Going Pro with Online Wine Science Education

When Higher Learning recently talked to students in the WSU professional certificate program in enology, we learned that they not only come from all over the country, they’re also making connections, starting businesses and getting jobs in wine regions all over the place. Hear what certificate program students have to say in this short video.

The two-year certificate programs in viticulture and enology are continuing education programs offered through Washington State University Extension. These non-credit, professional certificate programs are tailored for people who are seriously interested in working in the wine industry — grape growing and winemaking — but are not interested in obtaining a college degree.

Mapping Complexity in Washington Wine Country

As you read this, a graduate student in Prosser is sitting in front of his computer, for the umpteen millionth hour, bashing his head against the mapmaker’s perennial problem: the map can never be as detailed as the terrain it represents.

But that doesn’t mean the mapmaker doesn’t try. Especially when there is tremendous pent up demand from Washington grape growers for a vineyard site-selection tool.

Ian Yau is the mapmaker, and he’s a grad student based at WSU’s Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser. Yau is trying to wrestle a vast amount of information to the ground in order to turn raw data into useful knowledge.

“It’s a lot of spreadsheet manipulation,” Yau said, the wry understatement of his project causing a smile to play across his face.

Consider what you’d want to know if you wanted to plant a vineyard in Washington. You’d want to know, of a given plot of land, how many growing degree days it got at a certain elevation on a particular slope. You’d want to know about the soil beneath your feet: is it going to drain properly so the grape vines don’t wallow and rot? Is there hardpan or some sort of other restrictive layer close to the surface that will prevent the plants from sinking their roots deep into the soil? And what’s the soil’s water-holding capacity and pH?

The Mendoza Connection

When Daniela Romero heard Washington State University’s Markus Keller talking about irrigation during grape ripening, her curiosity was piqued. After all, applying water close to harvest time was simply not done.

Keller was teaching a grape physiology course at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza, deep in the heart of Argentina’s wine country. Romero is a graduate student at the university, and she asked if she could join Keller’s research team in Prosser to learn more about his tradition-defying research.

“Keller’s research is important to the wine industry, because it will influence the way growers add water to their vineyards. In most of the world’s wine regions, irrigation during grape ripening is thought to dilute the sugars in grapes–but this belief does not have any scientific foundation,” Romero said.

As Keller pointed out, “The European wine industries and their many regulators have it all figured out: irrigation during grapes’ critical ripening period is generally a bad thing and must be strictly regulated.”

A quote from the International Organization for Biological and Integrated Control in their 1999 Guidelines for Integrated Production of Grapes illustrates Keller’s point: “Irrigation of vines for wine production will not be applied after véraison or highly restricted by the regional guidelines in order to guarantee the good quality of the wine.”

“The tacit assumption is that irrigation boosts berry size and dilutes the quality-impact components of the grapes,” Keller said. “So pervasive is this argument that, even in the New World, many wineries encourage growers to withhold irrigation water during fruit ripening to avoid any perceived adverse effects.”

Keller and former graduate student Marco Biondi put the assumptions to the test–with startling results that fly in the face of viticultural tradition.

The Fine Details: The Ability to Blend Art and Science Helps Make Great Wines

When sipping a glass of a fine winemaker’s red blend in front of the fire, it’s easy to appreciate the art that went into that glass.

But anyone who has tried to make wine finds him or herself quickly caught up in what amounts to a science project.

“Winemaking is certainly creative,” said Carolyn Ross, assistant professor of food science at Washington State University and an expert in the sensory analysis of wine. “But at its core, winemaking is a scientific endeavor. What folks often forget is that those two things are not incompatible.”

Take the fine art of fining, for example. Fining agents are substances added at or near the end of the winemaking process in order to improve clarity, adjust flavor, aroma and wine stability. In other words, fining tweaks a wine’s sensory qualities.

And the sensory quality of wine is, of course, what enjoying a glass of great wine is all about: the mouth feel, the unfolding bouquet, the color, the acids, tannins, and other qualities that wine writers deploy armies of adjectives trying to describe. Ross takes a scientific approach to those armies of adjectives be finding ways to quantify their chemical properties and by training panels of wine tasters to communicate the importance of individual sensory qualities.

“Fining is critical for consumer acceptance of white wines as a haze or sediment in the bottle may eventually lead to consumer rejection and economic loss to the winery. Together with racking and filtration, fining agents improve clarity, define aromas and increase shelf life,” Ross and her colleagues wrote in a recently published article in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture.

