A winery grows grapes, makes wine and often hosts visitors, which means farm work, cellar work and hospitality in one business. Farm, cellar and visitor teams work under different rhythms, and harvest weeks depend on seasonal workers arriving on time and being treated fairly.
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Share your requirementsA winery and vineyard runs three jobs: growing grapes, making wine and, in many cases, welcoming visitors. The vineyard needs pruning, canopy work, spraying and a short, intense harvest; the cellar needs crushing, fermentation, ageing, blending and bottling; the tasting room, restaurant or stay needs hospitality staff. Work follows the vine and the cellar, not the clock, with a long quiet stretch and a harvest that must be picked at the right moment. Many estates are far from towns, so housing, transport and food for workers matter. The licensed product brings record-keeping and conduct expectations, and a small year-round team is joined by many seasonal hands. See also HR for food and beverage.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
Grapes ripen on their own schedule, and if the pickers are not there, quality and the crop are at risk.
Workers need housing, transport and food, and arrangements for them are an HR matter as much as a facilities one.
Experienced pruners and cellar hands are few, and learning takes several seasons.
A small core carries the estate for months, and then a large temporary group arrives and must be organised quickly.
Tasting room and event staff work weekends and holidays with a different pay and pace from the farm.
Piece rates, advances and housing conditions need to be fair and clear, or workers do not return.
Tasting is part of the job in some roles, and conduct standards around alcohol need to be clear.
Blends, cellar practice and vineyard decisions are known to one or two people.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Recruitment and Talent Acquisition; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for food and beverage, not in general.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a wineries and vineyards business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A list of returning pickers, new recruits and a contingency pool, with an arrival schedule tied to ripeness checks.
What this coversHideA list of returning pickers, new recruits and a contingency pool, with an arrival schedule tied to ripeness checks. The recruitment process keeps it topped up.
A written minimum for accommodation, travel and meals for seasonal workers, with someone responsible for it.
What this coversHideA written minimum for accommodation, travel and meals for seasonal workers, with someone responsible for it.
Clear rates, piece-rate rules, advances, weather days and end-of-season payment, explained before the work starts.
What this coversHideClear rates, piece-rate rules, advances, weather days and end-of-season payment, explained before the work starts. The payroll process supports it.
A progression from helper to skilled worker with supervised learning each season.
What this coversHideA progression from helper to skilled worker with supervised learning each season. The learning and development process can structure it.
Written terms and rosters for each group, so weekend tourism work is not treated as an afterthought.
What this coversHideWritten terms and rosters for each group, so weekend tourism work is not treated as an afterthought.
Cellar procedures and blending notes captured as the winemaker teaches an assistant, so the estate does not depend on one head.
What this coversHideCellar procedures and blending notes captured as the winemaker teaches an assistant, so the estate does not depend on one head.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A returning harvest pool and a backup list, ready before the grapes are.
Clear piece-rate, advance and end-of-season payment rules that workers understand.
A multi-season route for pruners and cellar staff to become skilled.
Housing, heat, tools and chemical-use routines for people who live and work on the estate.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in food and beverage, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Kitchen, service and outlet staff leave quickly in food and beverage. How to ask what lies behind the first answer, compare outlets and act on what you learn.
7 min readRead article
Candidates who accept and never arrive are usually lost in the silence between offer and joining. What actually causes it, and a contact plan that closes the gap.
8 min readRead article
Most salary structures grew one negotiation at a time. How to build grades and bands from what you already pay, without repricing everybody at once.
8 min readRead article
A calendar of courses, a budget spent by March and no record of what any of it changed. What a learning and development process contains when it starts from need rather than from the catalogue.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Keep a list of returning workers, contact them early, confirm travel and housing, and keep a standby pool in case ripening moves forward.
Rates and how they are calculated, advances, working hours, weather days, housing and transport, and who to contact. Put it in a language they read.
Use supervised practice across seasons with a simple skill ladder, and recognise progress with grade and pay.
Provide decent housing, safe transport, food, first aid and a named person to hear problems. A fair estate gets workers back.
Document cellar practice, train an assistant alongside him and give him time and recognition to teach.
Our opening discussion would cover how many harvest workers returned compared with last year, what housing and transport feel like from a worker's side, and whether piece rate, advance and weather-day rules are written. Who could run a fermentation tank without the winemaker would come up. A good first piece of work is early harvest crew planning. Scope is agreed in writing.
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