UC Davis Frets That Its Wine Is Going to Waste

The reputation of the University of California’s winemaking school is exquisite, like a finely aged cabernet sauvignon. Some call it the Harvard of Enology, a cornerstone of the state’s multibillion-dollar wine industry, which the school helped pioneer after Prohibition.

Its graduates make wine or grow grapes at wineries ranging from the biggest and richest to fledgling operations. They ply their trade from California to Australia.

“It is the most well-regarded program in the world,” says Lyndie Boulton, executive director of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture, which publishes a technical journal about winemaking (enology) and grape growing (viticulture).

But the school does have an alcohol problem.

Each year, Davis students produce 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of wine for research purposes--studies of filtering techniques and the like.

But then, in an act that would make a sommelier wince, most of the wine is dumped down the drain.

Not because it’s bad. Because it’s the law.

State law bars the school from producing alcoholic beverages except for teaching purposes. Without a waiver, the wine cannot be sold, bartered or given away. It cannot be served at university receptions or provided for nonprofit group functions.

Now school officials say they want to change the decades-old status quo and win state and federal approvals that would allow them to sell their wine to the public. The proceeds would be used to help the program recoup production costs.

They compare the situation to the university’s animal sciences division, which raises cattle for research and then, when the work is done, sells the beef on the open market.

Selling wine is only part of a much bigger plan the school hopes will end with the construction of a 20,000-gallon commercial-type campus winery. And not just any kind of winery, either, but a landmark $25-million to $35-million national wine center that would signify UC Davis’ status in the industry.

“We want to build the spiritual center for the science of wine,” said James Wolpert, chairman of UC Davis’ department of viticulture and enology.

The department has quietly approached major vintners and industry leaders, asking them to help the university pay for the center’s construction.

The department’s research is currently conducted in old and cramped facilities, most built in 1939.

There is no space for a barrel room to age wine, although commercial wineries have offered to donate the oak barrels. The drainage system on the floors is antiquated, forcing students and instructors to constantly guard against harmful bacteria that would wreck their experiments. Plastic spray bottles containing an ethanol solution are the main weapon against contamination.

Temperature control, a key part of the fermentation process, is one-dimensional: hot or cold, with no ability to precisely vary conditions for different wines or winemaking techniques.

As a result, the students produce just one white wine, usually a chardonnay, and one red wine, usually a cabernet. And, given the physical limitations, they usually make wine only one way, although there are many ways to do so.

The combination of small, decrepit facilities and the need to discard the wine has forced the school to use what Wolpert calls “junk grapes.” It makes no financial sense, he says, to pay for top-quality grapes or use premium grapes from the school’s Oakville research vineyard in Napa Valley if wine can’t be properly stored or sold.

“Right now,” Wolpert said, “we use junk grapes because it is the cheapest way to go, because you have to throw the wine away.” That may not have been a big problem in the past, but Wolpert and others now see a growing gap between the school’s limitations and the rising expectations of a highly competitive and expanding wine industry.

“While winemaking can be done without science . . . the foundation of a full-scale commercial industry needs a solid technical footing,” said Co Dinn, maker of white wines at Hogue Cellars in the state of Washington and an enologist with a master’s degree from Davis.

A campus winery, supporters say, would significantly improve the school’s teaching, provide for wine variety and better winemaking and experimentation, create a real world vineyard-to-the-bottle experience for students and allow the school to bring in revenue. Because of its relatively small size, the facility would not compete against industry giants.

Already, the trail has been blazed a couple hundred miles south at Cal State Fresno. Three years ago, the school opened a 50,000-gallon winery, the first and so far only commercial winery run by a college in the United States. The Fresno winery, built with state money and equipped with contributions from the industry, has a waiver allowing it to sell its products.

“It’s been a tremendous asset for our academic and research programs and from a practical side too,” said Joe Bezerra, interim director of Fresno’s Viticulture and Enology Research Center.

The winery is big enough that the school is able to do large-scale, commercial-type research that is more valuable to the industry, Bezerra said. “We get high respect because our research has a high probability of being replicated” by commercial wineries, he said.

The school is now producing 13 kinds of wine, taking grapes from harvest to the bottle. Some of the wines are receiving rave reviews. In the recently concluded California State Fair competition, five Cal State Fresno wines won medals in blind taste tests.

While officials at UC Davis are careful to praise Fresno’s success, they point out that their proposal calls for a smaller and more upscale facility that makes a statement about Davis’ historical role in the wine business.

While it is possible to buy wine from Fresno off the shelf, wine made in Davis would be sold in bulk to commercial brokers and also bottled and used to raise money from university donors. There would be a certain cachet, they hope, to a Chancellor’s Reserve Cabernet.

“This is a big thing for us,” Wolpert said. “We academicians are trying to do a business . . . and our philosophy is education first and money second.”