Thousands of acres of bushland surrounded the vineyard so for the birds it was a supermarket in the wilderness so bird proof net was the only answer - miles and miles of it;

• See the vineyard covered in a sea of white net
• Find out how to cover acres and acres of vines at a time
• Look at the damage when the weather turns bad the nets go flying
• And read just how difficult it really is to put out (and bring in) miles and miles of nets

Later in the season there's full ripe bunches hanging off each vine and I'll show you;

• Lush full grapes on each and every vine
• All the insect life in the vines
• The droplets on the grapes when you've sprayed
• How to test wine grapes before harvest
• And what goes wrong with ripe grapes

But first you have to pick them and here you'll see;

• What it's like to pick by hand and what pickers are the best
• How the mechanical grape harvester works, including video of it running
• And things that go wrong and get very expensive when machine harvesting goes wrong

And then the worst vineyard task of the year - pruning - in the cold and wet middle of winter where you'll see;

• Hand pruning and the different methods of
  • Cane pruning
  • Spur pruning
• Or machine pruning
• And a mix of both, machine and hand pruning, I'll show you them all

Vintage is when you're working till all hours and it's both the best but also the hardest time of year so I'll show you;

• Vintage full of yeasty rich ferments and wines
• How traditional oak barrels 'stack' up against new technology - stakvats
• Full bunch pressing the whites
• Traditional basket press vs airbag presses vs a trusty old Rotapress for super results
• Pressing the fermented grape
• Unloading the press and what to do with the pressings
• And believe it or not, see real Kangaroo poo after they've eaten the pressings...

The cellar door is where you meet your fans, bitter critics and everyone in between, so;

• Follow how we grew from zero up to hundreds of visitors a day
• See the winery brochure translated into Traditional Chinese, Modern Chinese and Thai that brought in tens of thousands of visitors
• Soak up the top 12 tips on what makes a great wine region tour
• Read about staff and the most surprising thing many people in the country can't do
• Go through the full staff manual, 122 pages of nitty gritty and wine/local history
• Find out how we managed to get just about every major tour operator - going to the third most visited attraction in Australia - to stop at the winery
• And more importantly, how we got to keep the drivers coming back

Festivals and functions were a huge part of our success and income and I'll show you;

• What 'behind closed doors' festivals are like
• How early to start planning and advertising
• Setting up is more than throwing out a few chairs on the day...
• The key ways to get people to come along to your festivals
• What it feels like when you've got people 5 deep at the bar and more streaming in the door
• About using a live band or a DJ - what sells more wine?
• Hosting car clubs - yes or no?
• And how you feel at the end of the day when everyone's gone home

Any excuse for a festival, Melbourne cup, Easter harvest... whatever, we had a whole calendar available to us so we'd pick a date and event and get a festival happening to get the winery on the map, sell wines and keep our customers happy and coming back... See;

• Easter harvest and the one part of the day that had people coming back year after year
• The classic raffle and the simple change so everyone - not just the single major prize winner - goes home happy
• Melbourne Cup Day - the horse race that stops the Australian nation - and how we used it as an excuse to have a festival and sell more wines
• Our one single thing we did for weddings that got us bookings other venues continually missed out on
• The background for a full on 'silver service' wedding
• And what the 'afterwards' is like
• Plus, the one animal every good winery needs and every customer expects - a winery dog

It all starts with the single thought - what's it like to make my own wine and pretty soon you're several million dollars down the path to your own wine label as we did and here's;

• The wines we did and the grapes we had
• How the label changed
• What lab tests we did and the equipment we used
• And the e-book to download - The ten most common wine cellar problems and how to overcome them - I wrote it many years ago and it's been downloaded thousands of times, here's your free copy

I've had the most amazing highs and the deepest lows and they're all part of the journey in your own winery, here's;

• What it feels like to have the stall in the corner at your local festival - the days where you sell everything you brought with you and the days when you sell...
• The short term promotion we stated to make 'something out of nothing' and how this weekend promo is still running many years later
• Us supporting the local community and how they supported us
• The awards we won - not just wine medals that is
• And how we showed up and showed ourselves in the press

What does it take to physically bottle tens of thousands of litres of wines and ports - I'll show you;

• The hard way to bottle and the easy way to bottle
• Corks vs screw caps - what's best?
• Unique port crocks and how they helped us sell more wines
• Making custom big wine bottles from 1.5 litre up to 18 litres - that's 2 dozen wine bottles in one huge bottle - each individually sandblasted
• And how to download the big wine bottle names e-book and see where Methuselah and Magnum and so on came from

The answers in here may surprise you, it's all about;

• The nitty gritty of making it all work
• Putting in the irrigation
• The ever expanding cellar door
• Making our own road side signs
• Cutting time slab tables to make the winery unique
• Building a new BBQ area not just once, but twice
• What tractors, machinery and implements we used
• And more...

To buy or build your own winery would cost you at least $3,000,000 and that's not in a top wine region.

A part-share in a winery starts around $500,000, and even that gets you very limited access.

One bottle of Penfolds Grange will cost you over $520 and anything with more than 96 Parker Points will pull more than $200 from your pocket.

So, for less than the cost of one decent wine, you'll find out what it's really like to live the dream.