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Helping winemakers sustainably produce premium wine
Ten large, shiny tanks stand near the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science at UC Davis, holding more than a year of rainwater and the key to processing food and drink during a drought. The water tanks, and the teaching-and-research winery they support, are showing students and winemakers throughout the world how to reduce processing costs, improve wine quality, and protect the planet's dwindling natural resources.
The work is the latest in more than a century of trail-blazing viticulture and enology science at UC Davis. UC Davis researchers are working with Cooperative Extension specialists and farm advisors with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources to help winemakers and grape growers sustainably produce premium wine.
Water is critical to winemakers in drought-stricken California and beyond. Grapes aren't a very thirsty crop to grow, but keeping fermentors clean is another story.
A typical winery uses four to six gallons of water after the grapes are harvested to produce one gallon of wine, and most of that water is used to wash equipment. Boulton and David Block, chair of the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, are developing self-cleaning fermentors capable of recycling 90 percent of that water. The goal: affordable technology and alternative practices that use less than one gallon of water to produce one gallon of wine.
Winemakers currently remove sticky, fermented, grape residue from tanks with water and elbow grease. Clean-in-place technology replaces hand-cleaning with an automated system that sprays tanks with diluted solutions of potassium hydroxide and potassium bisulfate.
“The dairy industry has used clean-in-place technology since the 1960s and the pharmaceutical industry since the 1990s,” says Block, a chemical engineer and enologist who helped the pharmaceutical industry manage clean-in-place technology before coming to UC Davis in 2008. “It's a little different with dairy and pharmaceuticals, where poor sanitation can kill you, but the concept is similar.”
“We will filter and reuse that water at least five times, hopefully one day up to 10 times,” Boulton says. “It's not waste water. It has no phosphates, no nitrates, and no chlorine. Clean-in-place technology represents a huge potential for water and labor savings.”
Industry is starting to notice.
“Clean-in-place technology is very attractive to us,” says Ashley Heisey, director of winemaking at Long Meadow Ranch in Rutherford and a UC Davis viticulture and enology graduate. “Water is such a critical issue. Long Meadow Ranch owners Ted, Chris, and Laddie Hall built our facilities with great concern for the environment, and thanks to UC Davis, we can take it one step further.”
In Sacramento, grocer Darrell Corti from Corti Brothers Market says where UC Davis leads, winemakers will eventually follow.
“What we know about grape-growing and winemaking is primarily due to the work they do at UC Davis,” Corti says.
A longer version of this story is in the magazine Edible Sacramento.
The fine art of spitting: Allowing underage students to taste alcohol
Not until students turn 21 can they taste the wine and beer they make and learn to assess its sensory quality. Learning the characteristics of a wide assortment of good (and not-so-good) wines and beers is an important component of winemaking and brewing. Having to wait until their junior or senior year to learn these skills is a disadvantage for these students.
Legislation (AB 1989) has been proposed by California Assemblyman Wesley Chesbro (D-North Coast) that will allow students, ages 18 to 21, enrolled in winemaking and brewery science programs to taste alcoholic beverages in qualified academic institutions. The students can taste, but not consume — which means they must learn the professional practice of spitting during the tasting process.
Professor Andrew Waterhouse, an enologist in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis, notes that tasting is critical to the students' education.
“Winemakers taste wine daily during harvest to quickly make critical decisions as the winemaking is underway,” Waterhouse said. “Our students need to start learning this skill here, with our guidance. And, they also have to get over the embarrassment of spitting — after every taste.”
Chik Brenneman, the UC Davis winemaker, said that the bill, if passed, “will allow students to move on to the sensory program a lot sooner, before they've finished most of their winemaking classes. Earlier sensory training will help them when they go to work in the industry.”
If the legislation passes, it will benefit enology and brewing students at UC Davis, which is the only University of California campus to offer undergraduate degrees in viticulture and enology and in brewing science (an option within the food science major).
While parents of college students may worry that the bill will open the door to widespread drinking, Waterhouse and Brenneman both noted that the focus of the bill is so narrow that its impact will benefit a limited number of students, and that it's unlikely to lead to excessive drinking. They say that the over-21 students routinely spit what they're tasting in a standard industry manner, and that “drinking” in class is not a problem.
With passage of this bill, which is backed by the University of California, the state will join 12 other states that have allowed this educational exemption for students.
Read more:
- California legislative information on AB 1989
- NBC Bay Area: Reality check: Bill calls for underage tasting on college campuses, Feb. 27, 2014
- Bill by Wes Chesbro would allow underage beverage students to sip; PressDemocrat.com, Feb. 28, 2014
More women pursuing careers in winemaking
But times have changed, Reuters reported. David Block, the head of the university's viticulture and enology department, said about 60 percent of their graduate students this year are women.
Edwards now has her own winery in Sonoma County's Russian River Valley and her own clone.
"Its formal name is UCD clone 37, but everyone around here calls it Merry's clone. And right now we're surrounded by it," she said, pointing to the acres of vineyards just outside the winery window.
A weak economy is pinching the premium wine industry
Like many business sectors, the California premium wine industry is suffering under the weak economy, according to an article published over the weekend in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat.
Wine produced in Napa and Sonoma counties used to be cheap alternatives to French wines. Now connoisseurs are turning to less expensive wines from Australia, South America and California's Central Valley.
UC Cooperative Extension viticulture farm advisor Glenn McGourty told reporter Glenda Anderson that he believes consumers will return to North Coast wines when the economy improves.
“Lodi is kind of like the person you go out with that's really hot but you don't want your parents to see them,” he was quoted.
The story opened with the travails of McDowell Valley Vineyards of Hopland, which is facing possible foreclosure Nov. 5. McGourty said the McDowell situation is not unique.
“A lot of people are on the ropes,” he was quoted.
Wineries are cutting back on how much they buy and the prices they'll pay for grapes.
The McDowell vineyard reported that the value of its premium winegrapes has dropped from $1,400 a ton to about $700 a ton. A winery offered to buy 32 tons of McDowell sauvignon blanc at $600 a ton. In Lodi, winegrapes average about $500 a ton, the story said.
The wine market decline is putting some people out of business.
Associated Press profiles two Latino family wineries
Latino winemakers are rare, but some are finding success by catering to Latinos developing a taste for fine wine, according to an Associated Press article by Olivia Muñoz. The story ran in the Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, on the ABC News website and other media outlets.
The article profiled two Latino family wineries whose founders started out working in the fields.
"I would work my regular shift and then pester the vineyard manager with questions until I knew everything he knew," Reynoldo Robledo of the Robledo Family Winery near Sonoma was quoted.
The winery sells 20,000 cases per year bringing in about $1 million.
Ceja Vineyards in Napa president Amelia Ceja and her husband Armando worked in vineyards as children, and also obtained formal education. Armando earned a degree in enology and viticulture from UC Davis, and worked as a vineyard manager for other wineries before the family started their own, the story said.
Both vineyards were reported to be targeting the Latino market. Half of the Ceja Vineyard's wine club is Latino and the company promotes the wine at dinners pairing traditional Mexican dishes with Ceja Vineyard reds and whites. The Robledo Family Winery also built its business by catering in part to Latino wine drinkers interested in quality and a connection to their heritage.
Esau Herrera of the Hispanic Vintners Association, a marketing group with about a dozen members in California and Florida, told Muñoz that part of Latino vintners success comes from making a connection with Latinos.
"There are people like me who are very proud of our roots and don't mind plunking down $125 for a bottle of wine," Herrera was quoted.
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