We’ve been driving around South Australia for the past two months, training cellar door and tourism staff in how to talk to visitors about biosecurity and keeping vines healthy.
Our training manager Rebecca Weatherill has delivered training to hundreds of frontline staff and feedback to the Wine Tourism Biosecurity Program has been overwhelmingly positive.
“The training program is written to allow cellar door teams to easily apply the principles to their own situations. We’ve given a range of scenarios and suggestions on how to handle tricky situations, plenty of dialogue staff can use when talking to visitors and lots of ideas for activities for visitors that won’t put the health of vines at risk,” said Bec.
“We’ve been delighted with the feedback. In some regions we’ve been back for return visits to ensure we deliver training to all who are interested. We had so many people attend in Coonawarra that we could barely fit them in a room!”
Training has just been completed in the Adelaide Hills. Following the group session held at Barristers Block, general manager of Karrawatta Darren Furst updated the company’s standard operating procedures with biosecurity activities and he is passing on the training to all new cellar door staff.
At Hahndorf Hill Winery, Marc Dobson and Larry Jacobs have not only been training their team in Wine Tourism Biosecurity protocols to protect vineyards, they’ve been busy putting up a range of cellar door and farm-gate signs, to educate tourists and other visitors to their property. See images of the signs at Hahndorf Hill below.
“We’d like to thank all wine businesses and regional tourism associations who have participated in this important training. If you missed out on training this time, please contact us to discuss a visit from the Vinehealth team,” said Inca Peace, CEO of Vinehealth Australia.
“We’d also like to encourage managers and cellar door teams who have done the training to pass key information on to their marketing teams. There’s no point cellar door staff educating tourist about keeping vines healthy by not walking into vineyards if photos of people walking in vines are then going to be shared by the winery on their social media platforms.”
