Remote Jobs In The Wine Industry

In the post-COVID era, many industries have rethought the way that companies leverage commercial offices. There are now many people across the world whose jobs are either fully or partially remote, no longer having any need to commute to work. Although jobs in the wine industry are very hands-on and people-facing in many aspects of its businesses, there are now many more remote or hybrid work opportunities available to people seeking those kinds of roles.

There are a few general categories of employers that will be helpful to follow to find these roles:

• Corporate Wineries
• National & Regional Sales Manager Roles
• Administrative Roles
• Distribution Roles

Corporate Wineries

The wine industry’s biggest players are the large corporations that produce the vast majority of wines available on the US market. According to the SVB 2024 State of the Wine Industry Report, over 60% of US cases of wine sold are produced by just seven of the most prominent wine corporations. These companies are listed below in order of largest by cases in 2022:

1. Gallo, 90.3M cases
2. The Wine Group 41.7M cases
3. Constellation Brands, 23.5M cases
4. Trinchero Family Estates, 17.4M cases
5. Delicato Family Wines, 15.0M cases
6. Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, 12.0M cases
7. Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, 7.0M cases

Although the larger wine corporations are often the least glamorized, they can offer their employees the access to significant benefits and streamlined organizational systems. The companies of this scale will have the resources and systems in place to be able to support you. Beginning your search with these winery corporations will increase your likelihood of landing a job that can be either fully remote or hybrid.

National & Regional Sales Manager Roles

Even in more medium-sized wineries, if the company is supporting national distribution, they will hire national or regional sales managers to represent their brand across different sales regions. The nature of these roles is already decentralized from the winery headquarters, since they are spread across the country.

These roles are semi-remote in that you cannot work from home entirely, as there will be occasions that demand interfacing with others. For instance, it is standard to conduct a National Sales Meetings in which all the sales managers are required to convene at least annually at the winery headquarters to align on goals and network with each other. Similarly, you will be very customer-facing in your region as it will be your job to be the brand ambassador for all the accounts in that area.

Administrative Roles

Anecdotally, the roles within wineries of all sizes that are the most often fully or partially remote are those in administrative or support functions. The most common examples being in Finance, Accounting, Compliance, General Counsel, Analysts, Marketing, Social Media, and some Wine Club Managers. In cases where a winery’s tasting room is not open seven days a week, the more tenured tasting room managers are able to work remotely on these days such that they have more of a hybrid role working from home for 1 to 2 days per week.

Distribution Roles

As with the winery-specific National & Regional Sales Managers, distribution companies will have a vast portfolio made up of many different wine or spirits companies. They too require sales representatives to work across many different regions in order to manage their local account relationships. These roles will tend to be fully or partially remote, but do demand many regular meetings with customer accounts in the field.

The largest distribution companies with the greatest footprints will require the most regional representatives. As outlined by Wine Business Insider these companies, listed from largest to smallest portfolio, include:

1. Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits
2. Republic National Distributing Co.
3. Johnson Brothers Liquor Co.
4. Breakthru Beverage Group
5. Winebow
6. Empire Distributors
7. Opici Family Distributing
8. Georgia Crown Distributing Co.
9. Martignetti
10. Empire Merchants of New York

On the flipside, it is worth mentioning that in the wine industry even if working hours have generally become more flexible with cloud-based file sharing and software platforms–there are certain roles that due to their hands-on nature will never be able to be fully remote. These jobs will include the following:

• Vineyard Jobs - These jobs require in-depth knowledge of how each vineyard block is progressing throughout the season and the work performed is very hands-on. There is a developing marketplace of different vineyard management softwares to allow Viticulturists or Vineyard Managers to have more flexibility with how they track and document vineyard work.
• Winemaking Jobs (Winemaker, Cellarhand, Enologist) - These cellar-based workers spend a majority of their time performing tasks on the wines themselves. Many winemakers and assistant winemakers are able to work more flexibly by leveraging cloud based winemaking softwares like Innovint or Vintrace, and being able to generate and close-out work orders while off-site.
• Tasting Room Jobs - Tasting Room Associates are always customer facing. As mentioned earlier, in cases where a tasting room isn’t fully open seven days a week, there can be some opportunity for managers to work flexible hours or even hybrid. Software platforms like WineDirect and SOVOS Ship Compliant, allows Tasting Room Managers and Direct-to-Consumer or Wine Club Managers the opportunity to access their platforms online so that some work can be done from home, if the company is open to a hybrid role.

All-in-all if you are interested in beginning your career in the wine industry, but are looking for a remote or hybrid work opportunity there are plenty of routes to be able to achieve this. It’s best to keep this in mind when seeking roles that are with larger companies or that tend to generally be decentralized from a winery’s headquarters. Sales and distribution are the most abundant remote opportunities in the industry, but that isn’t to say they are the only ones. If you specialize in a more administrative function, there is a good chance that a winery will be able to offer you some degree of flexibility.