few sentences why you think taking this position would be a good idea.
Erosion Wine Co. is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.
Click Here for more information.