By Mikayla van Loon
Mount Lilydale Mercy College (MLMC) has added yet another award to its belt for best school wine at the Royal Adelaide Show.
The 2019 Oak Cabernet Sauvignon, produced entirely by students, also took home the national gold medal, while the 2018 wine of the same making took home silver.
Farm manager and agriculture and horticulture teacher Tim Thompson said the students involved in the winemaking program were thrilled with the result.
“You’d be surprised how interested students get when you set the bar high and you tell them this is what we’re setting out to achieve and this is what we’ve done in the past and this is what you are expected to do,” he said.
“They really switch on and get engaged and it’s not just a school project, it’s a real thing.”
Students are involved in the process from start to finish, first by testing the quality of the grapes and picking a harvest date, through to managing the fermenting temperature, plunging the juice twice a day, barreling the wine and then finally bottling it.
Mr Thompson said the program has been around for a number of years but it’s only in the last six years that MLMC has really focused on building it up.
During that time the school has won a dozen or so awards, not just in school competitions but in national competitions against some of the leading winemakers in Australia.
“It got an honorary gold in the James Halliday Cabernet Challenge last year which is the national commercial wine competition. It’s not a school wine competition, it was up against some very good wines from all around Australia,” Mr Thompson said.
Students from all year levels can take part in the winemaking and agricultural classes on the school farm at MLMC.
Younger year levels learn how to produce wine, breed sheep, prune the orchard and propagate plants in the nursery, while VCE students learn the more mechanical side of things like shearing sheep and maneuvering heavy equipment.
“I think it’s an important job of schools to connect students with local industry and set a purpose for them and I think our principal’s done a great job in promoting a program that does that,” Mr Thompson said.
“Some of these students end up with jobs in the industry and they can converse with winemakers and vineyard managers quite intelligently and are quite successful when they go out into industry, which is just wonderful.”