But, the researchers add, fining may also “impact the sensory quality of wines,” though how much sensory impact fining has depends upon a complex relationship between the fining compound and the type of wine being fined.

“Fining is definitely where some basic scientific practice is essential to making a good wine,” said Ross.

Ross and her team fined Chardonnay and Gewürztraminer made by a well-known Washington winery which donated the wine to Ross’s team specifically for this series of experiments.

“There’s hasn’t been a lot of research done on the fining of Washington wines,” Ross pointed out. Because wine is so chemically complex, it is very “place specific”: grapes of the same variety grown in different areas produce wines with varying sensory qualities and so research, too, needs to be place specific.

Petite Sirah and Petit Verdot

Ain’t Nothin’ Small About ‘Em

By Christine Go

Does size matter? Well, it does if you’re talking about grapes, namely Petite Sirah and Petit Verdot. These varietals produce big, bold wines, so why are they called “petite?”  Give up? Because of the size of the grapes! Apparently both varietals have small berries, so they have a high skin-to-juice ratio. Since color and tannins come primarily from the skin and seeds of the grapes, more skin equals more color and tannins, which translates to tooth-staining wines with lots of structure.

So Petite Sirah isn’t petite, but is it related to Syrah? There’s been a lot of confusion about the origin of Petite Sirah, and it’s taken about a hundred years to figure out the answer to that question. If you check out the timeline on the “P.S. I Love You” website (an advocacy group for Petite Sirah), you’ll see that Syrah first came to California from France in 1878, but some called it Petite Syrah. Then, a few years later, a French varietal called Durif (named after the grape grower who propagated it) was introduced to California, and it was called Petite Sirah, since that was its common name in France.

We now know that Syrah/Petite Syrah is not the same as Petite Sirah/Durif, but they are related. In 1997, Carole Meredith, a professor at UC Davis, did a DNA analysis of Petite Sirah compared to Durif, and discovered that they are indeed the same. It turns out that Syrah and Peloursin, an obscure French varietal, are the parents of Petite Sirah. Syrah is prone to a fungus called “powdery mildew,” something familiar to gardeners in Western Washington, and originally Petite Sirah was developed to be resistant to it; but in humid climates, Petite Sirah is prone to another fungus called “grey rot.” This is why Petite Sirah does well in drier grape-growing regions. Today the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) recognizes Durif and Petite Sirah as synonyms for the same grape. And just to add to the confusion, some wineries label their Petite Sirah as “Petite Syrah” even though it is not the same as Syrah.

Cork Dork: False Advertisement?

By Chris Nishiwaki

“I was lured to a restaurant with the promise of $5 glasses of wine during happy hour, including one of my favorite Côte du Rhones (Grenache-based blend). When the wine arrived, the glass was merely a third full. Isn’t that false advertisement?”

That’s a great question and one I hear often. Glass pours can be misleading. The fill level of a wine glass is relative to the size of the glass. Some bars and restaurants will serve you a tasting glass filled to the rim that amounts to about two to three ounces of wine. Ideally you would want a large glass about one third full leaving enough room for the wine to release its aromas inside the bulb for maximum enjoyment.

Instead of focusing on how full the glass is, measure as best you can how much wine there is in your glass or simply ask your server or bartender. Pours of five to six ounces for still wine or three to four ounces for sparkling wine are standard. Some establishments may in fact serve smaller pours during happy hour.

One way to ask politely is to enquire how many glasses of wine they pour per bottle. A regular bottle is 750 milliliters, which amounts to a little more than twenty-five ounces. Five glasses per bottle calculates to about a five-ounce pour. Four glasses per bottle equals to about a six-ounce pour.

The Essential Wine Tool Kit

Seven must-haves for optimum wine drinking consumption

By Henri Schock

Our favorite corkscrew. We all have one, and without it we would be lost looking into an empty glass of nothing (unless you find a screw cap, of course). But once that cork has been pulled, what do you do with the bottle? Well, drink it of course! But, what’s the best way to consume this juice? What is the appropriate vessel to put it into? What do you do with half drunken bottle on that off chance you don’t finish it? And, with all this wine you’ve been drinking, how on earth will you begin to remember what each bottle was like?

