VCAL at Shiraz Republic

On Tuesday 29 March, VCAL students boarded buses and headed off to Shiraz Republic Cornella, 25kms north of Heathcote. 

Heathcote has been well known for viticulture for many years. But what is viticulture we hear you ask? Viticulture is the saying or word for the harvesting of grapes. 

Once we arrived at Shiraz Republic, we got prepped by Spencer’s dad who is the owner of the winery. He told us everything we need to know, including the safe ways to pick the grapes with the cutters. After he talked us through the process, we were ready to go out to the vines. We were given buckets and cutters and then we set off. 

We started cutting the grapes which are smaller sized because their surface area is more of a factor rather than the juice. The skin creates the red wine colour. We picked buckets full of grapes which we put on the back of the tractor when we had filled them up. They were then transported to the shed. We had to make sure we got all the grapes off the vines otherwise it would just be a waste. Once we picked the whole row clean, we headed over to the shed where the next stage of viticulture begins. 

The VCAL cohort made their way over to the shed where we started the next process of putting the grapes into the crusher which separates the grapes from the stems. Spencer talked us through all the processes and answered any questions we had. 

Once that had been completed, some people went bare foot and trampled on the grapes which is an actual step to create wine and does not leave any bacteria or anything in the wine due to the alcohol getting rid of any bacteria or germs. It is completely safe! 

After that we moved on to the press. We used a different batch of grapes to those we had picked, because all batches must sit for two weeks with the yeast before commencing the next stage.  This stage consists of the press separating the skin from the juice. We had to play Jenga with the wood pieces to press down the grapes to extract the juice. We used a ratchet to tighten and press it down to get the most juice out. Once that was completed, we took apart the ratchet and we were left with a big cake of grape skins and about 225L of wine. A wonderful experience for our students, with many new learnings to take away.

Felicity Hutton

Applied Learning Leader