The introduction of the new Wine Sensory Room, located within the Law and Commerce building at Bedford Park campus, signals an important step forward for the Bachelor of International Business (Wine, Spirits and Tourism), ahead of its first full year of student intake in 2021.
The room – which includes wine tasting benches for up to 30 students, teaching facilities and temperature-controlled wine storage cabinets – presented its first flight of wines at a special tutored wine tasting on December 8 for several guest panels of students and guests, and was applauded for being an outstanding facility by Professor Roberta Crouch – Professor of Business Management, Director MBA and International Wine Business and Tourism programs at the College of Business Government and Law.
“The creation of facilities such as the Wine Sensory Room underlines that Flinders is making a serious commitment to providing legitimate, business-orientated education to best serve the Australian wine industry,” says Professor Crouch. “It fills an important educational role in what has been a blind spot in Australian wine industry teaching.”
Professor Crouch says the wine sensory room will provide students the opportunity to obtain valuable knowledge and perspective of wine styles, diversity and quality from wine industry professionals – with sessions ranging from identifying different wines of the world, to identifying how wine judges and media score wines for judging and reviewing.
“Such a rounded knowledge is essential in the modern wine business – not only to identify wine quality and provenance but to understand where every product sits in the global market,” says Professor Crouch.
The trial tasting was presented by Andrew Weeks, Principal Consultant of Weeks Consulting (an Adelaide Hills-based wine company) and working with Professor Crouch as course co-developer and Lecturer for the Bachelor of International Business (Wine, Spirits and Tourism) degree.
“Too much wine education has suffered previously from being the victim of a silo effect – only teaching about winemaking, or only about viticulture, or only about wine sales and marketing,” says Mr Week. “The modern wine industry demands a complete integration between all of these aspects, and that’s what this course will be teaching to provide the complete knowledge for a strong wine business model.”
The inaugural wine sensory experience in the room featured students, staff and guests examining Riposte Wines from Lenswood in the Adelaide Hills, with brand manager Nick Knappstein impressed by what the new facility adds to the bachelor degree. “Wine knowledge must be complete for anyone who is going to take their wine business forward,” says Mr Knappstein, whose Riposte The Cutlass Shiraz 2019 was recently voted into James Halliday’s Top 100 Wines in 2020. “I’m delighted to be asked to support a course such as this, because it’s bringing all the essential elements of a wine business together – and the students will reap the benefits.”