As a carpenter with his tools, a wine drinker needs the proper gear to guarantee that every experience is a pleasant one. Forget all that gimmicky shit you’ve seen; this is the real deal—your essential tool kit for the everyday wino.

A Pinch of This, a Dash of That

The Importance of Understanding Micronutrients in Grapes

By Brian Charles Clark
wine.wsu.edu

When humans don’t get enough zinc, we can get sick with cancer and suffer immune-system dysfunction. The same is true of plants. Micronutrients such as boron, zinc and copper, although only a tiny part of a plant’s diet, can have a profound effect on the plant’s health.

Washington State University soil scientist Joan Davenport and her colleagues at the WSU Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser are studying micronutrient utilization in Concord grapes. Washington is the nation’s number one Concord grape producer, so understanding what happens with micronutrients is important to the industry’s bottom line. And what Davenport learns about micronutrients in Concords is going to be applicable to wine grapes, too.

Micronutrient availability is an issue in Washington’s grape-growing region, with its high pH soils. The soil availability of micronutrients decreases as pH increases.

“Right now, growers apply micronutrients based on their experience and on what’s commercially available. We want to give them quantifiable data to work with,” said Davenport. “Then they’ll be able to supply plants with what they optimally utilize without spending more than they need to on inputs.”

If the vine doesn’t get enough boron, Davenport said, pollen lands on the flower but doesn’t germinate. “That’s a disaster,” she said, “because if there’s no pollination, there’s no seed, and then there’s no fruit.” Copper and zinc don’t affect the plants so dramatically, but do affect the size of the canopy.

Davenport’s current project is based on one that her doctoral student, Suphasuk “Bird” Pradubsuck, finished recently.

A Nefarious Plot

The juicy story of a chick, a couple of guys and a dog

By Erin Thomas

Heather and Dean Neff really are living the dream, as the signs up to their Chelan estate winery suggest. With the green and flourishing Defiance Estate Vineyard overlooking the rolling hills and glistening waters of Lake Chelan, the folks behind Nefarious Cellars are fully aware and grateful for the thriving luxury known as their life.

“We are just a chick, a couple of guys and a dog striving to blow your mind,” the Nefarious Cellars website states referring to Heather, Dean, and their children, George, 4, and Cooper, 9 months.

“The bonus to being the woman in the group is I do notice I tend to smell things a little better than Dean,” Heather said, “That’s my little asset.”

With a bag full of tricks and assets they bring to the blossoming Lake Chelan Valley AVA scene, the chick and the fathering guy have a longstanding history in the industry and as a couple.

The two met in 1996, both striving to crack into the soils of the wine business after attending Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Oregon for enology and viticulture. They then decided to plant a test block vineyard on Dean’s property in Pateros, Washington. At the Rocky Mother Vineyard, named for its soils, Heather said they got a great sense of what they could grow in the Lake Chelan Valley.

The Neffs returned to Oregon, where Dean started working for a vineyard management company, then to study under the uncompromisingly gifted winemakers Isabelle Dutartre of De Ponte Cellars and later with Tony Soter at Soter Winery in Willamette Valley. Heather managed a small tasting room in Carlton, with the intentions of both retaining every aspect of the business but ultimately wanting to start a winery of their own, Heather said.
With the couple having equal parts of formal grape training, they said it was an obvious decision to split production by colors and ultimately give themselves a niche in the industry among giants.

Top Ten Reasons To Celebrate Wine in The New Year

As we approach the ‘tween years of the new millennium, there are many things to be excited about in the world of wine. Our own Chris Chan has compiled a list of things you should definitely be checking out next year. Hell, do it now.

By Christopher Chan

#10. Tasting Rooms

There are over 100 wineries within thirty miles of downtown Seattle, and that means many, many places to celebrate wine! So much wine, so much time (a whole year) to visit, view, sip and decide before you buy! Just remember to be cool and courteous just like the tasting room staff, and you’ll have a blast. Plus, no glasses to wash afterwards!

#9. Wine Bloggers

There’s an old saying about opinions… everyone’s got a pair and now there’s more than a “million” reviews, recommendations, and write-ups on wine. In fact, this June, Walla Walla will be hosting the 2010 Wine Blogger’s Conference. Read some, write some, heck… don’t cost nothin’. So, get your iPhones ready, and come and get your “blog” on, or if you’d rather…“tweet” this!

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