Vineyards And Wineries: Employees

Winemaking is labour intensive. No machine can yet pick grapes, so you will need to employ pickers for that as well as a team for the general management of the estate and operations, including sales and marketing.

When buying an existing vineyard, consider the staff already there. In a share sale (i.e. an acquisition of the shares in the existing operating company) the buyer will automatically inherit the staff. In an asset sale (e.g. the property, machinery and goodwill are sold separately), the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 ("TUPE") are likely to apply. Under TUPE, employees wholly or mainly assigned to a business/property automatically transfer on their current terms and conditions. In both scenarios, a well-prepared buyer will review the current arrangements to understand who and what they are inheriting and work out whether they fit with their plans. In addition, under TUPE, the buyer and seller must follow a