Milly Hoffmann (right) pushing skins with Nuriootpa High School student Dani Carter. Images courtesy Nuriootpa High School

Nestled in the heart of the Barossa Valley, one of Australia’s largest winegrowing regions, Nuriootpa is at the centre of wine production in the area. So deep is this connection to wine, that the local public high school is offering students an avenue through which they can upskill and enter the industry, teaching high schoolers the ropes from picking and pruning through to winemaking and marketing.

Known for its old vines and big names (the likes of Henschke and Yalumba), the Barossa Valley is home to more than 150 wineries, meaning that the region is no stranger to community or competition.

“There’s a really deep found respect of wine in our region,” explained Milly Hoffmann, the Wine Education Manager and Agriculture Coordinator at Nuriootpa High School.

With the industry experiencing tough market and operating conditions in recent years, numerous growers across the country are choosing to retire early, or else exit the industry altogether. But whilst this may seem like a daunting environment to enter, Hoffmann said that students are not deterred, and emphasised the importance of developing a new generation of skilled workers, who can carry the sector forward and bring with them fresh life and passion for the industry.

Nuriootpa High School currently offers the Vines and Wines program, run by Hoffmann, which is available to Year 10 students for either one semester or the full year.

In Semester One, the students are involved hands-on and at full speed in the vintage process, measuring and monitoring Baumé and deciding on picking times, before donning hats and safety gear to harvest the grapes from the school’s vineyards. The program delves beyond the basics of picking and pruning, taking the students through both the everyday and more complex vineyard tasks, from netting the vines to replanting them.

There is one small vineyard on the school grounds, and another around 1.2km away which the school leases from the council, where Hoffmann said there are vines around 75 years old. Some activities, such as spraying, are understandably contracted out, however essentially all other duties are left up to the students. Some of the local wineries generously donate additional grapes to assist with the class’s wine production.

The school is fully equipped to produce market-standard wine, with a commercial winery—the first of its kind in the country—which has been operating since 1992. In the winery, students are responsible for vintage preparation, and are taught how to clean and sterilise the equipment.

“When vintage starts, the kids are involved in picking, crushing, pressing, racking—everything you can think of, they’re involved [in] except for bottling of the wine,” explained Hoffmann.

Career progression

Beyond the obvious wine-industry specific skills, Hoffmann said they focus on developing teamwork amongst the students, and encourage active communication skills and open attitudes to problem solving.

The program is introduced in the same year that students are deciding whether to pursue a trade, and Hoffmann said that the classes allow kids to trial what a career in winemaking or viticulture could functionally look like.

“Because it starts in year 10, it’s a little bit of a taster,” said Hoffmann. “Some kids might go into operational viticulture, so a school-based apprenticeship working with a vineyard. Places like Yalumba; Henschke, they will take on students, and there’s many more [wineries] that our students have gone on to.”

“They’ll finish school, usually with a qualification in viticulture, and work for those vineyards for quite some time. And other students might go on to winemaking, or they might even be [involved] in wine label design as well. So there’s lots of different career options, for being involved in the wine industry.”

Hoffmann said the winemaking process is always an engaging element for the students, as the wine needs to be carefully followed along with testing to ensure it’s quality is maintained in barrel.

“The kids are really interested in [the winemaking], particularly because it’s an interactive class as well, and it’s really relevant for them. Whether or not they end up in the industry long-term— we get a lot of students that might go [and] just ‘do a vintage’ straight after they finish year 12, so doing casual work, or they might work in the labs as well, so they’ve got a keen interest.

“They know that there’s a potential future in it, it’s something that could take them away around the world as well.”

Equipped for innovation

For high schoolers, the draw of a hands-on class activity is strong in almost all circumstances, however in the Barossa, where this hands-on work is a pull towards the wider community, it is especially strong.

Many of the students at Nuriootpa High School have family members already in the industry, and their jobs are widespread and varied. Being home to such a large number of wineries, the region is not just a central location for the winemakers and viticulturists themselves, but also for all of the other branches of the sector supporting them, such as glass manufacturers and label makers, bottling lines and wine marketers, equipment and merchandise suppliers.

Hoffmann said she will usually start her classes for the semester with the question ‘whose parents work in the industry?’.

“It’s quite interesting,” she explained, “because there’s some that haven’t, and then they realise that it’s a potential future for them that they haven’t been exposed to.”

Luckily for the students, the wine community in the Barossa is eager to embrace them.

