17/02/2026
A large part of the job involves monitoring various wine making equipment outside of normal "production" hours. This includes various pumps, chilling equipment, filtering equipment as well other subsidiary equipment such as drainage pumps. This becomes extra useful over holiday breaks when the winery shuts down and essentially leaves it to the security team to handle such issues. It can be critical that certain machines are shut down in the correct sequence to avoid spoiling the wine and that taps, gases etc are dealt with in the appropriate manner. CFB utilises the latest in a lot of wine making techniques so there is always new equipment to learn to operate as well as 2000+ wine tanks as well as beer, spirit and water tanks.
Once a year or as needed the team is assembled and put thru a CFB Cellar Training course for Security. Whilst it shows our training of new staff is about 95% comprehensive, there is always something new or improved that they all can learn. It is a good chance to also catch up with any questions they may have.
A good example is a particular filtering machine that can be shut down two different ways. One method generally takes 5 minutes to fix and restart whilst the other method takes 45-60 minutes to achieve the same result. Doing it the first way improves productivity for the cellar staff and a cost saving for the winery.
The day also included a question and answer with Winery management giving us a heads up of what is to come, and future plans.
The crew were shouted to a lunch at a local restaurant and finished the day off with a tour of various other sites in the area owned by CFB that they monitor by CCTV 24/7 but have never seen in the flesh. This aims to give them a better understanding of what they are watching and how to deal with various issues that arise.
Overall the day was well received, a lot was learnt by all, even the long term staff.
