May through October, 2024 Bottling and Harvest Jobs at Patricia Green Cellars

Patricia Green Cellars was founded in 2000 and is now one of the leading producers of Pinot Noir in the country. We make a fairly large amount of small quantities of wines from a selection of the best vineyards in the Willamette Valley. This is a unique operation in many ways. A large Estate Vineyard in Ribbon Ridge provides the setting but fruit from upwards of 15 more vineyards rolls through during harvest. In addition to Pinot Noir small amounts of Sauvignon Blanc, Tempranillo and Chardonnay are produced as well. We also happen to be the best producer of whiskey in the state of Oregon.

We will need 2 people for wine assembling/bottling and a total of 2-3 people for harvest.

If you’re looking at the litany of harvest jobs out there you have read some version of the same bullet-pointed ad several times. Starting in May we will begin the process of assembling 34 different Pinot Noir spread over more than 800 barrels. Lots of cleaning, wine prep and bottling to be done. Harvest; there isn’t a lot more ground to cover about what harvest is. It’s sorting fruit and cleaning up equipment and floors all the time. Forklift driving experience is a major plus. Previous winery experience and familiarity and experience with pumps, electric pallet jacks, presses and the like is also a plus but hardly required.

Most importantly and in addition to the above, we do manage our fermentations by doing a daily pigeage (foot treading in the fermenters). This is strenuous work that requires upper body strength, stamina, a relative lack of modesty, good hygiene, determination, generally positive human energy and skin that’s either tough or well-taken care of.

If you have worked in restaurant kitchens or bars you're our kind of person. Experience in winery operations is awesome but if you have come from the restaurant world we know what you have been through and many people here have that background.

What Patricia Green Cellars offers in the whole deal:

*This is a progressive and team-oriented operation.
*Complete and extensive training, particularly in regard to safety measures.
*The work environment is pretty low stress even if there will be days and stretches of days that are pretty intense.
*We will hopefully end up processing around 250 tons of fruit, most of it will be Pinot Noir from some of the best, oldest and most historic vineyards in Oregon. This should be around 6 weeks of work sort of give or take a week on both ends of harvest with the additional two month of bottling for 1-2 of the crew. You will work with an extremely experienced core group that will provide training, direction, motivation and hopefully inspiration.
*The pay ranges from $22-$25/hour depending upon experience, there is time and a half pay after 40 hours. This will be 7 days/week of 8-12 hour days.
*We don’t pull over-night shifts. We don’t work past 12 hours/day other than in crisis management situations which we hope to avoid.
*Breakfast, lunch, snacks and beverages are provided daily. Dinner is provided when necessary. There is a hot tub.
*We are out in the middle of nowhere and it’s really beautiful.

What we don’t provide:

*We don’t have guest quarters or a winery house and transportation is not exactly something we can provide but it is necessary as the winery is 6-7 miles from the nearest town that would have housing. We will work with folks from afar on these issues and attempt to solve that problem before it becomes one.
*This isn’t a big “on the job training for your new career in the wine industry” sort of place although we have had people move from here to other wineries so it is certainly not unprecedented.

What we expect of you:

*You can physically and mentally handle the amount and intensity of work. During harvest this is 70 hours/week on your feet doing work that ranges from monotonous to strenuous, during bottling it is 8-10 hours/day of repetitive motion and lifting.
*You take direction, are enthusiastic, team-oriented and care about the quality of your work.
*Cleaning is an essential part of everyone's daily activities and taking initiative on it and being thorough about it is required.

Bottling work will begin in mid-May and we will have a lot of wine tasting, barrel cleaning, tank prep, moving stuff around sorts of day and weeks basically all summer long. While it is basically impossible to predict when harvest will exactly begin at this point we are expecting, based on current trajectory, for harvest to begin sometime in the first 10-20 days of September but that is a wait and see sort of situation at this juncture.

Check out the website, patriciagreencellars.com for more general sorts of information.