The Grande Armee

When talking about our picking team, we, yet again, make reference to Emperor Napoleon’s Grande Armee because once more it has a predominance of French people, although we should add that we have a sprinkling of Canadians, Germans, an Italian and Finn, and believe it or not, we even have an Aussie! The Backpacker tourists use the Working Holiday visa available to 18 – 30 year olds and they automatically qualify for a second year by accruing 88 days work in government-specified regions, one of which is Margaret River. Without exaggeration, there would hardly be a grape picked by hand in this area if we didn’t have access to these people, so from a quality wine perspective, they provide just about an essential service. The difficulties in Europe are a concern to us all but one of the positives has been the number of people taking the opportunity to travel to Australia while their home economies are slow.