First-term Winery and Viticulture Technician students jumped into harvest with both feet in a spirited activity that offered a taste of ancient winemaking.
Their winemaking class at the Teaching Winery turned into a grape stomp on the evening of September 23. After harvesting grapes in the vineyard and bringing the fruits of their labour back to the crush pad, students were divided into teams and faced off in a friendly competition, using their bare feet to stomp grapes in bins to yield the most juice.
“It’s a fun way to start the term and introduce our new students to the culture of wine,” said Professor Gavin Robertson, who is also an alumnus of NC’s Winery and Viticulture Technician program (2011).
The event served as a team-building activity and introduced students to foundational winemaking skills. Robertson noted that the stomp offered students a glimpse into the simplicity of ancient wine production, while framing all the science and technology that they will be introduced to over the next two years.
As a first step, students wandered the vineyard, to forage both cultivated and wild indigenous grapes, as hunter-gatherers would have done thousands of years ago.
“The only way neolithic humans could extract juice from the grapes was with their feet,” said Robertson.
The highly anticipated experience proved to be an enjoyable one for the students.
For Donovan Gilroy of Barrie, who is pursuing his dream of becoming a winemaker, the stomp was an exciting first harvest experience.
“It’s fun learning to do things in a traditional way,” he said. “It really shows you just how important technology is to creating a good product.”
Student Rowan McDowell called the experience “surprisingly slippery” and tiring, but “super fun,” despite getting splashed with juice.
Caitlyn Feyer of Hamilton also enjoyed her first grape stomp and the camaraderie she is experiencing among her classmates.
“My love of wine brought me to the program; I thought I may as well get educated and do something that I love,” she said. “I have an open mind to experience the program before I develop a goal. So far it’s been really fun.”
Once the stomp concluded, the juice was put into a vessel to ferment. The class will track the fermentation throughout the term, monitoring key metrics and using their senses, building foundational skills that winemakers use daily.
“It shows students what happens when you intervene minimally during winemaking, and the importance of skilled, trained wine professionals to the global industry,” said Robertson.
During the weeks ahead, students will compare their press yield from the stomp to results from modern pressing technology. By the end of the term, they will taste this wine alongside conventionally made wines to deepen their understanding of different processes.
For wine students, the grape stomp is the starting point, Robertson noted. Students will go on to learn to make more conventional white, rosé, and red wines later in the year. Robertson highlighted the uniqueness of the resources that NC’s Winery and Viticulture Technician students have at their fingertips, including its own 30-acre vineyards and a top-notch modern 5,000-case winemaking facility, with ‘only at NC’ experiences that await – such as the upcoming on-campus Icewine harvest when students pluck frozen grapes from the vines to transform into a beverage that has become the Niagara region’s ‘liquid gold.’
“This is only place in Canada you can do this and it’s quite rare on the world stage,” Robertson said. “This is where it all begins.”
