The SWURL Guide To Working Wine Harvest

A practical look at the work, culture, and realities of harvest.

Written by Ben Booth

Illustration by Cerise Zelenetz

I was still finding my footing in the wine world when I first reached out to a winemaker about harvest work. With no real industry connections at the time, I sent a hopeful email to Bloomer Creek, a small winery in the Finger Lakes. It was already late August–around the time others began picking–so I felt lucky when Kim and Debra, the vigneron couple who’d run the estate for decades, invited me to stay at their farmhouse to help during a busy stretch in October.

Every evening the three of us drank bottles of Bloomer Creek wine and I began noticing a throughline in their whites: ginger-like savory pepperiness and a warm honey character. One day in the vineyard while picking grapes with Debra, I noticed some clusters covered in botrytis, or “noble rot,” they allowed to be included into the wine for complexity. Botrytis is a fungus that can grow on grapes in damp climates, imparting ginger-honey-saffron flavors while concentrating sugars and acids through dehydration, making withered grapes taste like candy. This seemed to come through in the wines I was tasting.

That day, something clicked. It felt like my first small glimpse into the mysterious, alchemical transformation of fruit character into wine profile, and I suddenly became deeply desirous to seek out more connections like this.

What Is Wine Harvest?

Harvest is, broadly, the busiest time for a winemaker. Grapes can succumb to problematic weather and other damages in a matter of hours, so having a picking team on call is important for securing blue ribbon fruit. Once collected, the grapes are quickly transported to the winery and transferred from picking bins to clean, cozy fermentation vessels. Depending on the winemaker’s desired outcome, they might be kept as whole clusters or partially processed to coax out a desired style, beginning their metamorphosis into wine.

This intense period often translates to the longest hours of the year for the winemaker and is when they most need extra hands. In the northern hemisphere, harvest usually falls between August and October, and February and April in the southern hemisphere. Helpers during harvest are called interns, but you can assist at other times of the year as well, like in late spring with pruning, training dormant vines and shoot thinning. During harvest, however, expect the fullest days, often beginning before sunrise and stretching into the evening. It’s also when you’ll have the highest likelihood of getting involved in cellar work if that’s what you’re after.

Why Work A Wine Harvest?

If you’re curious to understand what’s really in the glass and the winemaking process more intimately, working a harvest is almost a rite of passage. I’m reminded of the lengthy title of Richard Linklater’s obscure first film: It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books. You can study wine endlessly and learn a hell of a lot from tasting, but there are a million little epiphanies that emerge from getting your hands dirty in the vines and cellar.

It changes your relationship to wine, reframing and strengthening your understanding of it as something agricultural, alive, and unpredictable. “There is something so magical about how a sense of place can directly translate into a wine,” says Olivia Ruk of Verve Wine. “I don’t think I truly understood that until I had the opportunity to immerse myself in one of those places.”

Getting Started

Don’t be afraid to send cold emails–winemakers will be flattered by your interest. Even if they don’t need more help that year, they might point you toward someone who does.

Sometimes harvest plans materialize more organically, like over a chance conversation with a winemaker at a wine fair or estate visit. That’s how Tim Ring, of Irving Bottle and Ilis, landed his first stint: while visiting Gérald and Jocelyne Oustric of Le Mazel in Ardèche, Jocelyne casually suggested he come back sometime. Tim quipped about working harvest, but Jocelyne replied in earnest that he should. A few emails later, he had a ticket booked.

Social media is another avenue. It’s becoming more common to see posts for harvest help on Instagram, like the one by Alexander & Maria Koppitsch that inspired Olivia Ruk to reach out. “I had been keeping my eyes open for wineries posting on Instagram about [harvest]...and I remembered that the year prior Koppitsch posted that they were looking for harvest interns,” she remarks. “The year that I was looking to go they didn't post anything, but I slid into their DMs. They were looking for a handful of people and it worked out.”

What To Expect

When seeking out a harvest internship, it’s good to know ahead of time what type of work you’re looking for. “ A lot of people will hire harvest helpers or interns, and you want to make clear whether you’d like to be part of the picking team or in the cellar,” suggested Brent Mayeaux of Stagiaire Wines.

Picking work is more plentiful than cellar work, but it’s fun and can be quite peaceful. Drew Carr, a non-industry friend but a passionate drinker, reflected warmly on helping natural wine journalist Aaron Ayscough forage grapes from abandoned vineyards in Faugères. “There are moments where I was alone in a parcel with no one else around, and it was completely silent and you just look out and you see nothing, and you're in a place where it's just you. I don't know how to describe it, but it's one of the most serene things that I think a person can experience.”

If you end up working alongside seasonal migrant pickers, who are ubiquitous in the viticulture world, prepare to be humbled by the expert wielding of snips unimaginable to a novice. Depending on the size of the team, area of vines, and winemaker’s urgency, picking can be a full-day affair or a collective sprint before breakfast.

One common slide in a harvest-recap Instagram carousel is that of an XL picnic table flanked by glistening pickers and open bottles, some large salads, and grilled or cured sausages. Lunch mileage varies: some days it’s bacchanalian, other days it's a thermos of coffee and a tuna sandwich. But the harvest lunch table is sacred. It’s where you get to know the people you’re laboring alongside, take some pride over your shared efforts, and forge fast relationships.

In the cellar, depending on the winemaker’s setup, expect to work with some combination of pumps, hoses, tanks, barrels, a press, and other equipment. A typical cellar day for me last year looked like this: concoct enough cleaning and sanitizing solution for the day. Take radioactive-hued samples from a dozen or so active fermentations and get sugar readings. Like watering a flowerbed, pump juice over some bins of syrah to oxygenate the native yeasts and prevent the floating grapes from drying out. Press three tons of chardonnay picked that morning and pump it into a large stainless tank. Spend two hours cleaning the press.

Everything gets cleaned before and after use, so be prepared for a lot of that; potentially the majority of your cellar time. But hosing down MacroBins can become peaceful when you get a rhythm going.

The Financial Barrier

The reality of putting your life on pause for little or no pay cannot be ignored. The small producers I would recommend working harvest for often don’t make much money themselves, and typically offer some mix of food, wine, housing, and hands-on experience in exchange for your time and labor—and a little cash, if you’re lucky.

This work structure makes harvest less tenable for anyone who can’t afford to miss a few paychecks, especially in countries where PTO is limited or nonexistent. That said, if you enjoy being physically active and learning by doing, there are plenty of winemakers who would love your help, even just for two weeks.

If you treat it like a working vacation, you get to enmesh yourself in a new place and get acquainted with the surroundings in a way most tourists never will. I work in restaurants and don’t receive paid time off, but the tradeoff of a lightened bank account for new boots-on-the-ground wine experience has always felt worth it.

Of course, a harvest sabbatical is easier if you have a remote job or access to wealth. But I want to stress: you don’t need to be wealthy to have a great harvest experience. It just requires some planning and a little sacrifice.

One of the prompts from the editors was to explore whether harvest is really as romantic as it’s made out to be, but everyone I asked concluded it basically is.

“If you're doing that work year round, that's tough,” said Tim Ring. “But when you know you're only doing one or two months, it's pretty easy to deal with.”

The consensus? If you’re working for good people, the long, dirty, physically demanding hours, and drunken downtime will leave something enduring: a reference point for every glass of wine that comes after.