School vineyard becomes wine industry classroom

LEVERAGING its strong relationship with Wine Australia, the Limestone Coast Grape and Wine Council has teamed up with Naracoorte High School to transform the fortunes of a vineyard on school grounds that was planted back in 1997.

The goal is to transform the school vineyard into a high-tech ‘viticultural demonstration and training’ vineyard, which will become a pivotal element in the delivery of coursework to students of the agricultural curriculum in the school.

Emma Phillips, Learner Agency across the Curriculum, Agriculture Key Teacher Naracoorte High School, has been a key proponent of the collaboration.

The first Wine Australia-funded activity for the season, held at the end of last month, focussed on smoke taint research.

At this informal event, opportunity will be provided for producers to attend at their leisure and speak one-on-one with Professor Ian Porter (La Trobe University) to learn about the research, development, and adoption pathways of the ‘Wine Industry Smoke Detectors’ or WISDs developed by his team and Wine Australia.

This technology has since been commercialised within Australia by Goanna Ag.

Industry professionals relished the opportunity to learn directly from the inventor himself about their installation and the factors to consider in their placement.

Hans Loder, Viticulturist and Chair of the Biosecurity and Technical Subcommittee of the Limestone Coast Grape and Wine Council, said the event was the first of many to be held at the site to showcase best-practice technical and related management practices.

Limestone Coast Grape and Wine Council executive officer Edward Cavanagh said to install this technology and capture this expertise here at a well-established, non-commercial vineyard site in Wrattonbully was a fantastic outcome for the region.

“And it would not have been possible – and the potential for future collaborations would have been severely restricted – without the support of Wine Australia,” Mr Cavanagh said.