Murchison winery closes its cellar door, puts staff on hold

Mar 24, 2020

It’s “definitely not” business as usual at Longleat Wines — otherwise known as Murchison Wines — as it has shut its cellar door to battle financial hardships, according to owner and winemaker Guido Vazzoler.

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The spread of coronavirus has put all Longleat Wines’ exports to China on hiatus, and the financial implications of this — and new social distancing rules — have led to the temporary closure of its cellar door, with staff members to be put on hold.

Mr Vazzoler said the vintage season was “still on”.

“The grapes don’t know there’s any coronavirus going on.

“But we’ve had to close our cellar door because of financial costs and we’ve had issues with losing workers.

“Our staff need money to survive and we feel responsible to give them work, we will put them on hold and keep paying them as our aim is to look after our staff.

“We’ve got one staff on our cellar door, and another helping me and (wife) Sandra, who will have to go home at the end of this week — we’ll just do all the work ourselves.

“Without quantifying it, exporting to China is a huge part of our business.”

Longleat Wines, which has been operational since 1975, announced the closure of its cellar door on its Facebook page on Monday.

Mr Vazzoler wondered how long the “economic downturn” would last.

“When this ends, it’ll be interesting to see whether it’ll bounce back and whether people might come out of it and celebrate with lots of wine.”

The coronavirus has led to widespread panic-buying across all sorts of household goods, such as toilet paper, paper towels, meat and pasta — and now, alcohol.

Mr Vazzoler said he had not seen a spike in his winery’s sales, but some of his customers had told him they were “bunkering down” and purchasing his wine in bulk.

“It’s been fantastic to see, we’re buoyed people are choosing to give us a ring and order our produce,” he said.

“But whether it would compensate for our losses or not is another question.”

Mr Vazzoler said Longleat Wines was adapting to its customers’ needs.

“We’re delivering wine to people — we’ve got hygienic procedures in place where we can leave the wine boxes at your house.”

Mr Vazzoler said all staff were washing their hands more thoroughly now than ever, and social distancing wouldn’t be an issue for his winery for the foreseeable future.

“We’ve got our roles and if I’m working with a machine, then nobody else works on that machine.

“We regularly wash machinery and we pump the wine from A to B — we just wash the pump down after.

“It minimises the risk of transferring from person to person, we keep physical separation by having one of us on the press and one on the pump.

“But our aim is to look after our staff — so we’ll keep paying them although we’re putting them on hold.”

For delivery of Longleat or Murchison wine, phone Guido and Sandra Vazzoler on 0409 080 044.

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