Skip to playerSkip to main content
  • 8 hours ago
An ancient trade that flavours some of the world’s favourite wines and spirits is at risk of disappearing. Australia has just a handful of barrel makers or coopers, to keep the many thousands of oak casks in service for wineries and distilleries. But with no official courses on offer the unique skill could soon be on the rocks.

Category

📺
TV
Transcript
00:03over a century of family coopering skills run hot in John Carberry's hands but he's worried
00:11they could soon dry up I've got all this knowledge up here that I need to pass on to the
00:15next
00:15generation after training dozens of coopers in Britain he's just taken on Kieran Quinn as his
00:23first Aussie apprentice yeah people think it's pretty cool it's not very many people doing it
00:29Kieran will join the dwindling ranks of Australian coopers charged with maintaining the hundreds of
00:36thousands of oak barrels used by wine and spirit makers to store and flavor their products and with
00:45no accredited training course on offer the handful of master coopers that remain want more to be done
00:51to ensure the trade maintains its standards it's a food grade industry so it would be good for them
00:58to re-establish that that side of the craft more for the fact that the job getting done right it
01:03also needs to be registered as a trade in Australia so that we can get young Australians learning what
01:09coopering is coopering is not listed on Australia's occupational shortage list making it hard for
01:16producers to fill jobs locally we're going to end up with no coopers here in a matter of you know
01:22years really but Corowa's master Cooper is eager to pass on some more trade secrets before then
01:31I'm hoping to take on another couple of apprentices get a couple of good lads in here and pass that
01:35information on a skill worth preserving
Comments

Recommended