A Career at a Winery?

If ever there was a job situation that looked great from afar, it's working in an idyllic setting of a winery surrounded by vineyards. Let's take a look at how you might get there.

Many of these jobs will be in wineries, though there are plenty of other wine sales, wine retail, and wine importers jobs that will be located somewhere else.

See winejobs.com for current job listings.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go!

The jobs

Broadly, these are the available positions:

• Production of wine. Cellar hands and winemakers, lab workers
• Marketing. Of the winery and its wine. Can be direct-to-consumer (DTC) and with wholesalers.
• Direct-to-consumer sales/hospitality. Tasting room sales and management.
• Wine club. DTC. Involves sales, hospitality, schmoozing, putting on club events.
• Events. Some wineries put on dinners, parties, weddings.
• Running the business. GM, finance, maybe IT & HR if it's big enough to staff their own people. 

Definition of key jobs:

Winemaker - Oversees the production of the wine from the crush to the bottle. Often involved in what goes on in the vineyards, too. The job can vary widely, from working at a small ma and pa operation to the guys putting out a million cases of wine every year. The job is based in the hard sciences.

Vineyard Manager - Oversees the grape growing operation. This involves maintaining the health and quality of the product, plus maybe understanding sustainability and organic farming.

Wine Sales & Marketing - Promotions, client relationships, and sales.

Wine Educator - This is teaching either academically, at a winery or elsewhere in the wine business, or it can be on your own contracting wine education to groups. This last option looks enticing to a lot of folks, so there are a lot more people saying they do this than there are actual jobs.

Some Places to Get a College Education

On the production side, there is viticulture (growing grapes) and enology (making wine). It is art, science, farming. All jobs don't require a four-year degree. Here are some of the places to get a bachelors degree for the ones that usually require a degree or at least some classwork.

Univ of Calif at Davis
The premier school for grape growing and wine making.

Fresno State
Offers bachelor's and master’s degrees, and even a minor, in Viticulture and Enology. The minor works well for someone more focused on the business side.

California Polytechnic State Univ, aka Cal Poly
In the Ag School, the Wine and Viticulture program lets you choose an emphasis on grape-growing, wine making, or the business side.

Sonoma State Univ
Offers a Wine Business Degree. A winery management focus.

Cornell
Offers a viticulture and enology program.

Washington State Univ
Viticulture, wine making, business management

Community/Junior Colleges
There are two-year colleges that offer certificates and degrees in different aspects of the wine business. Near me, Santa Rosa Junior College offers extensive training, hands-on and classroom.

Sommelier

Somm training is the most well-known wine-specific training. There are several levels that get much more difficult as you progress. The training is service oriented plus food and wine pairing. Certified sommeliers work in restaurants, wine shops, heck, maybe even on a cruise ship! For someone with wine knowledge already, perhaps working in the wine biz already, getting through the first two Somm classes to become certified isn't terribly difficult, or so I've been told.

WSET

The Wine & Spirit Education Trust is a private company that has training that's all the rage. It is a quick and relatively easy way to get a broad understanding of the worldwide wine business. Will it get you a job in the wine industry? Not really. Will it look good on your resumé? Yes. It will help set you apart when applying for entry level production, hospitality/retail sales, and wholesales/importers. I suppose you might be able to go from a management job in another field to the wine business with a WSET.

If You Don't Have a Related Degree

If you have experience in another business in management, IT, finance, or HR you can transfer that knowledge to a winery. The bigger ones, and especially the corporate wineries, will have more of these sorts of jobs available.

Going in without related training can be done in the cellar, especially during the autumn harvest season (hard, physical work), on the hospitality side in a tasting room sales, or with events (dinners, weddings, etc.).

My view from work one November morning