A multi-disciplinary educational team led by Associate Professor Peter Kumble of the Faculty of Environmental Sciences (CZU) partnered with the Greek NCO – Trace Your Eco – to develop an interpretative program demonstrating to visitors how wine grapes are grown and wine is produced.
Professor Kumble, along with Professor Claudia Bieling and Ph.D. student Marius Jahnke from Hohenheim University, brought twelve students from each of the ELLS partner schools to the beautiful peninsula of Halkidiki in Macedonia, northern Greece, for seven days in September of 2023. Prior to the field excursion, students engaged in two weeks of online lectures to prepare themselves for their exploration into the unique ecology and history of human settlement patterns present to this region of Greece. The goals for the summer school were to learn about viticulture, soil science, eco-tourism and farm-based tourism, branding and marketing, and recreational trail planning.
The destination was Domaine Agrovision; a wine grape-growing 25-hectare farm estate in Lerissos. The vineyard is situated four kilometers from the sea, opposite the island of Ammouliani, and with views of Mount Athos.
Students worked collaboratively in multi-disciplinary teams; each came from different educational disciplines and cultural backgrounds. The twelve students had not met or worked with each other prior to the seven-day field excursion, however the synergy and enthusiasm between each was amazing!
While in Greece, the students conducted intensive on-site research where they explored and documented the physical, social, and environmental characteristics of the vineyard, growing and production techniques, soil science and management, marketing, and branding of product(s), and opportunities for farm-base agri-tourism and eco-tourism development for visitors. Final presentations with a series of strategic recommendations were made to the manager of the vineyard.
