WORK EXPERIENCE / OCCASIONAL ASSISTANT VINEYARD WORKER (self employed)
- Company: WYCHES VINEYARD
- Closing Date: 31-01-2025
- Location: SWANMORE HAMPSHIRE SO32 2UQ
- Salary: £20/HOUR PLUS TRAVEL ALLOWANCE
- Hours: Work experience
- Contact Title: Vineyard owner
- Contact Name: Tony Burton
- Contact Email: tony.burton@burtonproperty.co.uk
- Contact Telephone: 07885822289
- How to Apply: Email with information about yourself in the first instance or telephone
Description
Work Experience opportunity on small vineyard (www.wychesvineyard.co.uk)
We are a small 5 acre (5200 vines) vineyard planted about 7 years ago within our 25 acre smallholding and home in Upper Swanmore Hampshire in the South Downs National Park. Our site is well regarded and we are consistently in the upper quartile of yield in the UK. We have still and sparkling varieties.
We started our journey at Plumpton with the Principles of Vinegrowing Course in 2016 with Chris Foss.
We are a husband and wife team, principally focused on growing high quality grapes. We have an established contract to supply the Bolney Wine Estate with grapes (our 6th harvest is this year) and they in turn make a small amount of wine for us that we sell locally. This agreement was originally put in place with Sam Linter in 2017 when Sam owned Bolney, so Sam knows us well and we have a really good relationship with everyone at Bolney.
We have no employees. We have each year sought help for some tasks in the vineyard and high quality advice either from a part time contractor or using Vineworks who are one of the main vineyard contracting firms and consultancies. We have carried out all vineyard tasks ourselves and still do but sometimes prefer to get help so we can manage our other interests: we are quite knowledgeable but not experts. I have spraying qualifications and do all spraying unless we are away. We have the usual gambit of equipment here and suitable welfare facilities for anyone working here.
We are wondering about getting some help through Plumpton this coming year as well as continuing with Vineworks as our full time consultant and occasional labour provider for bigger tasks like harvest: we are not sure where on the sliding scale of Work Experience through to Internship and Apprenticeship this might apply but we are very happy to pay for a keen student to come and work with us on and off for some of the year. Realistically we cannot offer a full time job.
