By St Hallett, http://www.sthallett.com.au/
Vintage in the Barossa, one of Australia’s leading wine regions, brings with it busy times, crazy times and if you’re lucky, fun and satisfying times. Working at a winery during this period is a unique experience and one often not shown to those outside the winery who enjoy the fruits of such labour, including media, customers and sales teams.
Several vintages back the St Hallett winery team decided this had to change, with the team pronouncing (with a good dash of glee) “…it’s about time we let those guys experience what it’s REALLY like!”
Hands on at St Hallett was born. It’s a unique three day “vintage” experience with the winery hosting small groups of sales and customer teams from around the globe. Unlike other winery jaunts though, “Hands On” participants are put to actual work (Winemakers Stuart Blackwell and Toby Barlow rather relish having “extra” helpers even if they tell St Hallett’s marketing team it’s all for the sake of education!).
A regional tour of the Barossa begins at the airport, with Stuart providing the chauffeuring and commentary as the scenery flits by. The invite says “No white stuff, no designer clothes” so once everyone is kitted out in appropriate gear including steel capped boots, it’s off to the winery for some hard yakka. Events get a little hectic and go a little something like this: bringing the grapes in, crushing, pressing…then it’s lab time…lunch (sandwiches on the lawn)…blending the perfect Barossa Shiraz in the afternoon…a BBQ dinner. Up at sunrise to trek into the vineyards to taste grapes row by row…back at the winery for more work…barrel tasting…benchmarking different parcels of fruit…woops, almost forgot lunch…and so on. Somewhere in there they get some sleep too!
Our weary workers are sent back home with what the St Hallett team hope is a genuine passion for the Barossa – its wine and its people – and an appreciation for what goes on “behind the wine label”. Funnily enough, no-one has ever complained its all too much work. We think it’s because of the sense of satisfaction they have of seeing some of their hard work end up in lovely bottle of St Hallett wine! Cheers to all of our “Hands On” Alumni…and welcome very soon, class of 2010!
Tags: Australia, Barossa Valley, Harvest diary, News, St Hallett
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Erica Fowler, Bibendum Times . Bibendum Times said: Visit a winery is great fun but what about harvesting. Join the "hands on" vintage in the Barossa http://bit.ly/63h8Gk [...]