Teaching and Learning

Shiraz Republic Winery

Tuesday, 16th March 2021

Recently, the VCAL students had the opportunity to visit the Shiraz Republic Winery to see a workplace in action and the process involved in producing wine. 

We caught a bus at roughly 10:30am to Cornella, which was an hour drive. When we arrived, we were quickly briefed about the products and concerns with the process of picking grapes, including the best way to do it and the don’ts.

We started by renting out four rows of vines and distributed the number of students throughout each row evenly.  We used pruners to cut off the vine attached to the bundle of grapes as close as we could to the top, for the reasons of reducing harm to the vine and minimize the amount of vine that will end up going through the crusher. To minimise waste, we had to completely clear the rows of any grapes and we had to be wary of cutting our fingers, and spiders hanging around in the vines. We collected around half a ton of grapes which converts to around 600 litres. We had tractors in the rows to collect all the grapes, so we would collect grapes in buckets and the employees would come and collect the buckets, then empty them into 500kg drums and drive them to the distillery.

As a group we had to transfer all the grapes to one drum to another but instead of the second drum being empty it had a de-stemmer machine attached to the top, which as the grapes were thrown in it would split open the grapes skin and spit out the vines into a secondary bucket while we were transporting them by hand.  It was very messy because of the grapes being split and staining our hands and clothes, then grapes being spilt onto the floor and having a slipping hazard. After we transferred all the grapes, they would sit in the tub for around 15 minutes. During the sitting the colour in the grapes will change from a light pinkish see-through colour and will slowly dilute to a dark purple.

During the stage of putting it through the press, we slowly filled the barrel with grapes and pressed down with a lever action wooden piece that slowly pressed all the juices out of the barrel into other tubs. After this process it will sit for three months.

 For students, the next stage will be making logos for the wine to sell.

Declan Baker

VCAL - Year 11