I applied to a posting at Williams Selyem and a few others. I was preparing applications for other wineries (had a list of about 20 that I had ordered based on my research and was going down the list planning to do a few each week) but heard from Williams Selyem early. A couple of the wineries I was planning on cold-calling ended up posting positions a few weeks later so I don’t know if the best bet is to wait for postings or call. I’d guess a quick inquiry wouldn’t hurt.
One thing that I hadn’t realized in my naivety was that the person to contact is the cellarmaster, not the winemaker. Obvious to those already ITB perhaps, and it makes sense, but that hadn’t been immediately clear to me.
In the 20-30 internships I looked into, none were unpaid. Standard was $15-20/hr. Higher range generally required some experience or was at small, cult wineries. I’d say around half of the positions I looked at gave some indication that they would consider people without experience, but I don’t know how that tracks to final decisions - could be more or less. A couple offered assistance with accommodation, particularly those in really remote spots (Skinner was a notable one), and quite a few offered accommodation for international interns.
I did find that once I was able to have a conversation with a person the whole process was much less stressful. It was clear that a major concern is that people will show up thinking its a vacation and then flop when the hard work really kicks in. So I think the fact that I’ve spent a good bit of time working outside in remote and physically demanding environments went down well.
For some of the wineries, it was clearly important for your cover letter to indicate that you “get” what they’re trying to do, regarding winemaking philosophy, style focus, expression of fruit/place. A couple years back I was lucky to have an 88 (birth year) Williams Selyem and I think I talked about that in a way that indicated that I had at least some idea of what they were trying to produce.
Yeah, for certain tasks it is almost beneficial to have interns with zero experience. The last thing you want is someone with one harvest under their belt who already thinks they know everything and take shortcuts, disrespect their supervisors, and put the fermentations at risk. It is nice if they understand the places philosophy, but much more important that the intern is good at following directions, respects the chain of command, and still has a sense of humor after digging out and cleaning tanks for weeks on end.
+1 to what Robert said. There’s such a range of personalities, processes, equipment, idiosyncrasies everywhere. Feel it out, find your place, prove yourself as reliable and “heads-up” first, then build on that. Figure out why one person likes to do something differently.
As a former employer, I hated it when some brand new person would come in and tell us we were doing everything wrong in the first moments of training. Not really “hate”. Like the enthusiasm, but we did things a certain way for a reason. Once they understood why, we were happy to hear ideas. Before that, they’re wasting our time.
Oof, I know what you mean. Back when I was working in a lab we had a similar problem. A new person came in once who thought the way we were running our experiments was “inefficient” and ran their experiment differently without telling anyone - their results came out a total mess. Maybe they had good original contributions to make to improve our process - hell, we weren’t perfect and we were always learning and improving based on other people’s input - but they didn’t even try to understand the context of what we were doing and why we were doing it. Waste of everyone’s time, including theirs.
You should have a good experience at Williams Selyem. My second harvest was there, started as a harvest intern in June - bottled the SVD wines before harvest. Topped barrels. Did some rackings. Then when closer to harvest, was part of the sampling group. Finally, was on the crush crew, did additions, punchdowns/wades, helped pressing/digging out tanks.
Stayed on for 5 more years (leaving as the Assistant Winemaker).
Jeff and the rest of the team are all great- you should learn quite a bit. Be clean!
Thanks Trevor! Just started about 10 days ago and loving it so far. The whole team is great, and the new(ish) cellarmaster, Joe, is giving me lots of opportunities to learn and try new things, which is awesome. Just the two of us interns at the moment, I’m sure it’ll be totally different (but also great) when all the other interns arrive in 6 weeks’ time.
Excuse my ignorance - what were you sampling closer to harvest?
Where did you head to after your five years there?
Thanks Casey. I thought that (or something similar) might be it…but confused since I didn’t think WS had interns out in the vineyards. Times may have changed.
Thanks for the bump, guys.
I’m still around if anyone has questions.
A lot of it has to do with sensible expectations, but for those of you who have actually been through it, you know it’s the unexpected challenges that are the real speed bumps.
I’ve been in this business for almost 20 years, grew up around it, and have never seriously done anything else.
#1 is your top advice from now till the day you retire. As soon as you violate #1, you’re on the way out.
The best And earliest of us in the wine biz get to run it around the post 40ish Times. If you’re not learning something each year, you’re getting worse, not better.
Thank you Mary, your book was really helpful. I didn’t know anyone ITB and your book - and people on this board - really helped provide a window that made the whole process much smoother and less intimidating.
I’m now a month into my first internship and that #1 runs through my head all day (along with the “find something to clean. And then clean it”). One thing that it took me a little time to realize was that not everyone already there knows what they’re doing, either. I don’t mean that in a mean-spirited way at all, just that different people have different ways of doing things and different backgrounds, skillsets, and knowledge bases. So one piece of advice I’d add to the big list, for people who have started their internship, is something like “Ask the same question of different people, even if you think you already know the answer. People’s experiences vary and there is always something new to learn or a new way to look at an old problem.”
Yeah seriously. Even a lot of “fancy” places struggling to get enough bodies in, and quite a few of the people they are getting are cancelling on offers from elsewhere as a result.