Australian Winemakers offers a range of short courses in Winemaking. Led by well-known winemaker and educator Richard Webb, the courses offer unique opportunities for learning by doing.

“We offer Basic and Advanced courses”, said Webb. “They suit the various levels of winemaking experience and previous technical training of our participants”.

The Advanced Red and White Wine classes are based on an innovative program where the participants actually make wine under the guidance of the winemaker. All aspects of winemaking are covered from crushing to bottling. “Unlike other classes which merely demonstrate the winemaking operations and routine analyses, in our classes the participants do it all themselves”, Webb explained. “At the conclusion of the class they take the wine they have made away with them - this represents a significant bonus or effective discount off the course fees.” Past students of the Australian Winemakers School include Alan Johns from the picturesque Yering Farm Winery in the Yarra Valley. “I found the course helped brush up on new winemaking techniques”, he said. “That's how you can keep in touch with new developments in the industry.” Gus del Rio, of del Rios Winery at Anakie, has a different reason to be satisfied with his course.

“I found the palate training particularly valuable”, he said. “Because I use a contract winemaker, I found that the course gave me a clearer understanding of the implications of decisions he was asking me to make. It helped me to make an independent assessment of his recommendations”.

The underlying philosophy of Australian Winemakers is that there are only two limitations to the quality of your wine: the quality of the grapes, and the quality of your palate. For this reason, graduated tasting exercises play an important part in all classes. These tastings provide an important second tier to the winemaking training.

The Basic Winemaking class introduces the procedures for making white, red, fruit, fortified and sparkling wine. A number of “hands-on” activities are included. This program is offered as a two-day intensive course.

The intensive weekend classes are popular with Country and interstate students. Basic courses have no requirement for previous winemaking or technical training.

Advanced one-day courses are also available. These classes focus on specialized winemaking techniques, and offer a range of hands-on activities including fining trials.

Courses are run during and pre – Vintage in Melbourne, and at other times in Regional centres.