Harvest Interns

In the autumn grape harvest season there is a group of people that are willing to work long, difficult hours surrounded by sticky juice, insects, and back-breaking work. It's a temp job that doesn't pay a whole lot. Their schedule is up to Mother Nature and there have been years when they may not get a day off for a month. Without these young men and women you would not have your wine. Who are these people? They're called simply The Interns.

They perform tedious, hard work like cleaning hundreds of oak barrels and all of the equipment before the harvest begins. They process the fruit, move the juice, and clean again. Always cleaning and sterilizing anything that touches the fruit. Everything is clean except for themselves.

Intern doing punchdowns (mixing up grape skins, stems, juice for color and flavors)
Backbreaking work. Image from Naggiarvineyards.com

They are also exceedingly hungry from all that manual labor. Providing food to your interns is an unwritten rule for a winery. Some will have a chef, others will find the winemaker barbecuing, maybe they'll order in a bunch of pizzas. The other unwritten rule is to supply plenty of beer. In the "old days" before craft beer I remember walking into a small liquor store in Healdsburg in Sonoma County somewhere around Labor Day weekend. One entire wall of the store was stacked with cases of Budweiser in preparation for the harvest. Nowadays they get at least Lagunitas or Sierra Nevada. Another rule is there is a harvest party at the end before everybody goes their separate ways. Friends are made. Networking might pay off in a job in another country or somewhere to stay when you travel.

Why would anyone want to do this? They might be getting into the wine business back home. They might be a young winemaker from France. They might be someone just out of school who wants to travel. Learning about winemaking somewhere else means you might pick up some tips and techniques you can use back home.

They come from all over the world. The folks currently in California for the grape harvest are from Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and South Africa (where it is currently "off season" in the wine business) and from wine producing countries in Europe such as Spain, Italy and France. Typically they arrive in town in August where four of them might share an apartment and a car. When they're done in November they will usually travel around California and other parts of the U.S. before heading home.

A couple years ago we housed an intern whose family owned a winery near Florence, Italy. We have a son who has done a dozen harvests in a half-dozen countries.

They key point is these unnamed temporary laborers are responsible for turning the grapes into your  wine.