AUSTRALIAN Vintage and 10 industry partners have received funding for the Advancement of Australian Lifestyle Wines as a recipient of the Co-operative Research Centres Projects program funding.
Australian Vintage, which runs Sunraysia’s Buronga Hill Winery, received the research grant of $2,997,599 along with a partner contribution of $3,706,753.
Australian Vintage said the grant would allow the wine company and industry partners, University of Adelaide, Australian Wine Research Institute, Treasury Wine Estates, Flavourtech, DrinkWise, Tarac Technologies, S. Smith and Son, Danstar Ferment, Mauri Yeast, and CHR Hansen, to continue to innovate in the low and no-alcohol wine markets.
Currently the Buronga Hill Winery is the home of Australian Vintage’s spinning technology, that gently removes the alcohol at low temperatures to protect and preserve the wine’s delicate and distinctive varietal characteristics, before it is bottled.
The company recently invested in a second spinning cone column to increase production capacity of the winery.
The columns aim to ensure the wine is still full in flavour while free of alcohol.
Australian Vintage chief winemaker Jamie Saint said Australian Vintage was “extremely grateful” to receive support from the Federal Government.
He said the grant would allow the company to continue conducting research with a key objective of optimising the flavour and mouthfeel of no and low alcohol, as well as drilling down into consumer and market insights of the category.
“The opportunity to work with a group of leading industry partners to take the growing NoLo category to the next level is something we are enormously excited by, improving the competitiveness, productivity and sustainability of the Australian wine industry,” he said.
“We want to position the Australian wine sector as the largest global producer of NoLo wines.”