“Barossa Australia run a work experience week, and they do something different every day,” explained Hoffmann. “They’re involved with TAFE and the university, and they’ll go on different excursion—so it might be to see technology in viticulture or wine—and at the end of that week, they have a list of providers who might be interested in taking on school-based apprentices, because there is a skills shortage gap in the industry, and they’re really keen to get young people into their vineyards.”

“There’s definitely a lot of support, and also demand for kids to enter the industry.”

“We get a lot of support with our wine program as well, from local vignerons and wineries as well.”

One of the goals of the program is to give the students a baseline level of experience which they can then use, even without an apprenticeship or university degree, as a first stepping stone to help them into the workforce, even if this is only as they pursue further study in viticulture or winemaking.

“What we do when within agriculture and winemaking, is we’re giving them those skills that make them highly employable.”

“A really good example is one of my year 12s that finished a couple of years ago—she did chemistry at school and worked in the winery which gave her experience and knowledge. And she’s still working at a winery in the labs at the moment. So it was a good pathway for her to go, ‘Hey, this is the experience I’ve got’, and then they were able to utilise that.”

Starting afresh

The current pressures on the wine industry do not seem to be something that is deterring students a career in viticulture or agriculture, Hoffmann noted.

“With agriculture, there’s always going to be times where things are tough, and then there’s going to be times where things are really good,” she said.

As in many branches of farming and agriculture, the supply and demand cycle is fragile—this is highlighted by the stress on the wine industry at present, however, as Hoffmann said, this relationship is not set in stone. Although now, the market for grapes and in fact wine more broadly may be challenging in some areas of the sector, it is not likely to remain that way forever. What is crucial, Hoffmann explained, is that we continue to pass on the knowledge and skills to new generations, so that there are always new workers and fresh talent entering the industry, with different perspectives and renewed energy.

“It’s about problem solving, and how we stay relevant and innovative,” said Hoffmann. “And I think that’s a good thing that I will expose the kids to. If something is topical, we talk about it. Because those industries will continue to exist, regardless of what’s going on in the world.”

No industry is guaranteed to be a smooth ride, and Hoffmann explained that her approach was to make sure the students were equipped not only with solutions to common problems, but with the ability to face a new problem and consider how best to tackle it.

“I think it’s about learning to be innovative […] if you have bad years, what’s your other option for making money or covering that bad year?”

“You have to come overcome challenges in any industry that you’re in, and often, in any industry, I would say it’s better if you try and go with a solution rather than a problem.”

“Giving them the opportunity to [develop] those problem-solving skills is really important.”

“I see this a lot with kids when they work together in the winery…they go, ‘Oh, hey, Miss, this is happening—this is how we think we can fix it’. And usually, it’s a really good idea.”

The finished product

The high school program runs within the constraints of the school year, and so the students use the wine from the year prior for their winemaking classes, after it has been maturing on oak since the previous vintage.

The wine produced by the students is sold in a more traditional manner than most on the market, with the school relying largely on word-of-mouth. Hoffmann explained that she will also recruit other teachers to collect orders, and equip them with notes and tasting samples.

“We have a long-standing list of valued customers who support the wine program,” said Hoffmann. “They like our flavours and our styles. We’ve got a lot of ex-teachers who might join, [as well as] community groups.”

Each year, there are five wines produced, including the Barossa Class Shiraz, the Barossa Scholar Shiraz, the Barossa Class Ruby Fortified and a 10 Year Old Tawny Fortified. In recent years they have also made a Cabernet.

Last year, the students produced a Grenache, which Hoffmann said is one of her favourites to date, made from fruit donated by one of the Barons of the Barossa, Adrian Hoffmann. Adrian Hoffmann is a graduate of Nuriootpa High School himself, and his children also attended the school, and he is still heavily involved in the wine program. That Grenache received 95 points, something Hoffmann said both she and the students were very proud of.

“We were really lucky to receive that, because it’s a very sort after fruit and a very generous donation.”

Whilst the community support for the school wines is strong, Hoffmann emphasised that proving the wines’ quality against their wider competitors was important to them—every year, they enter the wines into the Barossa Wine Show and the National School Wine Competition.

“When people are unsure about buying a school wine, we want to say, ‘Well, no, it’s industry standard. Look at these results that we’re getting, and you are getting a top-quality product at an excellent price’.”

“We’re very proud of our wine show awards. We’ve won 14 out of 15 of the National School Wine Competitions for the best commercially produced wine by a school.”

The wine list is available to view on the school’s website, however the wines cannot be purchased online. Profits made from the wines are put back into funding the agriculture programs at the school.

This article was originally published in the March 2025 issue of the Australian & New Zealand Grapegrower & Winemaker. To find out more about our monthly magazine, or to subscribe, click here!

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